RE: Portfolie... was Re: Am I experienced?

["Lisa Wright" <liwright -at- uswest -dot- net>]

<Dan Roberts asked some questions about portfolios...>

In my portfolio, I have everything from technical documents to the
installment I wrote as part of a serial story in my college newspaper, as
well as news stories. There are labeled tabs separating the different types
of docs. It also includes the best writing I ever did for the newspaper, a
memorial for a friend. I don't include anything I'm not proud of. Every time
I show it, I go through and make sure I still think the piece demonstrates
something positive about my skills and is appropriate to the situation.
Usually what happens is that the interviewer skims, looking for things of
interest. It's kind of a nice thing to have in team interviews because one
person can flip through while I'm answering someone else's questions.

Why do I include all these types of docs? I like to show that I'm versatile,
and it was especially helpful early on when I was trying to show that I
could write and did have lots of writing experience despite little
"professional" experience. Because interviewers skim the whole body of work
(it doesn't leave my sight), they get a sense of the breadth of what I can
and have done.

I don't know whether I've ever had someone say specifically "bring your
portfolio" vs. "I want writing samples." I always bring writing samples that
I can leave with them as well as the portfolio. In the interview for my
second job out of college, my portfolio helped impress the interviewing
manager--she liked the fact that I had put work into it. BTW, it's not a
slap-dash sort of thing. It's a leather-bound notebook that's very neatly
put together.

So that I don't have to haul around notebooks full of user's guides, and to
avoid any problems with "proprietary and confidential," I usually just put
the title page and TOC of the big books that I've done. We've discussed in
the past the issue around trust and confidentiality, so I won't go into it
again. But I always do get permission to use something. The general view of
the managers is that as long as it doesn't give away any operational or
strategic secrets, then it's okay. And I always just ask to use as writing
samples that stay with an interviewer very short, targeted documents.
They're not going to read something long and drawn out. Short and to the
point tells them that I know how to communicate effectively.

I've never really worked with a big team of writers on major collaborations,
so I've never had to worry about what was mine. I do have one sample that
shows how I modified a vendor's documentation to better explain a central
concept in the application. Before-and-after.

M2C
Lisa Wright
If it's got words, I'm in charge.
PeakEffects