Search This Blog

Thursday, 8 October 2015

4 Ways You Use Your Online Portfolio to Get Your Foot in the Door

 

By Kelli Orrela

If you’re on the hunt for a job, you’ve probably looked into lots of tools to get ahead in today’s tough market. But there’s one surprisingly powerful one that you probably keep ignoring—and that’s creating an online portfolio.
I know what you’re thinking: “I’m ignoring that advice on purpose. What would I put in an online portfolio? I’m not a developer, a web designer, or a writer.”
Well, portfolios aren’t just for specific fields anymore. In fact, they’re getting so popular that it’s almost surprising when a candidate doesn’t have one. Not only does it help you curate your online image (since it’ll pop up pretty high in your Google results), but it can also give you more opportunities to impress hiring managers.
Not sure where to start? Read our guide to building a personal website, then try these tips to turn it into a job-landing online portfolio.

1. Share Your Basic Facts in a Fun, Readable Format

First and foremost, your online portfolio should be the home of your professional biography. Yes, you have LinkedIn—but with a little time and energy, you can make your resume that much more appealing.
Make sure your portfolio includes:
  • A concise but memorable “about me” telling the highlights of who you are and what you do (here’s a formula to help you out)
  • The PDF version of your most up-to-date resume
  • Links to the social media accounts you want to share with potential employers
  • Your current contact information

2. Brag a Little

Avoid the pain of trying to squeeze the details of all your accomplishments and accolades into your resume by putting them in your online portfolio. Consider creating a “My Work” page, where you can describe the projects you’ve completed and goals you’ve reached in all their glorious detail. (Remember that employers love stats that emphasize the size or scope of your achievements.) And, if you use visuals to back them up, you’ll also make your portfolio that much more appealing and interesting for employers to scroll through. (Here are a few ideas for using visuals when you’re not in a design-related field.)
In other words, this is the perfect place to put that video clip of you being interviewed as an industry expert on the local news. It’s an ideal location for your stunning presentation at that conference. And it’s a great spot for photos of that huge volunteer event you helped organized.
In addition, this is also where you can also put those glowing recommendations from your clients or the highlights of feedback from your former boss. Just be sure to ask their permission before you do.

3. Start a Blog

Blogs are a tool for communication, and communication is critical for every job. So, by writing easy-to-read posts, you can show you’ve got that crucial area covered.
Unlike your friend’s fashion blog or your brother-in-law’s pop culture blog, you want to keep this one professional. While you don’t need to cover topics exclusive to your industry, you should make sure they all reflect your best professional self. When you start to brainstorm ideas, think about what one skill you’d want a recruiter to pull out from everything you write.
Coach a kid’s basketball team? You’re leadership material. Put together your neighborhood’s newsletter? You know design and editing. Traveled the world? You’ve got cultural savvy and planning chops.
Tip: Your blog posts don’t have to be long, but they should be regular. Nothing says “I can’t stick with it” like two lonely blog posts from 2012.

4. Prove You’re Ready for the Next Step in Your Career

Make your portfolio your platform for your dream job. If you’re switching careers or climbing the ladder, you can make that clear here. And, if you’re worried about your current boss seeing, you can do it in a subtle way.
Taken any classes that would be necessary to make the move from one field to another? Add it to the resume section. Working on your leadership skills? Write a blog about a few lessons you’ve learned from your favorite workplace leaders (be it your first boss or Sheryl Sandberg). Trying to show that you’re always open to learning? Write a quick review about an industry-related book you recently read.
Just remember to be yourself. Employers might look at dozens or even hundreds of candidates when hiring for a single position. Painting a unique picture of yourself will help you stand out from the crowd and get you that much closer to being picked to come in for an interview.


Want more? Check out these ideas on how to take your portfolio to the next level, as well as some sample personal websites to get you inspired. But know that whether you keep it simple or make it fancy, your online portfolio can be what wins over a potential employer. So what are you waiting for? Make one today!
Posted by at No comments:

Sunday, 4 October 2015

4 Ways to Figure Out What You're Good At (Not Just What You're Passionate About)


By Whitney Johnson

It’s a universal dream to do what we’re passionate about. The only problem with this aspiration is that sometimes the thing we most care about isn’t what we do best. As Gloria Steinem famously said, “We teach what we need to learn, and write what we need to know.”
Don’t worry! This doesn’t mean your dream is dead. It just means that you need to figure out how to bring that dream to fruition—using the skills you currently possess. Sure, your dream will be tweaked and altered. But, at the end of the day, you’ll still be able to do what you’re passionate about.
Here are four questions you should ask yourself to help make that happen:

1. What Skills Have Helped You Thrive?

During your childhood and college years, you’ve no doubt developed certain skills out of necessity. For example, Scott Edinger, a highly successful consultant and CEO advisor, grew up broke, in a trailer park, and at age nine, he was adopted into less than ideal circumstances. Edinger learned to survive his challenging childhood by becoming an expert in communication, conflict resolution, attunement to others, and raw persuasion.
In college, he put the paint and polish on his communication skills, placing in the top five in over a hundred debate tournaments, while earning a degree in communication and rhetoric. Fast forward—he has been globally ranked number two in sales in a division of a Fortune 500 company and has repeatedly helped organizations turn around underperforming divisions by focusing on a critical survival skill in business—how to sell.
Now, many people aren’t as unfortunate as Edinger. But that doesn’t mean that you haven’t come across obstacles throughout your life—and figured out a way to go over them. Think about situations that’ve challenged you: Is there a common thread among all of them? If so, that’s something that you’re good at. All you have to do now is figure out which field or position that skill is best suited for.

2. What Makes You Feel Strong?

Marcus Buckingham, the author of Now, Discover Your Strengths, explains: “Our strengths…clamor for attention in the most basic way: using them makes you feel strong. Take note of the times when you feel invigorated, inquisitive, and successful. These moments are clues to what your strengths are.”
Consider also your go-to task when you feel overloaded. When you are overwhelmed, you want to feel in control. To be in control, you do what makes you feel strong. As you identify and focus on what makes you feel strong, you can also expect to be happier, which makes you a better problem-solver in a wide range of circumstances.

3. What Made You Stand Out as a Child?

As children we do what we love to do—even if it makes us an oddity. When you look back on your childhood pastimes, you are likely to discover an innate talent. In elementary school, Candice Brown Elliott’s classmates teasingly called her “Encyclopedia Brown” after the character in the children’s books. She recounts, “All the kids thought I was the smartest kid in school, but most of my teachers were deeply frustrated because I got only average grades. I was labeled an underachiever.” Instead, she says, “I daydreamed of having animated conversations with famous people like Madame Curie. I daydreamed of building the first true Artificial Intelligence (AI) that would reside in my bedroom closet. I daydreamed about how to build floating cities, great inventions, and new forms of art.”
Four decades later, Elliott holds 90 U.S.-issued patents. Her most famous invention, PenTile, color flat-panel display architecture, is shipping in hundreds of millions of smartphones, tablets, notebook PCs, and high-resolution televisions. She founded a venture-backed company to develop this technology, and later sold it to Samsung. As a child, Elliott’s daydreaming was considered odd by her classmates and tremendously frustrating by her teachers. As an adult, her daydreaming, autodidactic approach is her superpower.
Is there something that made you peculiar when you were young? Could it actually be your superpower?

4. What Compliments Do You Tend to Ignore?

All too often, we’re oblivious to our strengths. When you do something reflexively well, it’s easy to overlook it. Keep your ears open for compliments that you habitually dismiss, not to be coy, but because this thing feels as natural as breathing. It may even be you’ve heard a compliment so many times, you are sick of it! Why can’t people praise you for the thing you’ve worked really, really hard to do well?
The tendency to deflect compliments around what you do well is understandable, but over the course of your career, it will leave you trading at a discount to what you are really worth. Ralph Waldo Emerson wrote, “In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.” Don’t assume that just because something comes easily or seems obvious to you, it’s not rare and valuable to someone else.
Are there compliments you repeatedly dismiss? Any of your superpowers not on your resume?


There is no shortage of jobs that need to be done and problems to be solved, but there’s only one of you. Once you’ve homed in on your underlying assets or your core strengths, you can more easily identify your distinctive strengths—what you do well that others in your workplace do not. If you’re looking to be successful, look for problems you feel especially passionate about, then get to work, by playing to your distinctive strengths.

more find out at https://www.themuse.com/advice/4-ways-to-figure-out-what-youre-good-at-not-just-what-youre-passionate-about?ref=home-large-tile-0
Posted by at No comments:

Saturday, 3 October 2015

The 35 Best Personal Websites We've Ever Seen

By Erin Greenawald  

Building a personal website isn’t tough. But building your personal website—the prime piece of real estate that you’ll present to the entire internet? That can be a little intimidating. When it comes to laying your site out, designing the right color scheme, picking perfect portfolio pieces, and crafting copy that’ll give your pages personality, it’s easy to get a little stuck.

Posted by at No comments:
Location: Dhaka, Bangladesh
Subscribe to: Posts (Atom)