Ditch That Resume – Stand out with Digital Student Portfolios

You work and compete hard during your academic years with the intent to continue to do so as you search for the ideal job. 

However, today’s employers are in a position that has never existed in times before. In the past, most employers had a local talent pool to select from when looking for suitable candidates. If they wanted foreign talent, it would require a little more effort to get it.

However, thanks to the internet employers no longer have to hire locally (if they don’t want to). Employers can easily hire individuals from all around the world to work remotely or directly in-office.

This can create a challenge for students who have been trained to compete amongst other students locally. When these students graduate from high school or university, they must now compete for jobs on an international level. With many jobs becoming remote this means that you have to work even harder to capture the attention of your ideal employer. 

What can students do about this? There are many things students can do to compete, but today I will zoom in one of those things. 

Create Digital Student Portfolios

If you’re going to be looking for employment during or after your high school years, why not do something different that stands out from the average candidate? 

While I’m not suggesting that you get rid of your resume or CV entirely, I’m suggesting that you do not depend solely on it. Create a Digital Student Portfolio in addition to your resume.

Why a Digital Student Portfolio?

Student Portfolios give students the ability to display their best completed work. Making it digital means you can share it easily with anyone you choose.

✳️ If you’re an athlete, you can showcase video clips of you winning competitions or receiving your awards.

✳️ If you’re an artist, you can flaunt all of your best paintings, sculptures, or other crafts that you’ve created.

✳️ If you’re a community leader, your portfolio is a great place to publish news articles written about you, or testimonials from those people you’ve impacted. 

Your digital student portfolio is the home for the work you’re most proud of.

Additionally, portfolios allow you to get into the habit of recording and archiving important information about yourself. It will also allow you to visually track your progress and see how well it aligns with your life’s goals.

Your portfolio also gives you a voice. The content you publish will tell others who you are and what you’re about. It tells employers that you get important things done or that you make interesting things.

Where to Create a Digital Student Portfolio?

You have many options for where to publish your portfolio. Three (3) criteria can be used when choosing a platform to publish on.

Firstly, there should be no restriction on what type of content you can publish. Some sites will censor your content depending on the nature of it. Secondly, the site should be structured in a way for you to organize your content neatly so that viewers can scan through and get as much or little detail as they want. Thirdly, you should be able to generate a URL leading directly to the portfolio content. In other words, the site should be easily shareable either with a password or a publically open URL. 

The option that I would NOT choose is social media sites because you have no control over your content on those sites.

I’ll recommend 3 methods of publishing which range from easy, medium to high in technical difficulty.

The option that you choose can be based on how technical you would like to be when creating your portfolio.

1. Low Tech – If you’re not too tech savvy or simply want an option that is quick and easy, you can create your portfolio on sites like Google Slides or Notion. With both of these options, content publishing is fairly easy and you can choose whether to share privately or openly.
2. Medium Tech – This involves using hosted sites that cater specifically to this kind of content. Sites like Portfoliogen and Showcase are examples of this. It’s a plug and play arrangement where you simply input the content and the rest of the tech is done for you.
3. High Tech – If you want to own your own private space on the internet then a personal website is the way to go. You could create a site using WordPress which is set up on your own domain. For example, you could conveniently send your potential employer to www.[yournamehere].com using this method.

In conclusion, if you’re looking for a job now or in the future, you’ll need to up your game in order to stand out from the international crowd and get your voice heard. One of the best ways to do this is with a digital student portfolio. Your portfolio speaks volumes about you, and tells that you’re a doer or a maker. Thanks to the many options available online, you can create a digital portfolio no matter what level of tech skills you have.

What about you, do you have something interesting to share that could be put into a portfolio?