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At 02:13 PM 03/11/2000 -0800, R Greenberg wrote:
>I'm going to be job-hunting soon, so I'm in the
>process of preparation. I have a few pieces of writing
>from my current job that I think would be great for my
>portfolio. Trouble is, one of them is 20 pages long,
>another is 28, and the third is 10 pages. From what
>I've heard, this is much too long - that the average
>portfolio shows only 3 or 4 pages of each piece of
>writing. However, I would like to show the entirety of each
>piece because I want to show structure and
>organization as well as the writing itself. The person
>looking at it wouldn't be expected to read the entire
>thing, but rather to skim most of it, observing the
>general pattern and maybe reading small parts of it in
>depth to get a sense of the writing itself.
Personally, I would show them in their entirety. When I changed jobs, I
didn't know any better, so brought complete examples with me, and everyone
seemed very impressed (primarily because I'm also the developer, and most
programmers/developers don't do their own writing). I think it really
helped me.
Obviously, interviewers didn't sit reading them from cover-to-cover -- but,
having an entire piece enabled them to skim over certain segments and
confirm that they were clear and concise.
