Career portfolios provide employers with a focused profile of a person’s skills and abilities. Learn how to use career portfolios to motivate, employ, retain, and build self-confidence in your workforce. Portfolios can assist individuals who are retraining or reentering the workforce, and research shows that at-risk populations can gain confidence and be successful as they identify their own unique skills and talents. A career portfolio is a dynamic tool that will change and grow with each person as they begin to take responsibility for their own career success.

Businesses who are leading in the workplace are efficient and effective with capital resources. Experts believe the defining factor for success or failure in the immediate future is in optimizing the workforce. The challenge is how to attract, motivate, and retain talent. The Department of Labor forecasts a shortage of talent in many geographic areas and fields of specialties as early as 2009. Individuals who can demonstrate skills and provide behavioral-based work examples will have opportunities for advancement.

Employees are shifting their priorities, and now focus on the core values of:    

• Career/Earning Growth
• Time & Flexibility
• Bonuses/Rewards
• Workforce Planning.

With the workforce now considered one of most company’s key assets on a business portfolio, everyone from investment bankers to shareholders are interested in turnover and labor productivity. Rare talent and talent pools are being analyzed in company teams. The cost of training is offsetting increased productivity and creative output to the bottom-line.

Career Portfolio Development

Career portfolios have long been tools used by job seekers to find a job. They are rapidly becoming the tool of choice for organizations offering career development as a benefit to its employees, and ultimately as a performance appraisal method. Career portfolios allow an organization to successfully marry the desire for employee retention and development with the goals of the individual for increased wages/benefits and professional development. This marriage creates a win/win for organizational human resources. Developing a career portfolio allows current employees to:

• Perform an individual self assessment
• Identify internal career paths, both lateral and vertical
• Identify and develop key skills needed to excel within the organization and industry
• Track goals and goal completion
• Prove ability and value to the company while improving confidence.

A career portfolio is a structured tool, that when implemented properly, can be used to measure performance, ability, and skill level while encouraging personal and professional growth. Developing a career portfolio is a process that includes:

• Developing a work philosophy and setting short/long term career goals
• Identifying and proving skill sets through work samples
• Tracking professional development and certifications
• Tracking community service and humanitarian efforts.

Use Your Career Portfolio to Create your Career Development Plan

Career portfolio materials give you:

• instructions and content
• examples of work
• career portfolio templates
• examples of work samples
• an interface with Career Portfolio sofware

 

Return on Investment

Career portfolios offer a unique return on investment. Developing a career portfolio supports both the individual employee and the organization. Career portfolios allow individuals to heighten awareness of their own skills and abilities, improve self-confidence, and more accurately create a career path within an organization.

When used properly, career portfolios assist organizations by:

• Reducing unwanted turnover
• Retaining rare talent
• Improving job matching
• Supporting employees in transitioning across organizational units
• Identifying and utilizing transferable skills within employee talent pools
• Tracking skill sets
• Identifying where skill sets are nested organizationally
• Retaining otherwise lost talent within the organization due to an individual’s personal life changes, such as a trailing spouse or urgent family care situation.

Deploying the career portfolio concept throughout an organization is very cost effective. There is little expense to the organization post-deployment. Initial training of the human resource team and the cost of materials is all an organization needs to enjoy all the benefits of the career portfolio program. Once the program launches, it typically becomes self-executing very quickly.