Room 800: Police Evidence Room by Sam Teigen
But as I’ve come to the end of my current stint of volunteering at the National Trust (on which more in a later post), I’ve been feeling that I want something a bit more than just the shouting into the void that I do here.
I have two difficult tasks ahead:
- Find a challenging and rewarding job in a very competitive marketplace;
- Continue to learn and grow outside the structures of formal education.
What I really want, then, is somewhere I can:
- Continue to reflect and learn, even when said reflections aren’t suitable for public consumption;
- Gather a base of evidence for my skills, to draw on when applying for jobs, and to identify gaps for me to work on;
- Access online, from work, home, conferences, etc.;
- Keep private but make available to individuals for PDRs, professional qualifications, etc.;
- Retain control of and keep regular backups of (this stuff’s valuable).
It seems to me like it’s time to resurrect a full portfolio, but as I’m new to this I thought I’d ask for some advice. My question to you is this: Do you keep a professional portfolio and if so, what are your top tips for doing so?
To get the ball rolling, this is where I am at the moment:
- I’ve set up a new blog on my trusty self-hosted Wordpress MU installation;
- For advice I have this advice from the University of Sheffield careers service, the course guide from the PCHE and my other half’s copy of Building Your Portfolio (aimed at qualified librarians seeking chartership).
I look forward to reading your comments and I’ll be sure to summarise them in a blog post next month and continue to keep you informed about my progress.
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Hi, I'm Jez. Welcome to my blog, where I talk about learning, teaching and educational technology.
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Hi Jez,
I don’t and never have kept a portfolio, however for people in a similar situation as yourself I think it is a very good idea. I have occassionally been part of interviews of grads and post-grads and one of the more difficult things is to grasp what they are about as they often turned up with little more than a suit, tie and debilitating nerves.
The advantage that someone with more work experience has over a grad in this situation is that their CV usually acts as a mini-porfolio that you can go through and gives the interviewer a “hook” to get to know the interviewee better.
A “good” e-portfolio would provide this hook and stimulate conversation, which gives the candidate – who might otherwise be too nervous to really come across well – a way of relaxing enough to say something interesting.
As I’m sure you’re aware e-portfolio’s are a big part of the current Learning Platform vision for schools so hopefully school children grow with a habit of recording useful work that they have done and being able to reflect back on it in the future.
Steve
p.s. sorry I haven’t answered your question really.
@Steve Thanks for your response — strictly speaking you answered my question in the first sentence, but the rest of your comment is insightful nonetheless! I’d be interested to know how and when a candidate might share their portfolio with prospective employer, particularly in careers where such portfolios are not standard.
I remember back when I was at school putting together my National Record of Achievement. I feel sure that if it was introduced and supported in the right way, this could have become a genuinely useful document. As it was, however, the subject was only breached in my final year before 6th form and the whole thing seemed to be presented as a one off.
It consisted of a folder containing a series of forms to fill in: one for your personal details, one for your educational achievements etc. Far more emphasis was placed on the usefulness of the standard format, rather than the discipline of maintaining it. No-one at any point suggested it was worth keeping this up to date, or reflecting on your progress. I hope the new e-portfolios are better thought out and implemented than this.
At the moment I would have thought that employers don’t expect them so don’t ask – this may change if they become common – interviews have to be fair so they’d have to be careful to not penalise for the lack of a portfolio (unless the industry specifically required it).
I figured that in the short term this would give people a leg-up to writing their CV’s / letters, but also give them some background info to talk about when they’re asked the inevitable open ended questions at interview.
E-portfolios are new and I get the feeling that they are still waiting for mass take up to happen. If they do this will then lead to the next stage in their evolution as feedback will be returned and developers will have to adapt. The one we produce has just added media tools so kids can easily record their progress using sound / video using flash based tools.
Learning Platforms are increasingly integrating with external services like youtube, therefore the content of your E-portfolio may not necessarily reside in the platform itself. The challenge here is, that though there are notable exceptions, some of these external services don’t always stand the test of time so how do you capture things that may need to be kept for 5+ years when your accounts on those services might expire or the services may stop wanting to host it. no answers to this at the moment.
[...] a semi-related note, I’m still looking for ideas and opinions about using a portfolio to record professional development, so please drop by that post and join in the conversation. Share and [...]