PORTFOLIOS Building an Employability Portfolio

What is a Portfolio? A portfolio is a marketing tool that is used as evidence of your skills. Essentially, it is a collection of documents and other easily portable artifacts that you can use to validate claims you make about yourself. While you are being interviewed for a job, you can show your portfolio samples while describing your suitability for the position. Having this evidence can also help employers remember you, by remembering something that they saw within your portfolio.

Development of a Portfolio The development of a portfolio is a continuous process. A portfolio should be constantly revised and updated throughout your school and work career. As you develop new skills and gain more employment experience, you will need to provide new samples for your portfolio.

How to Develop a Portfolio 1.Reflection: Think about yourself and your skills. –Try to answer the following questions about yourself: What are your personal characteristics? What experience do you have? What are your accomplishments? What skills do you have? What are your interests? What are your abilities? What are your strengths? What are your goals?

2.Gather Evidence: Get proof of your skills. –Gather information relating to fundamental skills, personal management skills, and teamwork skills. –These three types of skills were identified by the Conference Board of Canada as skills that are generally accepted as required of the Canadian workforce.

3.Organize: Create a well organized portfolio. –Once all evidence of skills has been gathered, it is important to organize the evidence in a way that shows your skills as best as possible. –One of the best methods is to organize your evidence into a binder using plastic insert sheets, with dividers for different sections.

4.Description of Evidence: Provide a clear description of the evidence. –The description of the evidence is like a support document to the evidence. –This is where you are able to provide a clearer description of the evidence by describing your skills and how you developed them.

PROOF OF SKILLS Documents to Include in a Portfolio

Fundamental Skills Section Choose documents that illustrate your best writing, speaking, listening, reading, mathematics, and technology skills –Transcripts –Certificates of Achievement –Work samples –Letters of recommendation from teachers, principals, etc.

Personal Management Skills Section Choose documents that illustrate your employability skills (e.g. good attitude, responsibility) –Work evaluations –Attendance records from school or work –Personal career plan –Highlight past jobs (include name and address of the employers, a picture of you at work, your job title, duties, special accomplishments, letter of recommendation) –Activities that demonstrate responsible behaviour such as babysitting and handling money –Volunteer work

Teamwork Skills Section Choose documents that demonstrate that you have developed skills in cooperating, advising, teaching, and respecting others –Jobs or activities that required teamwork skills –Certificates, awards, and letters of appreciation indicating teamwork skills –Leadership jobs or activities –Participation in sports teams, drama, choir, band, yearbook, student council, peer tutoring, etc. –Letters of recommendation