What is a Career Portfolio?
A Career Portfolio is an easily transportable display (electronic and/or hard copy) of your learning, skills, achievements, participation, aspirations, goals, and experiences.
- Employers when you are looking for a part-time job while you are at school, or a job when you leave school.
- School leaders when you apply for leadership positions and awards.
- Principals and Curriculum Coordinators at a new school if you change schools during your education.
- Your parents or guardians see your learning and development over time.
Your Career Portfolio is a lifelong process of collecting artefacts that you might include, reflecting on them, selecting your best artefacts and presenting them in a visually attractive way.
Your Career Portfolio will have several sections and your artefacts will be filed in appropriate sections. The sections that you will have depend on the nature of your experiences and the reason you preparing your Career Portfolio. Examples of sections that students in the middle and secondary years might have in their Career Portfolio include:
- Cover page.
- Contents Page.
- Personal Profile.
- Résumé.
- Samples of Work.
- Achievements.
- School Reports.
- Co-curricular activities.
- Spiritual participation.
- Service to the school.
- Cultural Activities.
- Community Service.
A Career Portfolio is a vital job search tool in our changing world of work. New occupations are emerging while others are declining or being replaced by technology or as a result of globalization. Stable life-time jobs in the one occupation are increasingly being replaced by short term contract and project work.
This means that in order to thrive in a changing world of work, you need to be able to provide evidence of your skills and experiences to employers. If kept up-to-date, your Career Portfolio will provide a tangible record of your current skills and experiences and may help you maintain employment in a constantly changing world of work.
