Kelly Common, Managing Consultant for Salt, an award-winning technology recruitment agency in our New Zealand office provides some practical advice on how to make sure your digital protfolio is up to scratch.
Whichever point of your career you may be at, your digital portfolio is your professional lifeline. As a physical realisation of your ingenuity, your portfolio needs to be current, and leave a lasting positive impression.
Here at Salt, we view digital portfolios on a daily basis and it is often the first impression we may have of a candidate, based on which we decide how to process an application.
These top tips will help you transform your digital portfolio and ensure you make the right impression:
- The first is the most important one, and no excuses! Please make sure your portfolio doesn’t have bad spelling or grammar as this is the fastest way for consultants and clients to move onto the next one in the stack.
- Ensure that the work you are providing is legal and approved to show without giving away commercially sensitive content.
- Strike a balance between showing a latitude of skills, depth and creating a holistic impression of your work. Just as marketer’s target markets, you should too!
- Look at the work you are displaying, you should have a minimum of 5 BRILLANT pieces and make sure these are relevant. I know it may be tempting to include nostalgic pieces, however, are they relevant?
- If shown on a website, you can compile your work logically to separate the work into tabs, for example Branding, Design, Concept, Personal (and make sure that the tabs work)
- Make it clear what your involvement was on projects – did you do it all? Concept/story board/ execution/ design etc.
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People often like to know the thought process behind your work, so give them a brief description – a few sentences will suffice.
- Keep it clean, fresh and don’t overload it! Make sure the paths to your work are visible and short. Ensure the speed of your hosting and web option are fast – on average, people won’t wait for more than few seconds before abandoning the task of finding your work.
- It may seem ridiculous to mention this; however, we see this on a regular basis – make sure you provide your contact details.
- Talk to your recruiter for additional tips, especially on how to tailor it for specific roles.
So how does your digital portfolio stack up?
1998 – Google is founded, Microsoft becomes the biggest company in the world valued at $261bn on the New York Stock Exchange, Apple unveils the iMac, Europeans agree on a single currency the Euro and Kelly kick started her career in recruitment. Kelly recruits for opportunities in all things Development: Tech Leads, Front End, Back End, Mobile ( JavaScript, Java, .NET, React, C#, MuleSoft, Python, Ruby, PHP, API, React Native, Android, iOS) and QA (Functional, Automation, Manual, Web API).If you would like to have chat about your next move, or discuss a contract requirement or bringing new talent on board, feel free to get in touch: kcommon@welovesalt.com
