The power of a portfolio

Remember kindergarten?  Remember show and tell?  You'd bring on of your favorite objects from home, and take your turn showing it to your class and talking about it.  Now that I think of it, this is probably the first experience any of us had talking about ourselves to people who we may or may not have known well.  Not a bad skill to get out of kindergarten.  The part you might be missing here, though is the power of the "show" half of "show and tell."

Graphic artists have long used the idea of a potfolioto show what they can do to prospective employers.  Even if you're not an artist, chances are you have projects in your past that, with a little creative thinking, could be used in the same way.
 
I was recently interviewing people at a large state school for software development positions.  One of my interviewees didn't have an official "portfolio", but he had brought a copy of the paper for his senior project, and when I asked about it he showed me the screen shots, explained what the project's goals were, and talked about his role in the team, both technically and from a group dynamics perspective.  This "show and tell" approach gave me a much clearer understanding of what the project entailed.  This same person had also had a a class project (a game written in assembly language) that had won the "best in class" award.  Although he couldn't very easily show me the game during our interview, he made sure to give me the URL for finding it on the web, and also pointed out that there was a link to it off of his homepage, whose URL was on his resume.

During the same recruiting trip, I talked to a psychology major, computer science minor who was looking for a job doing usability analysis.  She didn't have a portfolio, but the discussion we had about her job made it obvious to me she was a perfect candidate for a portfolio.  In fact, I told her so.  She had done usability studies on a large website, which included suggesting changes to frame the site with navigational tools, a user study where she watched users (and logged their actions) navigate the website, and a survey of how easy the users found the site to use.  Her portfolio could easily include "before and after" shots of the website, a copy of one of her logs, and a copy of her survey questions.  Any report that was generated from the project could also be included.

Portfolio samples don't have to be directly related to the job you're interviewing for.  If you did all the advertising for your cousin's lawn business, bringing examples of your work for a marketing interview would not be a bad idea.  Just make sure that the piece demonstrates specific skills that the job requires. (And make sure you do talk about them!)
Here are some ideas of what you might want to include in your portfolio:
-code samples
-writing samples
-projects
-excerpts from reports or papers
-web pages
Don't include to many things in your portfolio; 3 would probably be a good number.  A good approach is to use the portfolio to show different pieces of one project: design, code, user interfaces for a programming project or a survey, paper, and part of a presentation from a market research project.  Another approach would be to use your portfolio to show your breadth of experience; three pieces from three different projects would also work.  Portfolio work can come from your work experiences, classes, or outside projects.  Just be careful that if you're showing work from a previous job you're not disclosing propriety information.  If the company has a patent on the technology it's probably all right to show it, or if a customer who buys the product would be able to see your work, it is also probably OK to show it.  Less clear are pieces from a process that led to a final project--just be careful.

You'll have to be saavy to effectively introduce your porfolio work into an interview.  Your resume should contain items related to your portfolio samples.  If the interviewer asks you about a job or a specific project, use that opportunity to say "I have a sample of my work on that project if you'd like to see it", pull it out, and then point them to specific parts of the project and use it to explain your skills.

You can apply portfolio ideas without actually having a portfolio.  Try putting the URL of your webpage on your resume.  On your webpage have links to examples of your work.


-leaving copies with employers
-doesn't always work--I didn't give #1 a on site interview 

   person at UIUC showed me screen shots from his senior project, and
gave me the URL for an award winning class project.

UI person should have brought copies of her survey, and a series
of before and after pictures of the site she worked on.

Bringing examples of work in is a great way to show what you can

do.