Page 109 - Career Transitions Workbook - 2021

Where Do Where
No. 11 – Assembling Your Career Portfolio I Want to Now?
Am I
Be?

Estimated time: 3-4 hours
Creating
What's the Tools I
b My Plan? Need
Overview/Goals:

By this point you should have a collection of work samples – materials created, letters of
recommendation, pictures, awards, documents, reports, projects, etc… You should also have a
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good idea of what an employer might be looking for and what skills you have that can make you an
attractive candidate. The goal of this exercise is to assemble your Career Portfolio.

A career portfolio will help you talk to an interviewer about your skills and why you are the best
person for this job. Your portfolio will be unique to you and will show others what you have to
offer. Your portfolio should:
• Be neat For Evaluation Only
• Be organized by your most important skills
• Be easy to use and explain
• Show your best work
• Be able to stand up on its own. You should be able to hand your career portfolio to anyone
and they will know what each sample shows about you.

For more details about the details of assembly and some of the sections listed in this exercise, refer
to Creating Your Career Portfolio: At-A-Glance Guide for Students, 4 Ed.
th

Instructions:

1. Your career portfolio should have a professional look and feel. Choose a 3-ring binder large
enough to hold your samples. Each document and work sample should be put into individual
sheet protectors so your samples stay neat and have a quality look.
2. Use Exercise 8A to create the tabs for the portfolio binder.
• You can buy extra-wide tabs that will extend over a sheet protector, or you can buy tabs
that stick onto individual sheet protectors. The choice is yours. Just make sure it has a
professional look and feel.
Note: Tabs should always extend beyond the sheet protectors and should never be
hidden within the samples.
• Use the computer or a label maker instead of printing the labels by hand. Your portfolio will
look much neater.
3. Select your best work samples and put them into your 3-ring portfolio binder.
Each tabbed skill area in your portfolio should have three to six samples. If you have a lot of
work samples to choose from, be sure to include only your best samples. If you think the work

Exercise 11 – Creating Your Career Portfolio – Assembly Checklist 103