How to build a professional portfolio

Gone are the days when a simple resumé or CV was enough to let the world know who you are and what you’ve done professionally. Today, more and more people seem to rely on a tailored resumé, a LinkedIn^® profile and a professional portfolio.

Here’s what to know about a professional portfolio, a workhorse of the career industry.

It can also be a great tool during interviews, help grow your network and assist you in gaining visibility.

Some industries — design, education, technology, content creation — require evidence of completed work, while for others it’s optional. If you’re not sure if a professional portfolio is worth the effort, look at leaders or up-and-comers you admire to see how they present themselves online.

While Baker says your digital presence doesn’t typically need to be high tech or full of bells and whistles, you need to make sure it’s free of mistakes, including typos. Just as a misspelled or missing word can grind a recruiter’s review of your cover letter, resumé or application to a halt, the same is true for a portfolio. Ask a mentor or colleagues who know your skills well to review and proofread everything. 

Developers may use GitHub^® to share coding projects or code snippets, while designers often showcase their work in a portfolio built on the Behance^® online platform or Dribbble^®. Companies like Squarespace^®, Wix^®, Canva^® and WordPress^® offer a wide range of templates, hosting plans, customized URLs and more, and typically don’t require serious tech skills to build out a basic site.

Most important, says Baker, is approaching your portfolio in a way that’s sustainable: “It doesn’t have to be done all at once; you can work on different elements a little at a time. And if you’re still a student, there are elements in your classes you can capture that are great examples of the skills you’re learning.”

“In many fields, employers want an explanation of your thought process — why you went with certain decisions — as well as the results or successes,” says Baker. “It doesn’t have to be long-winded or full of a lot of detail, and it’s good to use bullets more than paragraphs. People like to see the strategy and the results in a portfolio.”

If you opt for a portfolio website, you can consider adding sliders or linked photos to encourage potential employers to interact with your work. Above all, carefully curate examples that show the most relevant skills to the role you’re trying to land. “Make sure that you’re sharing with purpose,” Baker says.

If you’re further along in your career and have a lot of examples to choose from, or you’re applying for different positions, it may help to organize work examples in folders on a drive rather than create a number of pages on a website that could be overwhelming or hard to navigate.

Ultimately, the narrative of you and your work should be clear, accurate and easy to digest. 

In her seven years as a career advisor, Baker has worked with a number of clients transitioning to a new industry. As you spend time looking at how leaders in your field present themselves professionally, dig into the specific elements within their portfolios and emulate those that make sense for your own.

“For example, if someone is moving from the corporate world to higher education, they’ll want to include a CV, a sample syllabus and maybe a slideshow of a lecture,” Baker says. Your digital presence, she adds, is a good opportunity to signal to would-be employers that you’re aware of trends, best practices and insights about your new industry. These can usually be found by following professional associations and other organizations.

“A lot of times, people haven’t explored what’s needed in that new field, so it can be helpful to go back to what the industry is saying,” Baker explains. Otherwise, “this could be a sign to an employer that you don’t know what’s going on.”

Much like avoiding typos, the advice to update may sound painfully obvious. But just as many of us put off updating our resumés, it’s easy to neglect or forget to add a new skill, accomplishment, responsibility or role to your portfolio. Also, links can change. So while it’s helpful to link to the original source of your work sample, be sure to download a hard copy so you always have a backup.

“If you’re job searching, a good rule of thumb is to update your portfolio every three months, especially if you’re new to the workforce and ramping up your career,” Baker suggests. “Doing updates every six months is good if you’re not looking, though those who do contract work may want to update it more frequently.”