Organizing your portfolio for your next job interview is an essential step to ensuring you look professional. Arriving at your destination looking frazzled, unprepared, and confused will tell the interviewer that you cannot handle new or stressful situations. If you prepare and organize beforehand, you can avoid this problem.
Of course, many people can’t even get to the interview stage as their digital portfolio doesn’t do them any justice.
Today we will give you 5 tips to make your portfolio pop enough to reach the interview stage, while also sharing tips while in the interview room.
When you make a resume, that information will likely be sent straight to your prospective employers. This might send you into a false sense of security, believing that you don’t need to bring this evidence to your interview.
However, having physical copies of your samples and resume will make you look professional while also acting as a memory-jogging trigger. Buy a portfolio holder that suits your aesthetic, such as a modern handmade leather padfolio.
Then keep your resume and samples in this holder ready to pull out and showcase when the time feels right. Having physical copies will help you point out elements of your ability that the interviewer may not have picked up on. It can also jog your memory during this stressful time - keeping you on track.
It’s tempting to throw all of your favorite samples into your portfolio, and even though these displays of your work might be great, realistically, the interviewer will not go through them all.
Instead, depending on your job type, pick out only 5 samples. From each sample consider the positive elements to show your prospective employer as well as correctional anecdotes which show how you deal with problem-solving.
Unless the work you have chosen is unique and impressive, your samples shouldn’t be older than 5 years. Anything past that will show the employer that you are rusty in this area that you’re trying to show off.
Lastly, tailor these samples to the employer. This might mean swapping your samples for every interview, but doing this will show the interviewer exactly what they want to see, making you a prime candidate.
To help your potential employer understand why your sample is important, you should caption it with the important information. Here are some examples:
The captions should simply highlight the key features they should find in the sample, making it easier to look through your content.
The potential employer will not want to spend ages clicking through your portfolio, for flicking through the physical pages. They will have hundreds or even thousands of potential employees to look at, so they will be searching for key information to narrow down their search.
Knowing this you want to keep your portfolio clean-looking, industry-specific, and chronological. This will make it easier to read, relevant to the topic, and simple to follow.
Although it might be easier to send everyone the same information, if you include data that isn’t relevant to the job in question, it will be discarded as a waste of time.
This step is even more important if you have a digital portfolio. Send the information to a critical friend, colleague, or family member. Ask them to click through or read through your resume and samples as if they were looking to hire you.
Ask them to write feedback on the smoothness and ease of understanding. Then ask them to read through your portfolio and ensure that everything makes sense.
When you write something without checking it, you can easily refer to something you hope to include later, and never do. This checking process points out those silly errors before they are seen by prospective employers.
If the portfolio is digital, make sure you check it on every software available to you. For example, if your photographs are high quality, will they be seen on low-quality computers? If the photos are low quality, will they seem impressive on high-quality computers?
Use these 5 tips to organize your portfolio in a way that is relevant, clear, and idiot-proof.
