Create a Personal Portfolio to Break Out of the Job Application Box

It’s no secret that it’s getting harder and harder to face the job market. Competition is fierce, AI is taking market share and the industries in need are constantly changing. All this to say that a “good enough” application package 20 years ago won’t get you a sniff today. Good has to become great and in some cases great as to become exceptional. So what does exceptional look like?

You Can’t Control Everything, but Take Charge of What You Can

There are literally hundreds of things that you can’t control when it comes to getting a job. Who is the company looking for? What are the personality traits the hiring official favors? What are the skills of your competition? Is there someone lined up for a medical transfer or has veterans credits that you don’t have. Many of these things depend on timing and the luck of the draw with regard to who you are competing against and who is making the pick.

Good news for you is that you can’t control any of them and so there isn’t much use worrying about them at this stage. There are things that you can control, however, and it’s your job to give yourself the best possible chance of success. Namely, parts of your application like the resume, cover letter, and how you do on the interview. These are the traditional parts of most application processes. 

Isn’t that it though? For most people, it is, but for those who want to go the extra mile there are other ways to get noticed that go beyond the big three parts of the application process.

Don’t Let the Application Process Constrain Your Creativity

Let’s be honest, there are only so many ways to format a resume and so many ways to make it look exciting, especially if you are confined to one or two pages. These tips can help with that but is it going to separate you completely from the pack? Probably not.

Cover letters can be powerful, but if you aren’t careful, cover letters can be generic and actually work against you. Check out my tips here to not only make sure that doesn’t happen, but instead leads the hiring official to giving you an interview.

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Finally, you can knock ‘em dead on the interview itself and we have some suggestions for doing that as well, but you actually have to get one first.

It can be easy to confine yourself to the box that the application process puts you in, but that can be very confining. It’s time to think outside the box.

95% of Job Applications I See Don’t Have This

One thing that the vast majority of job applications I see don’t have is an online personal portfolio that showcases the applicant’s work. 

“But isn’t that what LinkedIn is for?“

I have nothing against LinkedIn at all. It’s a great tool and there is a good chance you may have arrived at this article from that platform, but it still presents your story in the way that it wants to. Not to mention that it’s presenting everyone else at the same time, including your competition. Instead, let’s take those hiring official’s eyes to your very own private corner of the internet. You are a VIP after all.

A simple personal website linked into your resume and cover letter can give you an easy way to take the eyes of the hiring official away from the 50 resumes that look exactly alike and allows you to break the chains of the traditional application process and tell your story exactly the way that you would like to tell it. 

 No formats to adhere to. No restrictions on types of media. Pictures, videos? You got it. Clear examples of your work? Now that is freedom.

Where Do I Start When Creating a Professional Portfolio?

If you have ever created your own website before, then you will be well ahead of the curve. If not, I won’t go into all the details here but we can dip our toes in the water to get you started.

The first thing we need to address is, well, the address. Do we want our own domain or go with another option that might be available. Personally, I use Blue Host for all my domain needs. You can search to see if your domain is available and how much it would cost for the year or in some cases there are monthly options. 

Second, you will need domain hosting. You can also get this through Blue Host. This will be another monthly charge depending on which options you pick. 

I know what you are thinking, “this is getting expensive!” The reality is that it can be, but to have a beautiful site that you can keep updated for as long as your career is in full swing can also give you a very large return on investment. Is a couple of hundred dollars of investment per year expensive if it helps you land a $100K per year job?

 The Good News is We Can Make it Cheaper!

I’m going to make this a little bit cheaper for you. If you click through any of my Blue Host links, you will get up to 75% off your hosting package by being referred through the Human Constant.

The good news is that once you have your hosting and your domain set up, you can use WordPress software for free to give you everything you need to customize your site. In fact, the Human Constant is completely powered by WordPress with hosting and domain registration set up through Blue Host. You can find lots of tutorials on WordPress on YouTube or on WordPress.org.

Are There Any Free Options Out There?

YES! There are free options out there that can get you started with an online portfolio. I mentioned wordpress.org, but if you go to https://wordpress.com/free/ you can set up an account that has a domain and hosting for free. The difference is that you don’t get to customize your own name and your space is limited but it will certainly get you started.

Now if you are applying internally to an organization like the National Weather Service, you could customize your own google site that can be seen by anyone in the agency but that may not work for outside hires. 

Search the web and there are a number of possible options for you to create your own space. These options are also great because many of them are drag and drop website creators and you don’t need any coding skills. 

What Should Be in My Portfolio?

The best way to show you what you can do with your portfolio is to give an example. My own personal portfolio at http://www.meteorologistryanellis.com was created about 10 years ago now, (yikes) and it is not up to date, (I should really do that!) but it will do for now.

On the home page you can see a customized introductory letter and a video that I put together to showcase my video editing skills and how I would look on camera. My skills have come a long way since then but at the time trust me this was revolutionary! This was before TikTok and Instagram took over the world. 

Take a look around and you can see I have organized things the way that I want them. I include pictures of me doing various parts of the job. Hey there’s me with the former director of the NWS in front of a poster I presented at a conference! You can’t put that kind of impact on a standard resume. 

Maybe the most impactful thing is that you can give examples of your work. Click on the technology section of the site and you can see I have put an example Python code and output to demonstrate that I actually have those skills. This is infinitely better than just listing a cryptic bullet point on a resume. As a hiring official, I have no idea the extent of those coding skills.

How Can I Work This Into My Job Application?

This may be the easiest part of making a personal portfolio. Let’s be honest, this is a lot of sweat equity up front. That investment however will pay off in the short time you have to get a job application in. Because of the rush of getting the application in, if this isn’t done ahead of time, it usually can’t be completed quickly. I think this is one of the biggest reasons why people don’t do it. You have to have the foresight to create it ahead of time, before you are actually applying for the job.

Once it’s done, a personal portfolio website is very easy to slip into a job application package. You can add the link to the top of your resume, or guide people to it as a closing line of your cover letter. Drop it in an email to the hiring official when confirming an interview time or in a quick follow up thanking them afterwards. Make a QR code to it and slap it on a business card to give to people at conferences or site visits. 

Why Does This Work?

I think there are a couple of reasons that a personal portfolio can be so powerful. First, it breaks up the monotony of all the other applications and allows the hiring official to go down your own personalized rabbit hole. This almost guarantees them spending more time focusing on you rather than the other candidates.

Because of the effort you need to put into making a portfolio, not a lot of people do it. When not a lot of people do it, you are giving yourself something extra that others don’t have which can help you rise to the top. 

Finally, for as expansive as a personal portfolio can be, by delivering it through a simple link or QR code, the delivery is very subtle and it doesn’t come off as desperate because you are leaving it in the hands of the hiring official whether or not they want to click on it. It’s their choice, and when presented with a chance for more information about a candidate, I can tell you that most hiring officials will want to take a look.

It won’t guarantee you the job, but creating a personal portfolio can definitely help to set yourself apart from the field. In this competitive world, we need all the help we can get.

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