To portfolio or not portfolio?

["D. Michael McIntyre" <michael -dot- mcintyre -at- rosegardenmusic -dot- com>]

Well, all my anguished crawling about is over, and it's time to get myself a 
job.  I have an interview on Monday.  I've got to whip up some proof of my 
capacity to do various things with Word, so I can avoid being so 
wishy-washy "yes but" about everything, and I've got to expand my portfolio.

I've only included works I did for hire, in a formal voice, and it's a book 
and two small ~1,000-word samples.  The HR person doesn't seem satisfied with 
this showing, and wants me to bring my paper portfolio along.  I can try to 
pull some technical sounding gibberish out of thin air over the weekend, but 
it would be far better to use something I wrote for real.

I'm pouring over googlespace looking for old usenet and mailing list posts of 
mine that deal with technical issues.  I think they illustrate my ability to 
deal with technical concepts in a logical and structured way, but the tone is 
not formal, because the context was not formal.

Should I avoid this like the plague because of the informal tone, or should I 
use it to pump up the idea that I've been wrestling with technical issues in 
words since at least 2002?  (If I can find anything where I wasn't being too 
vulgar in my misspent youth, when I had *no* idea everything would be 
archived forever, I can probably show dealing with this into the early '90s.)

What is more important?  The tone, or the content?  None of the content bears 
any direct relevance to what I'm interviewing to document anyway, but it 
seems the more arcane computer-related topics might have some parallel when 
dealing with industrial controls, mightn't they?

Will the interviewer likely consider the context in which I was writing when 
judging my tone?

How about book reviews or interviews in the portfolio?  Good idea or bad idea?

I don't have to fret, because I have a trucking gig all lined up, and I 
actually wouldn't mind riding down the road in that shiny truck for a little 
while, but it's time to put money where my mouth has been the last month or 
so.  I'm a writer, I say.  I want to be a writer, I say.  So let's prove it 
and get a job, and excel at it, and live happily ever after.

Starting by getting this portfolio bulked up
-- 
D. Michael McIntyre 
^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^^

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