The Career Portfolio Workbook

Step 3: Obtain an Understanding of the Importance of

Your “P.E.A.K.S.”

As you reviewed the sample Can-Do Portfolios in Part 2, you probably

noticed that frequent reference is made to “P.E.A.K.S.” This is an

acronym for the following five categories that are used to describe an

individual:

Personal Characteristics

Experience

Accomplishments

Knowledge

Skills

The fundamental strategy when creating a Can-Do Portfolio is to try to

feature the P.E.A.K.S. that are likely to be considered desirable by the

people who will be evaluating you. The particular P.E.A.K.S. that are

considered most important will depend upon the kind of opportunity

you are pursuing and the preferences of the people who will be assess-

ing you. In Step 5, we will show you how, even when you are in a rush,

you can at least make an “educated guess”as to which P.E.A.K.S. will

be considered most desirable.

Our research has revealed that the most important category of

P.E.A.K.S. in the minds of the majority of people who evaluate candi-

dates for jobs is personal characteristics. By personal characteristics we

mean personality traits or characteristic behavior patterns, such as

being gregarious or highly detail-oriented. Which particular personal

characteristics are considered most desirable in a candidate will de-

pend upon whois doing the evaluating and the nature of the job and or-

ganization.

One of the great advantages of having a portfolio is that it enables

you to present documents that give evidence of your highly valued per-

sonal characteristics. Being able to hand an interviewer a copy of a let-

ter of appreciation from a client who thanks you for “always under-

standing what I need and being so responsive to my concerns”is far

more powerful than just saying in an interview,“People find me re-

sponsive.”A portfolio document can make the intangibles tangible.

For more information on the research we’ve done on P.E.A.K.S. and

the kinds of items that might be included under each of the P.E.A.K.S.

categories, you can refer to “The P.E.A.K.S. Categories”in Chapter 1.

Step 4: Describe the SpecificOpportunity You Are

Pursuing, Accurately

In Step 1, we asked you to specify the situation in which you hope to

use a career portfolio—to get a new job, to build a consulting practice,

to gain admission to college or graduate school, or whatever. The point

was to make sure you have a specific use in mind, so that it makes

sense to proceed with creating a targeted portfolio. In Step 4, we are

Chapter 10: Portfolios on the Fly: Creating a Portfolio in a Few Hours 143