Recently our Chief Brand Officer, Rae Owen, sat down with Freelance Founders to host a Portfolio workshop offering tips, tricks, and even personal reviews on current Freelancer’s portfolios. See the quick-takeaways highlighted below, along with the full recap video!
Attracting the right types of clients is subjective, but think about what’s right *for you*. Do you want to work with cause-based organizations? Major glossy brands? Local businesses? Tailoring your portfolio to speak to your audience isn’t just smart business, it’s marketing 101.
It’s easier than you think, even if you don’t have “sweet dev chops” on your résumé. Squarespace, Wix, and other site-builder tools can help you create a more professional presence that instantly elevates your profile in the ol’ candidate stack and allows you to show off your unique point of view.
The Internet debates the value of generalists vs. specialists all day long, but there’s no question that seeing a candidate who knows exactly what they bring to the table brings joy to hiring managers everywhere. Even if you ARE a generalist, there’s value in narrowing down the skills and interests you showcase – you can attract clients who are pickin’ up what you’re puttin’ down, so to speak.
Plenty of people want to put their very best foot forward – we get it. But showing work that you were only tangentially involved with – or worse, done as spec and never even interacted with the flashy client you name in your case study without a clear disclaimer – is a bad look. On the flip side, if you’ve done the work of four people – brag about that s**t!! Don’t diminish your major contributions by saying “the team” when you really mean “Me and 3 cans of Red Bull.”
Editing is everything – be judicious about what work you show, how you organize your content, and do your best to show a clear through-line of your skills, experience and personal point of view.
We’ll let you in on a secret: not everything on your website needs to be a full-on Case Study. A case study should clearly outline the problem, solution and results, but sometimes you just don’t have time (or information) to pull that together – and that’s OK! Make the case studies you do have count, and feel free to showcase the rest of your projects in a separate, lighter-weight section.
This one’s for our Pinterest fans. Feel free to save, share or go full analog and print it out. Ready to apply to Sandy? We can’t wait to see your work!
