An online portfolio is a supplemental internship/job seeking tool that can be shared with potential employers and recruiters to showcase your achievements, projects, experiences, and skills. A portfolio allows you to highlight your impact and provide details that cannot be conveyed in a written document, like a resume. Online portfolios are valuable for a range of roles for engineering master’s students including (but not limited to) aerospace engineers, biomedical engineers, civil engineers, data scientists, environmental engineers, mechanical engineers, and software developers.
Tips:
- Consider your audience. Knowing the audience will help you select the projects, skills, and experiences you will want to highlight. If you are unsure of your audience, consider your dream role and chose your projects, skills, and experiences that are most relevant for a hiring manager in this target role.
- Articulate what you like, are good at, and are looking for in an About Me section. In addition to your awesome projects/research/experiences, employers are interested to learn a little about you. Wow others with a one sentence headline about you.
- Tell your story. Structure your portfolio to tell stories. Structure your project/research/experience descriptions with a beginning (what you did), middle (how you did it), and an end (outcome & impact) – just like a story! Describe your stories through text, images, videos, or drawings. Focus on telling concise stories that do not overwhelm the page with text. If you are describing a team experience take note of when it is appropriate to use we and when it is appropriate to use I. Employers expect to see both in team experiences.
- Create clean, uncluttered pages that are easy to navigate. Find a balance between text and images. If in doubt, ask others for their opinions on if you need more/less text or images.
- Ask for feedback. Consider your portfolio a living document that will be refreshed over time. It is never “done” or “completed”. Ask for feedback from others to help you refine and level up your portfolio.
Get Started:
- Read this Indeed.com article to on how to make a portfolio.
- Access the LinkedIn Learning course on Building an Online Portfolio with Jason Fox. Some of the recommendations may not align with your target market, so consider your audience.
- Look at the portfolios of others in industries you are interested in to generate ideas for your own portfolio.
- Read this article from the muse on using your online portfolio in the job search.
2 Additional Portfolio Uses:
- Resume, LinkedIn, & Email Signature – Make it easy for prospective employers to click on your portfolio link by including it on your resume, LinkedIn, and email signature.
- Interview – During an online interview share your portfolio visuals to complement your impact stories. To ensure the transition is smooth, have your portfolio ready to go on your computer before the start of the interview.
