The Career Portfolio Workbook

self. You have to be comfortable with your filing system or you won’t

keep using it.

Using tabs may help.You will likely find that it is easier to locate

items if you have them stored in folders that have tabs on them for

identification. There are, of course, many general categories you could

use for these tabs. The following set of headings, which we reviewed

earlier in this chapter, could prove useful for filing items in your Mas-

ter Portfolio:

Bio stats

Targeted task skills

People skills

Learning skills

Self-management skills

Task accomplishments

Community service

An obvious alternative to the above categories would be to file each doc-

ument according to which of the following P.E.A.K.S. the documents

best exemplifies:

Personal characteristics that add value

Experience

Accomplishments

Knowledge

Skills

The problem with using the P.E.A.K.S. categories for initially filing doc-

uments in your Master Portfolio is that this filing system would require

you to carefully analyze each document before filing it. Determining

which of the P.E.A.K.S. a document best exemplifies can take a fair

amount of time. And if it takes a long time to decide which category to

file something under, the net result may be that you find yourself

putting an excellent document aside somewhere, fully intending to file

it in the future and losing it in the process.

Whatever nomenclature you do end up using for your Master Port-

folio filing system, you will no doubt discover that some of your items

could be filed under more than one heading. In these cases you can put

copies of the same document in several different files or leave a note in

each appropriate category that specifies the location of the actual doc-

ument.

If you use Career P.E.A.K.S. Measurement Forms, don’t lose them.

If you use these worksheets, you will need some system for keeping

track of where they are. You are unlikely to misplace them if you use

paper clips to attach the filled-out forms directly to the original docu-

ments they assess. Alternatively, you can have a separate file or files for

these worksheets.

Your filing system should suit your personal style for organizing

things. With your Master Portfolio you can be as sloppy or as neat as

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