Building an Impressive Portfolio: Showcasing Your Skills
How to build a professional portfolio that successfully showcases your skills.
Photo by Nick Morrison on Unsplash
Portfolios are an extension of your personality and work persona, and they play a key role when it comes to showcasing what you’ve done in the past. Properly showcasing your skills on your portfolio can be a challenge, but with some practice and useful tips, we’re sure you’ll make a good first impression.
In this article, we’ll go through the process of properly assembling a portfolio that displays your skills effectively and successfully.
Don’t Just List Your Skills
When it comes to making a good impression on your portfolio, you can’t just list your skills, you have to properly showcase them and explain how you apply them to daily tasks.
Avoid using a simple list like this titled “skills”, and include old-fashioned items like good communication, teamwork, and punctuality. Instead, start grouping your skills by categories that showcase their versatility, like industry-specific skills, multicultural competencies, proficiency in specific areas, and similar.
This will show recruiters that you have a lot of skills that can be used in the role you’re applying to and that you also know their worth and when it is appropriate to use each.
Include Your Best Work
To effectively show your resume skills, you have to add proof of them through some previous work you feel proud of. This doesn’t mean you should include 20+ links to the work you’ve done, be selective and choose only your best work, no matter if it’s just 3 things.
Quality is far more important than quantity, and recruiters can even stop looking at your portfolio if you include too much proof of your work (that is notably included just to reach a specific number of pages). Choose work that showcases the abilities and skills you’re listing on your resume.
Talk About The Process Of That Work
You don’t need to write a 500-word essay describing the process behind your work, but rather a short explanation of how you approach the task, face challenges, and find a solution.
There are various ways to do this, such as in brief bullet points at the end of each piece, or even in your cover letter. Try both and have someone read them and tell you which one looks more natural and professional.
Don’t forget to add context to the work you're showcasing. Include the task you were asked to do, how much time you had to do it, the expectations of your boss/team leader, and the outcome of the project.
Organize Your Portfolio Appropriately
Depending on the industry you’re specializing in, you can have some freedom over the look of your portfolio and its organization.
For example, photography, design, and fashion allow for a creative portfolio, with colors, different fonts, and lots of details. On the other hand, IT, science, and business are known for their simple yet attractive look.
Organize your portfolio according to what your audience likes, such as chronologically, by type of work, or even by industry.
Keywords: assembling/organize portfolio skills/resume skills