It’s been a hot minute since my last post about skills. The meme isn't a lie: skills pay the bills. But in today’s world, it isn’t enough to just say you have the skills to do the job. You have to show it. This is where your portfolio steps in.
Why Your Portfolio is More Than Just a Folder
Stop thinking of your portfolio as just a GitHub repo, a website, or a pitch deck. Those are just evidence. A true portfolio is a mnemonic trigger, an opportunity and a reference point for storytelling. It brings forward the memories of creating.
The magic? It’s not just what you did. It’s how you did it and what happened along the way.
Your portfolio should reflect:
- The work you want to do.
- The outcomes you want to achieve.
- The disciplinary lanes you find joy in.
Crucially, it doesn't even have to be public. The portfolio is about you, for you. It’s the tool that frees you from only having stories from work, which is especially important for those in roles where confidentiality limits what they can openly discuss.
Every item should elicit a story about something you did to achieve an outcome that delivered value for someone else. Whether it’s simple ("I drew a picture of a dinosaur to make my kids happy") or complex ("Here’s the architectural diagram for my community blog"), it’s a story of value delivered.
The Simple 3-Step Portfolio Methodology
Ready to build yours? The point of a portfolio is to create a space for artifacts that act as those mnemonic triggers to recall how you got there. Break your process down into three key areas:
1. Define Your Narrative: What Skills Do You Want to Reflect?
This is often the toughest part. If you’re job hunting, align your portfolio pieces with the conversations you plan to have. You're specifically looking to demonstrate where you’ve delivered valuable outcomes.
Building a hobby or growth portfolio? Focus on pieces that showcase that hobby or clearly demonstrate your ability to learn and grow.
- Actionable Check: Ask yourself and your network: "Are these skills and their associated stories representative of how I want to be presented?"
Got between 3 and 5 key skills and their stories in mind? Write them down.
2. Choose Your Stage: What Tools Will Facilitate Your Artifacts?
You need tools and platforms sufficient to elicit a story. They don’t have to be high-tech, but it is better if they can show off the work directly. Ideally, they are relevant to your field and can even stand alone.
I strongly recommend using the portfolio as an opportunity to build something. There is no better portfolio piece than something in use.
- Highlighting marketing skills? Start a blog and newsletter with analytics and analysis.
- Developing software? Build an application.
- A managerial type? Build templates and workflows that show how teams deliver better under your coaching.
Use these examples to tell the story: How did you do it? What did you learn? What resulted, and who benefited?
Match your tools to the work: Blogs for storytelling, Adobe/Behance for digital art, GitHub/GitLab for technical and engineering work. Don’t get stuck in analysis paralysis—moving from one tool to another can even be a portfolio item in itself!
3. Practice Your Performance: How Do You Convey Value?
You created it, so you’re already very familiar with your portfolio items. Now, you need to make others as familiar as you are.
- Take the time to practice telling the story of each artifact.
- Share with people you trust and get feedback.
- Connect your portfolio to your resume so that the words on your resume come to life in the story about how you did them!
Practice, practice, practice! You built each of your portfolio pieces, you should know them inside and out. Be certain you can talk about them as easily as you put them together. If you struggled to build a portfolio item, build it again. The repetition will do amazing things for your confidence, understanding, and your ability to tell a story.
Building a portfolio you're passionate is absolutely key! Those you talk with will pick up on your understanding of the topic, your ability to deliver, and your enthusiasm. It will assuredly make you stand out, and help others pick you out from the crowd.
Final Thought
You don't put a portfolio together for someone else. A portfolio is an invaluable tool that helps you communicate and helps others see your value. It’s about you, for you. When connected to your resume, it becomes a supercharged storytelling machine!
Use your portfolio as an exercise to define your differentiators: what makes you, you. And as a way to practice creating things no one can share because no one else has done it in the same way. Make sure your portfolio items are distinctly, uniquely you. Built from the ground up, and designed to tell the story you want to tell.
If you've got a portfolio today, how do you use it to tell stories? And if you don't have a portfolio yet, what are you waiting for?