As per Wikipedia, Career portfolios are used to plan, organize and document education, work samples and skills.

So as per the above definition, every professional should have a career portfolio.But, somehow portfolios is perceived to be only required for creative functions like design, marketing and advertising.

Why Career Portfolio Is Not Only For Designers

Portfolio is a reflection of an individual's expertise in any given field. Following are some of the professions where portfolios are common

• Marketing professionals create portfolios, about the PR campaigns they have run or ads they have created.

• Designers create portfolios, to showcase the design work they have done, whether it is in software design like websites, product design or for that apparel design.

Essentially, you are capturing your best work together for anyone to see. If that is the case, then the same logic applies to other professions too. Like others, Procurement has also have need for complex skill sets. Granted, that you are not looking for designs or well written software, but you are definitely looking for candidates, who have a diverse skill sets including negotiations, collaboration with stakeholders, analytics, ability of being a change agent. So I don't see a reason why  Procurement professionals should not have a Career portfolio?

Let’s look at some examples of Portfolios

• Dribble, is a show and tell for designers. You can see design work from various designers, comment on the work and hire professionals for your design work.

• Github, is an online code repository, where software developers can upload software projects (Open source). Anyone looking to vet a developer can easiwhich is  a good way to check work done by a developer.

• Hireo is a show and tell for Procurement professionals.You can create your portfolio and share it.

Benefits of a Portfolio

There are many benefits for having an online portfolio, some of them are listed below

Reference for Past Work:Portfolio should be compliation of your best work, so if you have an online portfolio, it is easy to refer to your work.

Easy to share: Whether you are sharing your work with someone else, showing your work to a potential client, it is much easier to showcase your work.

Proxy for your experience:  It is a proxy of your experience or resume. Anybody looking at your portfolio can review your past work, without reading a lengthy resume.

What to Include In Your Portfolio

If you are in creative work (design, advertising, marketing), it is easy to figure out what to include in your portfolio. But, if that is not the case, it might not be easy to identify what should be part of your portfolio. Here are some thoughts

• Category expertise: Share your category expertise with others. For example, how to approach category management for a specific category like IT,Outsourcing, Software Maintenance etc. There are many other ideas you can think about, for example, how to conduct research for a specific commodity. If you need some ideas, look at the categories and topics we cover on Hireo.

• Best Practices: Share best practices, for example, best practices for creating an RFP or sourcing best practices for stakeholder collaboration.

• Learnings: Lessons learned, is always good to share, you should focus on mistakes made, learnings etc.

Make sure you are not sharing proprietary or confidential information about your clients or company where you are currently working, For example, spend information, supplier information, specific competitive advantages.

How to Use Your Portfolio?

Before you make use of your portfolio, make sure that it is available online so that it can be shared easily. Few tips on organizing and sharing your portfolio

• Use tools like Google Drive, Dropbox  for storing your portfolio online, or you can create and store portfolio online using Hireo (needs a free account).

• Make sure that the portfolio is not hidden,set the permissions for it to be visible.

• If possible get a unique URL which is easy to share. For example, http://hireoapp.com/portfolio/carlmiller

• Share your portfolio with potential clients or if you searching for a job, then include the portfolio URL in the header section of your resume.

• Add a link to your portfolio in your email signature.

Feel free to share your thoughts in the comments section.