The Importance of a Portfolio

A portfolio is a well created collection of documentation that helps the interviewee monitor their growth and success in a specific field. A portfolio should reflect your accomplishments, skills, experiences, and attributes. I believe that a portfolio is essential for you as the interviewee to prove what works you have completed and show organization and consistency which can be overlooked if there is not one present. It also can help you gain confidence when you can visually review what your efforts have become in its entirety where in some cases there might not be any confidence or you may feel as though you have accomplished nothing. In your portfolio should be your resume, a letter of reference, samples of diagrams or events you have worked on in your previous positions or schooling, performance monitoring documents if you have them, school transcripts and certificates showing your grades, and some samples of your skills like writing documents or events that you may have planned within your career. The most essential reason it is important is in its ability to allow the interviewer a better way to review your growth and development and compare it to how you may grow in their company. Another important feature in a portfolio is the fact that it is or should be constantly changing. As an interviewee, your portfolio from 2008 should not have the same accomplishments as 2011 seeing as though you have had 3 years of opportunity to gain new skills, experienced different situations, and overall accomplished harder and or different challenges. Since most people don’t use portfolios, having one can set you apart from other applicants when applying to a position. With a portfolio you are able to customize your style of portfolio and showcase not only your jobs skills and experience, but also your ability to be creative. How you choose to organize your portfolio advertises your personality to potential employers and organizations and that alone may get you the job. The use of a portfolio is just limited to a professional setting, it can also be used in a school setting to assist you in receiving scholarships and grants so that you can further your education. Also sense a portfolio demonstrates prior work or learning experiences it can be used in some cases to obtain educational credits based off of what you have already had experience instead of paying a additional cost to be taught in that field.