How to Create a Professional Portfolio That Stands Out
Crafting a compelling professional portfolio is essential if you want to showcase your creative skills and experience to prospective employers, investors, or collaborators. However, mastering the art of creating an optimized portfolio that effectively showcases your work and secures new opportunities can be challenging.
To help, this guide will provide valuable insights into creating a professional portfolio that gets noticed. We also offer advice on building a portfolio website, a vital platform in today's digital employment landscape.
What Is a Professional Portfolio?
Before discussing how to create a portfolio for a job, let's quickly go over exactly what a professional portfolio is. A career portfolio is a collection of work samples. It also showcases skills, expertise, and achievements. It’s an extension of a resume for those in creative industries that have physical work samples to show, like graphic design or writing samples. A professional portfolio provides a tangible representation of creative capabilities and is a useful career growth tool. It’s an especially useful tool to leverage if you’re making a career change.
Some common groups that use portfolios include freelancers, employees in creative or tech fields, job seekers, and entrepreneurs (especially those seeking partnerships or investors).
A professional portfolio typically includes the following elements:
Work Samples: Examples of completed projects, creative works, or relevant tasks.
Resume: A detailed document outlining educational background, work experience, and skills.
Certificates and Awards: Documentation of any certifications, awards, or recognitions received.
Educational Credentials: Copies of degrees, diplomas, or transcripts.
Personal Statement: A brief narrative introducing the individual, their professional journey, and career goals.
References and Testimonials: Letters of recommendation or contact information for professional references. Plus, positive feedback from clients, colleagues, or supervisors.
A professional portfolio is a great medium to showcase creative works.
How To Create a Portfolio That Gets Noticed
1. Add a Strong Introduction and Personal Statement
The opening of your professional portfolio should feature a brief introduction. This section of your career portfolio should highlight your career objectives, skills, and experiences, along with what makes you unique (your professional USP).
You may also want to mention the purpose of your professional portfolio. For example, are you creating a portfolio for job applications, freelance work, or personal branding? You can also add a professional headline that grabs attention and quickly and concisely explains who you are as a business professional.
2. Format Your Portfolio in an Appealing Way
The next step to consider when creating a professional portfolio is what format it will be in. In general, you want a design that’s organized and easy to navigate. Make it clear which section includes your personal statement, work examples, contact information, and any other things you want to highlight. You’ll also need to think about where you’ll host your portfolio. You could opt for LinkedIn, build your own professional website, or use a portfolio platform.
3. Ensure Consistent Branding
Having chosen the basic layout and design for your professional portfolio, you need to ensure that branding is kept consistent throughout. Keep a consistent visual theme with the same colors and fonts, both of which align with your personal brand.
4. Effectively Showcase Your Work
One of the most important parts of a career portfolio is showcasing your work effectively. You should include a diverse range of your best work. Ensure a variety of skills and formats are covered to show versatility. If you’ve worked across multiple niches, also make sure that projects for each niche are represented.
It’s also crucial to provide context to each work sample included in your professional portfolio. For example, explain the work process, why it was undertaken, and what it achieved. If applicable, be mindful of copyright and other permissions for sharing published works.
Ensure your best work is on display and that it shows a range of skills.
5. Include a Professional Resume
Along with examples of your work, it’s a great idea to include a resume in your professional portfolio. Including an up-to-date resume can help potential employers or clients see your education, hands-on experience, the types of companies for and niches you have worked in, and other professional skills not linked to creative work examples.
Also, use the resume section to highlight professional achievements and project results. When covering skills and expertise, you may additionally want to use visuals like graphs and charts or icons. Another element you may want to include is a downloadable PDF of your resume or a link to a more detailed resume on your optimized LinkedIn profile.
6. Create Case Studies
If you’ve completed larger projects, you should also include case studies related to those key projects. Creating detailed case studies that outline the problem you were tasked with solving, your approach, the solution, and the outcomes (including any work samples related to the project).
7. Incorporate Testimonials and Recommendations
If available, add testimonials or recommendations from colleagues, clients, or supervisors to your professional portfolio. Incorporating recommendations and testimonials boosts credibility and provides evidence of your professional experience, relationships, and expertise.
8. Include Contact Information
Another important, but sometimes overlooked, part of a professional portfolio is a contact information section. Include all the ways for potential employers or collaborators to get in touch with you.
9. Proofread
Once your career portfolio is complete, ensure you proofread it fully. Read over all the portfolio pages along with all the work samples you’re including. It’s a good idea to have a friend, colleague, or family member proofread the portfolio for grammar and spelling mistakes and readability. Another party may also have feedback on user-friendliness and the layout and design of your professional portfolio.
10. Update Regularly
Once your portfolio is live, update it regularly to keep it up-to-date. Add all new projects you complete, especially if they showcase new skills or work in a different niche. Ensure all other elements, like your bio and resume, reflect your current professional status. You may also want to remove older work samples if new pieces better showcase your career progression and experience level.
Always proofread your portfolio and update it regularly with new work.
How To Create a Portfolio Website
When creating a professional portfolio, many opt for a digital portfolio. If you’re wondering how to create a portfolio website, the following are some tips to keep in mind for website hosting, design, and optimization.
1. Hosting Platform
There are many places to host a professional portfolio platform and well-known website hosting services. Some of the most popular professional portfolio hosting platforms include:
2. Homepage
The homepage of your professional portfolio website is very important because this is the first page many people will see when viewing your portfolio website.
While the design for this page can vary, it will generally include an introduction about yourself and your career (this can be quite concise if you have a separate bio page) and an easy-to-use navigation directing users to other portfolio pages. Some people also include a professional photo on the portfolio homepage.
3. Portfolio and Project Page
Another of the most important pages on your professional portfolio website is the work samples and projects page. On this page, or pages, categorize the work logically (different niches, different skills, etc.) and include examples of your best work that demonstrates a range of skills. You can also give an overview of what the project entailed and what it accomplished.
4. Additional Professional Portfolio Pages
The rest of the pages on your website will be used for the additional professional portfolio elements discussed above. These include a resume section, an “About Me” page, contact information, and testimonials and recommendations.
5. Website Navigation
Because your website will have multiple pages, you’ll need to add a navigation to help visitors find their way around easily. Keep the navigation simple and intuitive. You may want to test the navigation to ensure it will effectively lead visitors to all of your portfolio website pages.
Important parts of a portfolio website include a good navigation and an impactful homepage.
6. Responsive Design and Mobile Optimization
An additional thing to keep in mind when creating an online professional portfolio is implementing responsive design, including mobile optimization. Doing this ensures that your portfolio website looks the same on any device it’s viewed on.
7. Call-to-Action (CTA)
Adding calls-to-action (CTAs) across your portfolio website is also recommended. You can use CTAs to prompt visitors to explore other sections of the website and ultimately reach out to you to collaborate. Ensure CTAs are clear and to the point and are linked to optimized landing pages where the user can take action.
8. Social Media Integration
If you have professional social media pages, link them on your website. This is especially important if you post new projects on your social media pages. Website visitors can view all of your most recent work and get a better sense of your personality. Ideally, have consistent branding across your portfolio website and your social media platforms.
9. SEO Optimization
To have your professional portfolio website found on search engines, you’ll need to implement SEO. If you’re not intending for potential employers to find your website via search, this step isn’t necessary. However, if you do want to know how to create a digital portfolio that can be found on search, that’s where SEO comes in.
To do this, find some keywords that relate to your niche and that you can compete for, and then optimize your website for those keywords. You could even add a blog or article section, creating content that targets more keywords related to your niche that employers may be searching for.
Other steps include ensuring your website follows technical SEO rules like having a quick load time, not featuring broken links or webpages, and having a user-friendly design. You can also consider placing high-quality external links (for example, to authoritative websites where your work is published), gaining backlinks, and posting authoritative, valuable, and unique content, such as blog posts centered around your industry and niche.
In Conclusion
A professional portfolio plays a crucial role in job applications and advancing one's professional profile. With these top tips on creating a professional portfolio, you should now be able to build your own portfolio that effectively showcases your talent, unique strengths, and diverse skill set.
If you’re creating a professional portfolio with the goal of securing new employment, also consider reaching out to the team at Lynne Palmer. With over 60 years of experience connecting top talent to positions in the publishing and medical communications industries, we'd love to assist you with your next career move!