Do you need a portfolio?

Portfolio is not a list of achievements. Achievements is a short and specific description of the results of your work: achieved sales growth of 24%, increased department productivity by 7%, and reduced costs by 1.2 times. A portfolio is a much more voluminous and detailed list of works; it contains not only the results, but also a description of the essence, details.

A portfolio is necessary if:

The result of your work - a graphic file, image, visual object, website, physical object - in this case a photograph will represent it. Professions: designer, photographer, artist, model, architect, builder, makeup artist, event manager, souvenir specialist, cook.
You create a new creative object for the task. Professions: journalist, copywriter, screenwriter, advertising specialist. You should collect a portfolio of texts or their parts, links to publications.
Your work is of a design nature. Professions: auditor, project manager, programmer, consultant, specialist in business process optimization, technology implementation, engineer.
A portfolio is not necessary if the work is standard, described by instructions and does not have fundamental differences in tasks in different companies: for example, this is the work of an accountant, administrator, sales manager, personnel manager, logistician, secretary.

Describe the project
If your portfolio consists of projects, you can describe them according to the following plan:

project implementation period;
goals and general objectives of the project (or what the customer requested from you);
your role in the project, if it is not obvious, a brief description of personal tasks;
project results, including graphical ones: diagrams, statistics, photos, screenshots.
Choose the best
For different vacancies, the portfolio may be different. Focus on the employer company, choose projects that are suitable for its style, requirements and tasks. If you are looking for an industrial designer, make a portfolio of exactly such works, look for a journalist for a fashion column - give links to texts of a given topic and, importantly, the right style. Looking for an auditor - add projects in the selected industry.

It’s worth putting in the portfolio exactly those works that you consider to be the best. It is unlikely that the employer will appreciate the weak work that you did at the dawn of your career. As professionalism grows, replace older work with more complex ones. Good advice is to show in the portfolio only what you would like to work on in the future. This will narrow down your search and reduce the number of invitations, but help you stay on track.

Think about design
You can draw up a portfolio yourself or use special services. For example, artists and photographers create sites with their work - in this form, voluminous files are much easier to view, the quality of the graphics does not suffer. About the programmer can tell, among other things, his profile on GitHub. Copywriters often blog, for example, on Medium.

Try to choose a service with clear navigation that will not spoil the impression of your work. If the employer has to search for what is needed for a long time, interest may disappear, and your main masterpiece is to go unnoticed.
Journalists are better off submitting work in the form of links or a .pdf format that preserves layout and formatting. IT professionals and programmers, in addition to links and screenshots of sites, can lead parts of the program code.

Store correctly
Due to the large volume of the portfolio, it is customary to draw up a separate document and send it in the attachment to the letter, give a link to it in the resume or bring it in print for an interview.

Take care of relevance
Fill the portfolio gradually, as projects are completed. Creating it in one moment is an extremely difficult task.

Don't risk it
If you saw a “creative portfolio” on the Web and got the idea to do something similar, consider the pros and cons. Creating a high-quality and informative document is difficult, and the future employer may not appreciate the portfolio in the form of amateur infographics, a cartoon, a game, Internet memes. This is the case when it is better to resort to well-known or classic formats.

Those who do not have a portfolio often attach a scanned diploma, certificates and their own photos to the resume, acting on the principle that “at least something is better than nothing.” If you have nothing to show, this will not be an excuse.
A portfolio, like a resume, is a document that sells your experience: take time to compile it, check your spelling, and make formatting convenient and balanced. You should be happy with the result - and then the time spent on the portfolio will pay off by the speed of job search!