More often than not, portfolios have been used mainly by artists, designers and photographers to present their best work to clients or companies looking to hire them.
However, in the digital space, portfolios are a tool being used by every industry -- from teaching to writing, to accounting, to marketing, and more -- to bring a CV to life using real-world samples of work.
Everyone can, and should, make an advanced portfolio that exhibits their best work and utilizes it to separate themselves from different hopefuls who also apply for the same position, or are vying for the same client. But not everyone does. Mainly because of the general understanding that portfolios are for artists and designers, that creating a website that showcases your work is difficult, that particular skill sets are needed to make the portfolio, and you just don’t have the time for that during a job search, etc.
Mindset aside, it is incredibly easy to make your own portfolio nowadays. We have assembled a rundown of excellent choices for you to investigate and they are for the most part free.
Top Platforms for Creating Your Portfolio
Vizualize.me
Visualize.me is a program that enables you to make an online resume utilizing many free infographic resources. There are such a large number of topics to look over, the course of events layouts and shape alternatives to enable you to breathe life into your aptitudes and involvement in an outwardly effective infographic.
VisualCV.com
This online program enables you to make an excellent and expert resume rapidly either by transferring a record, your LinkedIn data or entering it starting with no outside help. Browse one of the formats, make your CV and either distribute it on the web or download it as a pdf. You likewise get some basic tracking of your online resume for free.
The author of this article uses this portfolio service, and because she was one of the first few users on the site, she was granted a lifetime professional package to the website for giving useful and helpful feedback. Perhaps the best thing about VisualCV is that they can host your CV or make it downloadable as a PDF depending on your preference.
About.me
This website enables you to make a page that is about you. Consider it a one page rundown of you and your accomplishments on the web. You can connect your page to your contacts, and the site also provides basic tracking regarding who has gone by your About.me page and how regularly. On the off chance that you needn't bother with a gigantic arrangement of work, then this site might be the best choice for you.
LinkedIn is a fabulous portfolio asset. Since its features include the ability to consider pictures, pdf's, sites and so forth… it has turned into a considerably more noteworthy companion of the active job searcher. You can bring all your scholarly and expert accomplishments together in your LinkedIn portfolio. Just go to the professional page on the LinkedIn site for instructions on how to amp up your profile.
WordPress.com
WordPress is a straightforward platform that steps you through the process of setting up your website or blog. It’s a very popular platform; in fact, they quote on their site that they power 23% of the internet. They are mobile and SEO friendly, have hundreds of designs to choose from, and the publishing process is very simple to manage yourself. It is very easy to add widgets and plugins for additional functionality.
Tumblr.com
Tumbler is similar to WordPress. Both platforms are great for setting up your blog, but Tumblr is more focused on images and social media. The Tumblr community likes, shares, follows and reblogs a lot which is great if that is what you are after.
Once you've settled on a platform, you'll have to start arranging out the different components that will go into your portfolio. Begin by expanding on the great - and gruesome - thoughts of others by going to the portfolios of partners, associates, and competitors. Observe what you like and don't care for about their sites. This "competitive scanning” is what marketers do for their clients -- so even if you’re far away from the marketing department, try to do what they would do to promote yourself.
Essentially what needs to go into your portfolio are the bare bones of your professional life. In a sitemap, they would look something like this:
- Cover Page
- Table of Contents
- Updated Resume
- Samples of Work
- Awards & Recognition
Choosing which samples to include is when it starts to get a bit hairy. Let’s make an example of marketing. If you’re a marketer, it is very tempting to include a visual of every campaign you were associated with that had positive results. Don’t do it! At best it comes off as – I was really busy. But more likely it says to the client or recruiter – I am not capable of reviewing information and isolating what’s important. This is a huge red flag, for any professional.
The basics you need to include in your marketing portfolio are:
An Integrated Marketing Campaign – It is essential to show you are a strategic thinker and featuring an integrated marketing campaign will prove this. Incorporate resources from conventional media, print, web content, social media, video, and email campaigns. This will likewise emphasise your experience in each publishing medium.
A New or Innovative Idea – This may be a product launch, redesign, line augmentation, new publicity campaign, process change or new client channel. This sort of movement demonstrates that you are an innovative thinker and will subtly sell your communication and management skills along with it.
An Activity with Great Results – This should be distinct from the strategic campaign, and ideally you will have had reasonably high involvement in the activity. Activities that resulted in increased brand awareness, loyalty, sales and profit are all great examples to use.
A Challenging or Failed Activity – A challenging activity or one that did not meet its objectives allows you to talk about perseverance, problem-solving, adaptability and importantly learning from failure. By admitting you learnt from some things that went wrong shows you have a lot of emotional intelligence and have understood what failure means to progress.
Much like crafting your CV, your portfolio needs to hit all the buttons for potential clients and/or recruiters to make them want to contact you. Think of your portfolio as an adjunct to your CV (which incidentally should be downloadable, as a rule). Use it as a space to showcase actual examples of your work -- and not a bin where you dump all the work you’ve ever done and task people to slog through to see if you’re what they are looking for.
