In all of my work with helping Data and GIS Professionals Map Their Futures with Portfolios, I’ve developed a list of questions to help them get thinking about their GIS portfolio. This isn’t an exhaustive list and not every question will be relevant to you. However, these prompts are a great place to get started to think about creating your GIS Portfolio. To see this list of 25 prompts for your GIS Portfolio you just need to sign up for our email list.
The goal for these prompts is to help get you thinking about the impact of your work and to help you think creatively about your GIS Portfolio. Are you not convinced that you need a GIS Portfolio? This blog post should help make the reasons why you need one pretty clear– even if you aren’t looking for a new job!
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- How can you visually show your work experience? Can you create an infographic for it? A cool timeline?
- What is a project that you are the proudest of? What about that project makes you the proudest? What was something that you had to learn to be able to complete it?
- What’s your process for learning new skills? What is a new skill that you have learned?
- What are some of your hobbies, outside of work? Are you an ultra-marathoner? Do you craft? The reason why you would add these into your portfolio is both to help show passions that may relate to a job, as well as to give a fuller picture of you as a candidate.
- What’s the hardest lesson that you’ve learned in the past year? Why?
- What position do you want to have when you retire? You may not include that specific information in your portfolio, thinking about where you want to be at your career can be very helpful in terms of how you frame your current job experiences.
- List out key projects that you have worked on over the course of your career. Think about the unique value that you add. How do your unique experiences, add up to you, being a great employee or candidate for a position?
- When have you been a leader? What did you lead? Why is this important?
- When have you not been a leader?
- Portfolios need to have a level of structure in terms of having a beginning, middle and an end. How might you structure your portfolio? Would you want to do it chronologically, to show how you’ve grown in your career? Thematically with an introduction to your themes going through the themes, and then a conclusion?
- What is the most fun that you’ve had at work? What was the project? What made it fun? What can you show of it?
- References are a great way to round out a portfolio. Who might be willing to write a reference for you?
- What characteristics are you known for? Are you hard working? The social butterfly? A really good analyst? Think about how others would describe you and use that language.
- What are you known for in the office? Why would anyone come to you for help?
- What’s the project you’ve had to work the hardest on? What made it so hard? The people? The data? The software?
- When was a time that you overcame really bad data?
- When have you worked well under pressure?
- Have you been recognized for your work? Have you won awards?
- When was a time that you applied your skills outside of work? Do you teach at church? Lead the Boy Scouts? Do a passion project?
- Have you done a passion project? Explain why you did it. What did you learn? What did you gain?
- What’s your vision for the future? A world where climate change is mitigated? No more social disparities? Why is that your vision? This shapes your personal value proposition.
- When have you saved your organization time or money? How did you do it?
- Who are the people that have been impacted by your work? How have they been impacted?
- What processes have you created? Not just automation– but have you created other processes in your workplace?
- What documentation have you created? What value did it bring?
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I will be opening up my portfolio workshop again in the near future! This workshop is geared towards anyone who uses data– data analysts, GIS Analysts, GIS professionals, data scientists etc. You won’t want to miss this! Make sure you’re signed up for our mailing list to get notified of when I open up my Portfolio Challenge again later this year! You can also go there to learn more about the Challenge.