You can discuss your qualifications for the job with confidence, with
or without showing items from your portfolio. Even when you do not
show documents from your portfolio, just knowing that you can veri-
fy the claims you make about yourself allows you to talk in a very
confident and convincing manner about your qualifications.
You come across as a can-do candidate. You give the overall impres-
sion that you are very much a candidate who is ready, willing, and
able to get the job done.HOW TO GET READY TO USE YOUR PORTFOLIO DURING A JOB INTERVIEW
To make your best case with your portfolio during an interview, you
need to have gathered information beforehand about yourself, the job,
the organization, and the industry. And, of course, you will also want to
know ahead of time as much as you can about the P.E.A.K.S. that your
interviewers are likely to consider highly desirable.
The research you have already done in connection with targeting
a portfolio for a particular interview should help with the preinterview
preparation. But to be well prepared to use your portfolio effectively,
there are some further things you can do as well. The following would
be particularly helpful.Have extra copies of a targeted P.E.A.K.S. resume ready to bring to
the interview. Even if you have sent your resume ahead, you should
still bring several copies to the actual interview. The interviewer may
have misplaced your resume, and more than one person may show up
to interview you. If you are able to hand to each of your interviewers a
copy of a resume that features P.E.A.K.S. that that person is likely to
find desirable, there’s a good chance you’ll get questions that enable
you to show items from your portfolio. Putting “Portfolio available upon
request”at the bottom of your resume also improves the chances you
will be able to show items from your portfolio.
Be ready to give a brief description of yourself that features your
key P.E.A.K.S. A standard practice for many interviewers is to get can-
didates to describe themselves by asking open-ended questions like,“So
tell me a little bit about yourself and what you’ve done.”
You should be ready to give a two- to three-minute synopsis of your
resume, making sure to include the key P.E.A.K.S. that the interview-
er is likely to want to know more about. Again, this information is like-
ly to prompt questions that will give you a chance to show documents
from your portfolio.
A good way to practice this synopsis is to do so out loud without re-
ferring to any notes. Time yourself to see if you can get it under three
minutes without rushing, and consult your resume at the end of each
recitation to make sure you have covered your key P.E.A.K.S. If you can
do this with a friend, so much the better. Listening to a tape of yourself
doing this can also be quite useful.
Know your portfolio. It is very important that you are intimately
familiar with what is in your portfolio. You need to know how to find
key documents quickly and what each document is saying about you.Chapter 6: Using Your Portfolio to Get That Job 83