How To Create Amazing Work Portfolio And Land Jobs
Today, I am going to show you to create amazing work portfolio that land job interviews and get job offers.
Creating and showing a quick presentation outlining your work experience is absolutely a great way to showcase your skills and abilities to interviewers in a concise way. It can help you be memorable and stand out among your peers rather quickly.
Putting up a quick presentation does require you to do a bit of prior work, but once you know what you need to put in it, creating one is quite easy. When we started to help clients put together their own quick presentations for the interviews, they saw a massive increase in interviews and job offers. We noticed that this is not something candidates typically do when interviewing for roles. So, anyone who takes the time to do this and show their interviewers tends to make a memorable impression on them.
A quick presentation helps you show rather than talk about how good you are as a professional. It’s a systematic way to showcase past projects you have completed, while showing your relevant creative and communications skills.
In the interview, ask the interviewer if there is time to share a few slides based on some of the projects you worked on in the past. Tell them it will be easier to discuss some of the experiences you have in detail using the presentation. I generally ask this question right at the beginning of the interview. Most of them will say yes!
Ask, “Is it ok if I share a few slides on some of the projects I worked on in my past roles to help me talk about my experiences a bit better?” If they say yes, great! Pull it up on screen sharing software or on your computer. If they say no, you can send them the slides as supplementary material in the thank you email.
Here are the steps I recommend in setting up the presentation.
1. Gather examples of your past work
2. Select 3-4 examples of your best work for the presentation and take screenshots
3. Write a small description about the project
4. Create a slide deck with images and descriptions
Let’s break these down further:
1. Gather examples of your past work
The first thing you need to do when creating your quick presentation is to start gathering examples of your past work.
If you completed the exercise in the chapter “Make a list of projects you worked on to help you answer interview questions with ease,” then you can use the same material to build your quick presentation. We will essentially be using the same details you outlined in those projects.
Creating a quick presentation begins with collecting examples of your project work. These examples may include reports, evaluations, published work, spreadsheets, presentations, articles, plans, workflows, graphs, books, products, services, or programs that you help create.
Take time to brainstorm first. Go through emails and files and check what you can collect as past work.
2. Select 3-4 examples of your best work for the presentation and take screenshots
Once you have collected your portfolio pieces, start selecting pieces to be part of your presentation and take screenshots. Find 3-4 pieces to insert in your presentation. Start with projects or problems that are most relevant to your ideal role.
Here are some examples:
If you are a teacher, you can take pictures of your curriculum and materials you created for the class
If you are a programmer, you can take screenshots of your code or specific feature in an application.
Product managers can take pictures or screenshots of the roadmap or products they worked on
Project managers, consultants, and analysts can take screenshots of plans, schedules, diagrams, and guides they put together to showcase their work
If you cannot find any artifacts related to your project, then you can simply take a screenshot of the website of the company or the webpage of the service or product that you worked on.
Make sure that you take screenshots of images of publicly available information. Do not take screenshots of any information that could publicize the trade secrets of any companies you worked for—this is very important.
3. Write a small description about the project
Once you have selected 3-4 portfolio pieces, it's time to write a small description explaining key details about the project.
There are three items to think about when writing the description. Write a small description based on:
Name of the project and why the project existed: i.e. Project HighGPA.com: Managed and developed a service that helps students study for exams
Actions you took pushed the project forward: i.e. Created product features list; specified and delegated tasks; negotiated contracts with vendors; gathered customer feedback, etc.
Results you had for each project: i.e. Successfully completed the project ahead of schedule and on budget; signed up 100 students in three months for the service
4. Create a slide deck with images and descriptions
With your collected information, you can now set up the slide deck. I generally recommend using Google Slides as it can be accessed anywhere and anytime, quickly and easily.
Create one slide per project that contains at least a screenshot and the key details of the project. Use this template as a base to build your presentation.
That’s it for today!
Much love and wisdom!
