INTRODUCTION to ePortfolios: What's an ePortfolio

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INTRODUCTION to ePortfoliosWhat's an ePortfolio
Why Do I Need One?

• Thursday, September 24, 2009
• Presented by
• The SI Career Development Office
• ePortfolio Series

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What is an ePortfolio?

• Artists, photographers, and architects are the
  traditional users of portfolios
• A demonstration of your skills and abilities
  through past work done and through the
  development of the portfolio
• A collection of documents, artifacts, and
  examples of your work
• A display of your work ethic, interests, and
  personality
• Can be used in an interview setting or as part of
  a job application

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Who Should Use an ePortfolio?

• Everyone!
• Especially students that are pursuing careers in
  technology fields (i.e. HCI, SC, IAR, and ICD)
• However, other students may want to consider
  ePortfolios as they can be an asset in the job
  application process
• Technology skills are never a bad thing whether
  you are an advanced user or can just talk the
  talk, the skill is of benefit to the organization

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Why Use a Career Portfolio?

• As in interviewing, past performance is an
  indicator of future performance
• A portfolio acts as a tangible example of your
  technology skills and abilities better than a
  resume or interviewing can
• A portfolio
• Enhances your ability to self-market yourself by
  further supporting your resume
• Through reflection, this tool helps you realize
  and be able to define you skills and abilities
• Builds confidence

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How to Best Use Your Portfolio

• Your ePortfolio url should be on your resume,
  included in your cover letter, on your business
  cards, and in your email signature
• Never just send your url to an employer without
  reason for them to look at it you need to get
  them interested in order to want to view it
• In an interview, give teasers about whats in
  your Portfolio again, dont just leave them
  with the url
• OR take your laptop and demonstrate as you talk
• Directly reference projects that are relevant to
  the function that you are applying for
• Tailor your ePortfolio to your ideal organization
  type

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Organizing Your Portfolio

• Decide how you want to organize your portfolio
• By experiences?
• By skill set?
• Reverse chronologically?
• Cross referenced?
• All of the above?
• This will depend on whether you are targeting a
  specific job or industry or other factors
• What suggestions do you have for organizing your
  portfolio?

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Developing Your Portfolio

• Complete a Skills Self-Assessment
• Start with an ideal job description (or several)
  and highlight the skills sought
• Develop a list of the skills that you have
  related to those sought in the job descriptions
• Think of examples of when and where you develop
  and used these skills
• If you dont have the all skills they are
  seeking, what could you create that would
  demonstrate your abilities?
• Personal projects are okay!

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Suggestions for Sections or Layout

• Educational Projects and Related Accomplishments
• PDDs or clips of Transcripts, Deans Letters,
  scholarships, course papers, presentations, Power
  Points
• Skills
• Demonstrations of technology skills, search
  skills, archival skills, instructional skills or
  whatever is most relevant to your targeted
  function or organization
• Work Experiences
• Samples of work, positive evaluation,
  accomplishments, letters
• Recommendations from supervisors or project group
  members
• Extracurricular Projects and Related
  Accomplishments
• Flyers, programs, awards, letters of
  appreciation, certificates
• Relevant Hobbies and Personal Interests
• Awards, certificates, photos
• Travels
• Blog and/or work website
• What else would you include?

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Finishing Touches

• Your Index page should include an introductory
  personal statement to demonstrate who you are,
  your values and philosophy, and a summary of the
  contents
• For each section or page, write a brief summary
  of the contents and their relevancy
• You may want to develop a printable PDF that
  displays the most relevant example(s) of your
  work to leave with the recruiter a good tactic
  to get them to want to look at the rest of your
  portfolio
• Of course, include the URL on the handout

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Finishing Touches

• Check over all of your work!
• Proofread all content for grammatical errors and
  other typos
• Then, have someone else proofread it
• Make sure that all of your links work
• Ensure that everything is labeled properly,
  especially links to attachments (PDF, Word Doc,
  file size, etc)
• Make sure that everything is in laymans terms
  your audience, possibly non-technical recruiters,
  need to be able to read your portfolio

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Create your own Portfolio

• For the less tech-savvy, use a portfolio site to
  showcase your work
• Carbonmade
• Portfolios.com
• Coroflot
• Several of these are job boards too!

• Or use, a Content-Management System (an in-demand
  tool/skill right now)
• UM Sitemaker
• Drupal
• Joomla!
• Wordpress
• These are all free and as a UM student, you get
  free hosting

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ePortfolio Creation Assistance

• The UM Knowledge Navigation Center offers
  assistance with a variety of software and tools
  including
• Dreamweaver
• Sitemaker
• Cascading Style Sheets (CSS)
• GoLive
• Flash
• Frontpage
• Photoshop
• Illustrator
• Other Content Management Systems
• They also host regular workshops and maintain
  guides to many commonly used web softwares.

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The First of Many Tips for Your Portfolio

• Limit your samples do not include everything you
  have ever created only whats most relevant
• If you do have many examples, place your best
  designs toward the front/top of the portfolio
• Keep the layout of your pages clean and simple,
  allowing for the work to speak loud and clear of
  your abilities
• To make it easy for people to find you, be sure
  to include full contact information somewhere on
  your site in a searchable text format
• Use your own domain name, if possible
• If youve developed websites for clients, dont
  just list the URLs -- your portfolio should
  include images of those projects with captions

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More tips

• Keep your portfolio up to date check your links
  to make sure that your work is still working and
  available
• When developing your online portfolio, be aware
  of download times try everything out on several
  browsers (although you and I use Firefox, Chrome,
  Safari, or Opera, almost 40 of the world still
  uses IE)
• Restrict the main points to one page
• Your goal is to keep prospective employers on
  your own site for as long as possible tell them
  where to go and what to look for
• Dont let them wander around aimlessly as they
  might miss something!

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And More Tips

• Give them something to take away a PDF hand out
  with a link is helpful
• Have a portfolio-only website dont mix your
  work site with your job-searching site
• Sort the work into categories and make it easy
  for the viewer to navigate back and forth
• You should also use META tags on your pages

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And more tips.

• Be sure that your code is simple, clean,
  semantically tagged, and accessible
• For Tech-oriented students, dont use CSS
  employers expect more of you and expect your
  portfolio to equally reflect your design skills
  and abilities as much as the projects and work
  you are showcasing
• Make sure your (X)HTML validates

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And more tips.

• In your code, make sure your title is appropriate
  and descriptive
• Guess how many pages come up if you search for
  Untitled Page in Google because people dont
  re-title their site in Dreamweaver)
• If you have the know how to increase the search
  engine optimization of your site, do so!
• Make it easy for the site user to be able to
  click through your entire site easily

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Displaying Your Work

• As you work on your projects, take pictures of
  group meetings, notes, wireframes, doodles, etc
  recruiters want to see the work in process as
  much as the final product
• Describe your work in terms of
• What, Why, How, With Who, For Who, etc.
• Specify skills and tools used and always include
  images
• Give details in words, not just visuals
• If you can get a testimonial or quote from a
  client, include it!
• Use techniques and methodologies, not languages
  and tools

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Extras

• Include a blog on your site and regularly blog
  about relevant topics, what you are working on,
  your coursework etc
• Include information on what (relevant) books you
  are reading, favorite products, favorite links,
  etc
• Demonstrate your web presence (especially
  important for Social Computing students)
  Facebook, LinkedIn, MySpace, Twitter, Blogs, and
  other social networking tools/sites
• WARNING! What you include on these sites can hurt
  as much as help be sure to maintain a
  professional web presence!

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SI Careers ePortfolio Series Events

• Mark Your Calendar!
• ePortfolios Panel
• A Review of SI Students ePortfolios by SI
  Recruiting Partners
• Wednesday, December 2, 2009
• 1200 100pm
• 311 West Hall
• If you would like your portfolio reviewed
  (publically) by recruiters and employers, send
  your portfolio to kkowatch_at_umich.edu

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Looking for Ideas?

• Check out the MSI Student listing page
• http//www.hung-truong.com/
• http//www.citronadedesign.com/index.php
• http//mayank.portfolio.googlepages.com/index.html
  
• View other sites via the MSI Students Listing
  (search for Web?)

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To Conclude

• Whats an ePortfolio?
• A showcase of you and your work
• Why should you have one?
• Its the easiest way to showcase your work in a
  media that is transportable, easily adaptable,
  and tangibly represents your abilities
• Whats most important?
• The first impression should be positive, so make
  sure that its simple and easy to use

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Other Online Resources and Tips

• Build A Killer Online Portfolio
• 5 Tips for a Better Online Portfolio
• Creating The Perfect Portfolio
• And many more!
• Search online portfolio tips 14 million
  results!

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Resources

• Creating Your Skills Portfolio by Carrie Straub
  (Crisp Learning, 1997)
• The Career Portfolio Workbook by Frank
  Satterthwaite Gary DOrsi (McGraw-Hill, 2003)
• Creating Portfolios For Success in School, Work,
  and Life by Martin Kimeldorf (Free Spirit, 2004)
• Step Inside Design
• Creative Public Portfolio
• Dr. Quincy Online Portfolios

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Questions? Thoughts to Share?

• Thank you for your time.
• This presentation will be available for viewing
  on the SI Career Services website under JOB
  SEARCH RESOURCES
• SI Career Development staff can review your
  portfolio and provide feedback email us at
  si.careers_at_umich.edu to make an appointment