As a GIS/ Data Analyst, you need a portfolio, even if you don’t want to change jobs. In this blog post, I will walk you through THREE different ways that you can use a GIS portfolio to help you navigate your career, even if you aren’t looking to change jobs. That’s right, you can use your GIS portfolio even if you want to stay within your current organization.
A GIS portfolio is incorrectly thought of as only a job seekers tool or something that you use if you want to get out of your job. My GIS portfolio journey actually started when I was working for the US Department of Defense, and I wanted a way to be able to really express the value that I had both to my team and to other teams as I wanted to get on other projects and I wanted to really try and forge my career. So this post is coming from my personal experience using a portfolio within an organization, and some of the benefits that happened.
For starters, let me explain what a GIS Portfolio is. A GIS Portfolio is simply a collection of your work. It can take many forms- PowerPoint, Word Doc, PDF, Website, or even an Instagram Account. You can learn more about free tools for creating a portfolio here.
The three reasons you need a GIS portfolio:
- Serves as a Document for Promotion
- Shapes Your Career Narrative
- Is useful to network
Serves as a Document for Promotion
Your GIS Portfolio can serve as a document to help in your promotion. So, this may seem pretty obvious, but a GIS portfolio is a helpful document of what you have done. This is handy when it comes time for promotion, it can showcase things like both the technical work that you’ve done as well as leadership work. When I went up for promotion in the DOD there was a very particular process that was based on points and some essays we had to write. I could not submit my GIS portfolio per se, but I gave a copy of my portfolio to those who were helping me review my documents and they were able to provide better feedback to me.
The next way that a GIS portfolio can be really helpful is if you work in consulting where there you respond to RFPs (Requests for Proposals). Keeping your GIS portfolio current (and even including the random side projects) can be helpful for you to be able to demonstrate that you have done a type of work related to a proposal. Even if you aren’t working in the world of consulting right now keeping track of projects can still be very helpful. I had a conversation just this week with a manager in a firm where their GIS team is pivoting to do external consulting and they were working on creating a portfolio as a team of their GIS work.
Shape Your Narrative
As you create a GIS portfolio, you can then begin to see if there are any gaps in your GIS portfolio. So say that you really want to get to a particular position by the time that you retire. For example, you are working in the county government and you are a GIS analyst right now, but you really want would love to have your career as a director of IT. Working on a GIS portfolio can actually help you recognize what gaps you currently have. What are the things that you need to do to fill the gaps in your experience? Can you frame the experiences that you have had in a different manner? Putting together that portfolio can help you identify the gaps within your career narrative.
Use it to Network
Your GIS portfolio is a great networking tool! You may have even done this without really thinking about it. For example, you’re meeting with someone from another department. You might bring a map that you made or some data analysis that you’ve done in the past. You bring these because you think they shed light on the current conversation that you’re having and help explain what your team does. At the most basic level– that’s a portfolio. You are bringing a visual representation of your work.
In some of those internal conversations, I have sent my portfolio in advance of the conversation. I wouldn’t send my portfolio for every conversation, but for some conversations where I wanted to say, “Hey, these are some of the things that I have done in the past. I’m really curious what synergies, you see between my work and the work that you’re doing.” I did this particularly when I was working in R+ D for the US DOD. In that organization, there was a bit more flexibility on what we would work on as part of our job. However, bringing my portfolio to conversations lead to some amazing opportunities. Colleges would say things like “I didn’t know you could do that” or “This is exactly what we need” or “Wow, this project you did was really interesting. Can you tell me more about it?”
Are you interested in creating your own GIS Portfolio? You can learn more about the GIS Portfolio Challenge that I run over here. You can also sign up for the waitlist to get notified of when we run the Portfolio Challenge Again! I also provide one-on-one career coaching to GIS and Data professionals to get ahead in their careers.
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