L'the art of presenting oneself well is what experts define as personal branding: take care of your presence and professionalism as if we were a brand.
In essence, it is a real strategy for positioning oneself within a specific professional sector, defining a precise and distinctive identity with coherent values that best communicate our value.
Among the various strategic tools that fall into this category we find the portfolio: a sort of evolution of the business card capable of enhancing one's professional expertise. Let's see how to create a truly effective one that leaves its mark.
Who and why should create a portfolio?
A portfolio is a collection of the most distinctive and successful projects of a professional's work or of a student's training path. For this reason, it is a strategic personal branding tool for those who are looking for a job or want to change their current one, for a professional who wants to expand their clientele but also for a new graduate looking for his first job. In this last specific case, the portfolio will be mainly composed of project work carried out during studies and personal projects.
A well-made portfolio allows you to show your work in a professional way, to make yourself known and to collect all the salient information in one place. The portfolio can therefore become a business card and represent a sort of showcase, where it is important to carefully choose what to display.
How to select and present projects within of the portfolio
The first criterion for choosing the projects to include in the portfolio is the satisfaction linked to the result of the work done: imagining the portfolio as the story of a slice of professional life and of one's skills, each work must convey something of which one is proud and which reflects one's working vision.
If the final result deviates from these criteria, it would be difficult to talk about it in a positive way in front of a future employer or client. Then, only projects that are functional to the type of work you want to do and the type of client you want to attract should be selected: it is useless to give particular weight to skills that you possess but that, perhaps for reasons related to professional growth, you no longer intend to cultivate.
A well-organized portfolio also represents an added value for those who browse it: depending on the profession, grouping the works by type, product sector or technique used can help to create order.
For an effective presentation, it is advisable to avoid a portfolio of only images, or vice versa a portfolio that is too written; furthermore, it is useful to provide a context for each project, to explain it and enhance it at its best.
Online VS Offline: Two Portfolio Versions Compared
Digital portfolio or printed portfolio? Surely the online portfolio, thanks to the visibility you have online, allows you to show your work to a wider audience, which combined with the possibility of frequent updating constitute an important plus.
At the same time, when you show up for a job interview or meet a potential client, it always makes an impression to bring along a well-presented paper portfolio in document folders, which they can be printed and above all customized online, so as to make them consistent with the rest of our materials.
The dilemma between online and offline portfolios is only apparent, because they are not mutually exclusive: adopting both options can represent an extra edge, the online version to be found and cultivate contacts online, the printed portfolio to amaze the interlocutor during the first face to face meeting.
Article published on 30 October 2018 - 11:01
