The Career Portfolio Workbook

Organizational and Career Counseling Use:

1. In career counseling, placement, and outplacement activities


2. In staffing and other human resource management activities


3. In academic settings

As we’ll see in the following sections, the criteria used for selecting

items to put in your targeted portfolio and the strategy for presenting

it should vary with its intended use.

FURTHER USES FOR CAREER PORTFOLIOS

The following are seven important ways to use the Can-Do Portfolio

system to boost your career that we haven’t discussed yet in any detail.

Note that a somewhat different strategy is associated with each use of

your portfolio.

Use 1: To Get a Favorable Performance Review

Get started early.In order to create a portfolio that gives you an edge

in your next performance review, it is important for you and your boss

to have an explicit understanding of the criteria on which your perfor-

mance will be judged. If you have recently been hired, you should have

a conversation with your boss concerning these criteria. And whenever

you have a performance review, you should get a clear statement of

what areas your boss wants you to focus on in your job. Once you un-

derstand the basis on which your performance will be judged, you can

collect documents along the way that give evidence of your meeting (or

exceeding) these expectations. The actual assembling of your portfolio

for a performance review should begin several weeks before your re-

view, so that you have time to collect whatever documents you are miss-

ing and can put the finishing touches on your portfolio at your leisure.

Assemble a portfolio that shows you have met or exceeded your

boss’s expectations. Here are some things to think about when you are

assembling your portfolio:

1. Identify the key performance criteria in your boss’s mind.List the
   performance criteria on which you will be judged. If you and your
   boss agreed to a business plan, that would be “an important”source
   for your performance criteria. The key issue is,“What will my boss
   be judging me on, and in what order of priority?”If you are having
   difficulty determining this, talk to a person you trust who has had
   successful performance reviews from your boss in the past.


2. List the particular P.E.A.K.S. your boss considers most important.
   Sort this list of performance criteria according to the P.E.A.K.S. they
   exemplify. These performance criteria may not have been identified
   as P.E.A.K.S. during your last performance review, but you can iden-
   tify them as such. If, for example, your boss informed you in your last
   performance review that you were perceived as “abrasive”by your

102 Part I: Building, Using, and Maintaining Your Career Portfolio