should be careful not to include items that might have the net effect of
underminingyour credibility.
In addition to refraining from including items that give only tenu-
ous evidence of key P.E.A.K.S, you should also be careful to avoid choos-
ing items that are, in essence, inauthentic. To protect against loss or
theft, you should use photocopies, but they should be copies of the real
thing.
Be careful to delete proprietary information.The documents you
choose should not contain any misrepresentations. That said, you
should make whatever deletions are necessary to protect the rights of
the authors of the documents you use. Deleting proprietary information
from company documents is necessary if you will be showing these doc-
uments to another company in the same industry.
Do not limit yourself to items drawn from the world of work.While
it is desirable to include as many items as you can that are drawn from
actual work experience, it is entirely appropriate to include items
drawn from your nonprofessional life, such as hobbies or even family or
other social events you have organized. The important thing is that
these items give evidence of desired P.E.A.K.S. that would impress an
employer or client.
Your education, work, and personal history will determine the
menu of items you will have to choose from. The younger you are, the
more likely it is that the majority of items in your Can-Do Portfolio will
be drawn from skills learned and achievements made during your
school years.
Whenever possible, include your most recent documents. Generally
speaking, whenever you have a choice, you should include your most re-
cent documents. Documents from the past five years are likely to have
the greatest impact. That said, a document from long ago that suggests
you have always had a desired talent or personal characteristic could
also be quite powerful.
Try to cover each of the P.E.A.K.S. categories. Having a perfectly
balanced portfolio, with an equal number of entries under each
P.E.A.K.S. category, is not necessary. The odds are that you will notbe
showing your entire portfolio during an interview, and your prior
research is likely to reveal that certain P.E.A.K.S. are far more impor-
tant than others for each job you apply for. Still, if you can have sever-
al documents in each of the P.E.A.K.S. categories, you will have more
options during your interview. You cannot know ahead of time what will
happen during the interview, but if you have a wide variety of entries
in your portfolio, you are likely to have more opportunities to show the
right item at the right moment.
If there is a particular personal characteristic or a specific kind of
experience, accomplishment, knowledge, or skill you know is considered
highly desirable in a candidate, you should try to include several
different documents that give evidence that you have this special some-
thing.
You may not be able to include entries in all of the P.E.A.K.S. cat-
egories, but you should give a high priority to identifying documents38 Part I: Building, Using, and Maintaining Your Career Portfolio