Newsletter of the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter August/September 2005

June 2005 Meeting -- How to Use a Portfolio to Ace a Job Interview
Presented by Jack Molisani and reviewed by Patrick Lufkin

Many technical communicators treat portfolios simply as collections of their work. If they have produced it, they include it. Such an approach fattens a portfolio, and may alleviate anxieties about not having something on hand when needed, but it does little to make you stand out from the crowd. This June, Jack Molisani visited the San Francisco chapter to discuss another approach.

Molisani is the founder and president of ProSpring, Inc., a technical placement agency, and LavaCon, Inc., an international conference for technical project management. He is a very active member of STC, and was chair of the 2000 STC Pan-Pacific Conference in Hawaii.

At the end of the meeting, Molisani held a drawing for free attendance at the upcoming LavaCon conference. It was won by outgoing chapter president, Susan Becker.

Rather than using the portfolio as a sample collection to be scanned by the client or dipped into at opportune moments, Molisani suggests using the portfolio to control the interview.

Because people respond to stories, and tend to believe what they are shown even more than what they are told, he carefully arranges his portfolio to tell the story that sells the idea that he is right for the job.

Molisani arranges his portfolio to:

• Establish that he is an expert
• Show that he has really done what he claims to have done
• Make the interviewers see that he has already solved the kind of problems they are having and can do the same for them.

Molisani carefully selects material for his portfolio to support each of these points. Specifically he suggests using the following arrangement:

• Project plan
• The results of the plan
• Samples tailored to the client
• Awards and Recognitions (PR stuff)
• Statistics
• A radical before-and-after sample

A good plan gives you a chance to show that you have "been there," and that you understand the development or documentation process.

If you have done a plan for a project you have worked on, use it. If you haven't, Molisani suggests that, for portfolio purposes, you can do a plan in reverse: think of a project you have worked on and record how it should have been planned. You can even mention what you have done in the interview -- while pointing out how much better the project would have gone if it had been so planned from the beginning. The important thing is that, as a portfolio piece, the project plan gives you a chance to discuss what you know about managing a project, which goes a long way toward establishing your expertise.

Next, Molisani suggests, show the results of the plan. This can be the manual you produced, but it can also be advertisements for the product, data sheets, product reviews, or anything else that shows that the project was a success.

As an example, Molisani showed a review that was published in PC Magazine that stated that a product he had worked on was easy to install because of the excellent documentation. A review like that, Molisani suggested, may go a lot farther than showing the documentation itself.

Speaking of samples, Molisani made a number of points:

• Tailor the samples to the client.
• Be proactive. Get permission to show work while you are still working on a project, and get it in writing. If there are confidentially issues, see if there are parts of the work that you can show.
• You don't have to wait to have a job to create samples. He suggests creating as many samples as you can with as many authoring tools as possible.
• Find something that is really bad and rewrite it; then use it as a before-and-after sample.

If you have awards and recognitions, include them. They serve to bolster your standing as an expert. If you have statistics, include them; they are useful in demonstrating that hiring you would give the client a good return on their investment. An example would be a testimonial saying that calls to the support center had decreased as a result of the Getting Started guide you produced.

Finally, Molisani suggests ending off with a radical before-and-after sample. Molisani showed a chart that had been scribbled on a napkin, followed by a neat, well organized chart that had been made using a graphics program. A radical sample drives home the idea that you can bring order out of the usual workplace chaos, and reinforces the idea that you are an expert who can produce.

What more could the client want?

See the ProSpring website to download the slides from Jack's presentation and for additional resources: www.prospring.net

Patrick Lufkin is a Senior STC member of both the East Bay and San Francisco chapters. He is currently co-chair of the Kenneth M. Gordon Scholarship. He can be reached at lufkin@ix.netcom.com.

Copyright © 2005 by the Society for Technical Communication, San Francisco Chapter (www.stc-sf.org). This article may be reprinted in another STC publication under the provisions of the chapter's copyright policy.

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