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Anyone who is on the lookout for a new or different job knows how important it is to have a solid portfolio. However, the kind of portfolio you want to establish is dependent on the field you’re in.
An artist, for example, is going to have a very different one from a sales manager, whose portfolio will look very different from an executive’s. Knowing and understanding what tools are available to you will help you make the most of yours. Remember, everyone has a portfolio – you have to make yours stand out.
Choosing Correctly
Okay, this isn’t so much a tool that you can actually use, but it should be the first thing that comes to mind. This article can’t cover everything, but most importantly, it can’t tell you what will work best for you. Many portfolio tools work wonderfully for traditional jobs – advertising, business, sales, and anything artistic lend themselves well to these tools. However, some positions require more complex documents and, as such, a more delicate hand.
A job with the government, for example, can be difficult to acquire, and the job requirements are often far from traditional. Receiving some help with these, such as using a federal resume writing service, will increase your chances significantly. If you’re applying for a traditional job though, the following tools are great platforms for your unique portfolio.
1. Pinterest
If your work involves any sort of tangible objects, Pinterest can work for you. Wedding planners, artists, photographers, sales managers and executives, crafters – this is a great platform to let people see what you do. This is especially good for freelancers or business owners who are looking to drum up clients, especially if your clients are end-users. This is a difficult site to use if your work is mainly text or audio. Music producers and writers may have a harder time making use of this site, since you can’t pin audio or plain text (yet).
2. Instagram
Have you heard about the women who decided to Instagram their daily yoga practice or their best outfits? Suddenly, they exploded in whatever field they had chosen to showcase. Similar to Pinterest, Instagram is slightly different in that there is less of a chance that you’ll face direct competition and you can essentially create a visual “lookbook” of the work you’ve done and the progress you’ve made.
3. Carbonmade
Carbonmade is perfectly made to showcase an artists’ designs. Unlike Pinterest, you can’t just pick and choose images to share, and people can’t take your work. You’re encouraged to upload your own, and the site is wonderfully designed to showcase images and videos. As a free site, it offers not only encryption services, but it is specifically designed as a portfolio site, so the people who are viewing your work are other working professionals. Think of it as the LinkedIn version of Pinterest.
4. Visualize.Me
For those of us who have less artistic jobs, or at least jobs where it may be more difficult to showcase your actual work, Visualize.Me is your new best friend. If, for example, you work as a programmer or network designer, it may violate your contract to make specifics of your work public knowledge. With this site, you can skip that contract killer while still making your value easy to understand for those that may lack the technical expertise. Essentially, this site allows you to create a visual representation of your career – including everything from education to recent job titles, as well as your interests and hobbies.
Since you’re looking to start an actual portfolio, it is important to look beyond LinkedIn, which is pretty much an online resume. It’s still useful and very important to have, but it doesn’t allow you to showcase the same variety of talents that some of these other sites do. Remember – a picture is worth a thousand words, so let your work speak for itself.
Photo Credit: Shutterstock
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