Why You Should Create a Digital Portfolio This Week

If you’ve hung out in the Auburn Career Center or the Miller Writing Center much, you may have heard about students’ ePortfolios or digital portfolios, but to most job applicants, it may just sound like unimportant, futuristic career readiness jargon.

On the contrary, back in 2013, Forbes.com explained that 56 percent of hiring managers are more impressed with applicants’ personal websites and digital portfolios than any other element of their job applications. However, only 7 percent of candidates actually had one.

Given the ever-increasing pervasiveness of technology in the job search, it’s a fair guess that these numbers have climbed since the Forbes article was published. With only about 20 percent of applicants being granted an interview for any given job, this new marketing tool is well worth including in your job search arsenal.

So, what exactly is a digital portfolio? Put simply, they’re websites where job seekers, students and professionals can display their work, demonstrate their skills and convey their personalities in professional, flexible way. By creating a digital portfolio, you can easily direct employers to a comprehensive location containing your resume, work samples, biographical information, and other representations of what make you unique.

Because of the flexibility and opportunity for creative expression in digital portfolios, no portfolio is alike, although many professionals opt to include an HTML or PDF resume or both, along with photos and other design elements to give employers a hint of their personality and values. They also link their personal sites to your LinkedIn, Facebook and other social media accounts and include the link to their ePortfolio in their job applications, creating a web of information easily accessible by employers.

Because digital portfolios are still gaining ground in the job search world, applicants with any digital portfolio at all are likely to stand apart from their competitors. But candidates with an especially thoughtful, personally crafted ePortfolio put themselves heads and shoulders above their competition.

If you’re convinced it’s worth your time to create an ePortfolio, but you’re lacking in the technical knowledge or design chops to make it happen, don’t worry! Websites like Wix, Weebly, WordPress and SquareSpace, just to name a few, make it easy for anyone to display their work for free using pre-designed, customizable templates.

For starters, the basic components of a digital portfolio usually include some basic sections:

1. About me. This is your opportunity to introduce yourself and explain why you’ve created your website. You have freedom in this section to express yourself in whatever way you’d like: with photos, lists, inspirational quotes or a personal anecdote—any way that employers will get a sense of who you are both personally and professionally.
2. Skills and experience. Usually the reason you’ve created your ePortfolio is to have a location to store your work from classes, internships, freelance projects or full-time jobs, so it’s a good idea to first introduce what kinds of skills and experience inform your work. You can include this in a visual format with graphs, tiles or other design elements, or you can simply include a modified version of your resume on your site.
3.  Work samples. Employers enjoy looking at digital portfolios because they bring candidates’ work into their reach. Your resume and cover letter may mention your ability to draft in-depth financial plans, but displaying examples of plans you’ve actually crafted on your website takes it a step further and proves you’re as talented as you claim. However, it’s important to note that any work you include should be as blemish-free as possible; any information you provide in a job application is grounds for rejection, so make sure your work samples (and portfolio in general) are polished and pristine!
4. Contact information. If an employer stumbles onto your site through a Google search or LinkedIn, it would be helpful for them to contact you directly if they’re interested! You can include a form so they can submit messages to you directly from your site, or simply list your email address and phone number. Also include a link to your social media accounts (as long as they’re professional) to show more about your personality.

ePortfolios are fun, creative ways to show employers what a successful employee you could be to them. For more information about getting started with an ePortfolio and for samples of other students’ and professionals’ own digital portfolios, visit the Auburn Career Center’s drop-in hours or the Miller Writing Center’s ePortfolio Project.

Written by Sarah Russell

Graduate Assistant working on a MEd in Higher Education Administration

Social Media: Pitfalls and Step Ups

There is no secret that social media is here and will be here to stay as it works to draw the masses of people all over the world closer together. Now this can be amazing for all things career related as different companies, brands, consumers, and producers have the ability to reach out to each other. It also has the ability to create a general consensus on various events. This is where social media can become a cautionary tale over and over again. Social media has created a very distinct line to where many have fallen victim of not getting employment opportunities and even fired for reckless behavior over the last few years. It is very much ok and within your rights to voice your opinion on anything, but the way to go about it and the language used has often been the problem. Often times during the hiring phase, companies will check out social media presence to grasp a better sense of who you are.

On a lighter note, social media can be very helpful as you are transmitting new ideas as well as absorbing them. Luckily for this generation, LinkedIn, a professional social media, has been created to better serve the community of professionals that are tried to branch out to other professionals across the world. I highly recommend giving this one a try. It has been helpful to me in my job search and in finding other professionals within my field. When you create a LinkedIn page, it will be completely blank as your typical social media would be. It allows you to input all of your different experiences to display to potential employers, peers, and coworkers as a way to connect on a professional level. The neat thing about LinkedIn is the recommendation feature that is built in the program. It is set up so that your peers and people that know your work ethic can cosign your strengths and skills. LinkedIn’s primary goal is to draw you closer to other professionals and that is exactly what it does. It allows you to add them to your online network as well as provides you with a wide array of paths that have been taken by other professionals to help you reach your career goals after graduation. It gives you a real world view that we all have to start somewhere whether it is serving as an intern or taking on a leadership role in a student organization.

What do you want your social media to say about you? Will an employer shutter away thinking of a complete disaster or think that you are thoughtful and aware of the outside world without using damaging words? Take all of this into consideration when participating online as it can be both a pitfall and a step up. Hopefully, each and every one you will use it for a step up. Technology is always advancing and career readiness has taken a major leap in the technological direction by fully embracing LinkedIn as a way to gather information on future employers and future companies to create the best fit for everyone involved. So go ahead and enjoy your posts, blogs, picture sharing, and trending topics, but use judgement as the internet doesn’t go away no matter how much time has passed.  

Contributed by:
Wade Manora, Jr.

Graduate Assistant