just yet. We can help you, too. We’ll give you the short course, so you
don’t have to wait for this book to come out as an “executive digest.”
Specifically, the key topics in this chapter will be:A brief overview of what career portfolios are and how they can help
you
How to create in ten quick stepsa career portfolio that will help you
achieve your next career goalAt the conclusion of this chapter, we will refer you to specific sec-
tions of the book that will quickly explain how you can use your portfo-
lio to good effect in a face-to-face meeting.
Throughout this chapter, we will include cross-references to other
sections and chapters of the book so that, if you wish to do so, you can
learn about specific topics in greater depth elsewhere.
We do hope that you will be inspired to learn about portfolios in
greater depth. But for now, if you are reading this chapter to learn how
to quickly assemble a portfolio, you’ve got a job to do. So let’s go for it!CAREER PORTFOLIOS DEFINED
In the next section we provide ten steps for putting together a targeted
career portfolio that is designed to help you achieve your career goals.
Before proceeding to these ten steps, let’s review a few important terms
and definitions that we have plucked from other chapters to explain
what career portfolios are and the kind of portfolio that you will be as-
sembling to suit your specific needs.
A career portfolio is a collection of documents and other easily
portable artifacts that people use to validate claims they make about
themselves.
A career portfolio is not a resume, which simply lists things about
you. Nor is it a cover letter in which you write about yourself and your
qualifications for a particular job. Instead, a career portfolio is a collec-
tion of documents that support and make tangible the things you want
to say about yourself in a cover letter, a resume, or a face-to-face inter-
view. Letters of commendation, performance evaluations, certificates,
papers, images of things created or of activities led, are all examples of
items that might be included in a career portfolio.
A Master Portfoliois compiled over time and is meant to be an up-
to-date, complete collection of every item that you feel you mightbe
able use at some future date in a career portfolio. These documents
come not just from your work life but also from volunteer activities,
from courses taken, from extracurricular activities you were involved
in at school, and, in some cases, from hobbies and leisure activities. Any
document that gives evidence of a skill, accomplishment, or other di-
mension to you that might make you an attractive candidate for a fu-
ture career opportunity can be included in your Master Portfolio. A
more accurate term for this compilation might be “master collection of140 Part I: Building, Using, and Maintaining Your Career Portfolio
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