Getting Started
Visit the Portfolio Center | 623 S. Wabash, suite 307 for advice and resources on how to develop your web presence, online portfolio and more, or visit them online for upcoming events or samples of their past work.
It used to be that a solid resume and cover letter was enough to breach the basic needs of job seeking. This is obviously no longer the case. Employers and collaborators in any profession are now looking more closely at your professional web presence.
What does your “web presence” mean and more importantly, what does it currently look like? Here is a quick way to find out: Google yourself right now.
What do these search results yield? How current is the information that appears in the top search results? Is your area of expertise clearly evident in these results?
These questions are all worth serious consideration as you begin the task of developing your web presence. If you’re worried about what this search currently returns, don’t let this bring you down. There are a few ways to work on retroactively removing pieces of your web presence. However, more importantly, think about what new elements you can bring to your web presence.
Creating a LinkedIn profile is a great start if you haven’t yet entered the world of career networking sites. There are a number of other platforms worth exploring and building profiles on such as Xing, Path.To, and Zerply. Some of these place the emphasis on the “connecting” and others emphasize a platform for “promoting” yourself.
Either way, this concept of displaying and promoting yourself is often best left to creating a web portfolio. A few of the sites mentioned above do allow for creating a nicely designed professional profile, but they don’t necessarily allow for you to represent your true “body of work.”
A web portfolio allows for depth that your resume does not provide. It can also be stamped with your own domain (i.e. www.yourname.com) and exists solely to promote and display what you have done. We are visual creatures and web portfolios allow for understanding a role or experience with the context of images, audio, video and elaborate text descriptions. It is a way to encapsulate what you have done in the classroom, on the job or for your own satisfaction and development.
Keep in mind, the web portfolio is not static. Your portfolio will develop with you so there is no better time to start than now. Your portfolio does not need to be fully realized upon inception, so please use the Portfolio Center as your starting line to creating your very own portfolio.
Written by Colin DeKuiper, Portfolio Center Creative Industry Liaison