Your professional portfolio – whether it’s in print or digital format – is one of the best ways you can showcase your administrative skills and abilities, and work samples are a key piece of the portfolio puzzle. Yet many admins struggle with what to include and how to demonstrate some of their responsibilities and skills.
Providing tangible proof of some tasks and talents is definitely a challenge. However, it’s one you can definitely overcome with some careful thought and reflection…and a little guidance. To help you better showcase all your administrative responsibilities, the following are some common yet hard to demonstrate skills and tasks, and how to include them in your professional portfolio.
1. Organization.
Organization can come in many forms – from filing to coordinating meetings and even keeping your desk in working order. Oftentimes, one of the best ways to show organization is with pictures. Snap some shots of your filing system – whether it exists in a cabinet or on your computer. Photograph your immaculate desk or your executive’s if you’re responsible for keeping it organized. You can also include copies of planning forms or templates you’ve created to coordinate events or projects, as well as documents that show an instance where you took a large amount of data and made it useable. Each of these creates a concrete example someone can view on paper to see your organization skills.
2. Travel planning.
Are you responsible for coordinating your executive’s or team’s travel plans? Are there forms or templates you’ve created over the years to help you keep all of the details in order? Include them in your portfolio. Take a past travel itinerary, remove the confidential details or replace them with made up names and numbers to show how you keep your travelers on track when they are in transit. You can also include copies of travel research you’ve completed or even a list of resources you utilize whenever you have to book a trip.
3. Project management.
This is one of the more critical skills for admins, so it’s essential that you include it in your portfolio if it’s part of your job. To showcase your project management abilities, think of a project you managed or helped to manage, such as planning a board meeting, an annual company event, or even charity events your company sponsors. Once you’ve identified a project or two, pull together the documents you used to coordinate it, including emails, schedules, marketing materials, and other relevant documents and put them in your portfolio. If you don’t have any project management samples from work, you can include materials from projects you done for volunteer positions or work with professional organizations.
A professional portfolio is one of the best resources an admin has when pursuing a new job opportunity, promotion or professional opportunity…but only if it’s an accurate depiction of your skills and abilities. Make sure your portfolio is comprehensive and includes works samples that put the spotlight on everything you can do, and it’ll be one of your greatest professional allies!
To learn more about developing your professional portfolio strategy, check out our e-books and courses to help you create a powerful professional portfolio today!
© 2014 Julie Perrine International, LLC
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Julie Perrine, CAP-OM, is the founder and CEO of All Things Admin, providing training, mentoring and resources for administrative professionals worldwide. Julie applies her administrative expertise and passion for lifelong learning to serving as an enthusiastic mentor, speaker and author who educates admins around the world on how to be more effective every day. Learn more about Julie’s books — The Innovative Admin: Unleash the Power of Innovation in Your Administrative Career and The Organized Admin: Leverage Your Unique Organizing Style to Create Systems, Reduce Overwhelm, and Increase Productivity. And request your free copy of our special report “From Reactive to Proactive: Creating Your Strategic Administrative Career Plan” at www.AllThingsAdmin.com.
