Treat Your Career Like a Portfolio, Not a Resume
Linear career paths are a thing of the past.
For generations, careers have been a ladder to climb.
You start at the bottom, grab each rung, and pull yourself up until you reach the top. You might slip and fall back a bit (like a layoff) or skip a few rungs with a promotion. Or maybe you get stuck somewhere in the middle and stay there. But overall, the task was straight and known.
Moreover, your chosen ladder was your chosen ladder. Forever. Forty years of working, going up and down on a single ladder.
Careers aren’t like that anymore. Nor do they always take place in a traditional office or corporate environment. As a result, you should think of your career as a collection of knowledge, experiences, and skills, whether you need to submit that next resume… or strike out on your own.
If you think of your career as a portfolio — a representation of all of your accomplishments — you’ll be better poised to control your career’s direction or handle any curveball thrown your way.
Non-linear careers are the future of work
The career ladder has disappeared in part due to rapidly changing technology. Entire industries have to reinvent themselves. Print journalism, for example, has now shifted to digital media, with journalists managing their own online followings. Software engineers have to keep up with emerging programming languages every few years.
And what happens to those that cannot adapt? They end up falling behind.
The already-in-progress transformations were thrust into overdrive as a result of the pandemic. Millions of people lost their jobs in industries like retail and hospitality; millions more quit their jobs in a phenomenon now known as The Great Resignation. This massive shift has led to the rethinking of work by employees and employers alike.
Because of this, everyone needs to amass a career portfolio. No one, in any industry, should assume that a career ladder will be available. Words like “career pivots” and “upskilling” are now a regular part of the conversation — and you should constantly be preparing for a change.
Anna Burgess Yang
Show your capacity for continuous learning
One of the greatest assets you can have in your career is your ability to learn. You’ll never walk into a job with the exact skills you need on Day 1. Instead, you learn on the job — and need to demonstrate that you are a proactive learner.
So what happens if your current career doesn’t allow for learning opportunities and you feel stuck? I found myself in this situation before I joined The Great Resignation in early 2021. I had been with a company for 15 years, and my career had stagnated. This put me in a difficult situation as I weighed my options because I knew that my skills were not on par with the minimum requirements for similar roles.
It was a wake-up call. Since I knew that I wanted to make a change, I decided to “go all-in” and pursue a career pivot instead, moving from fintech into content marketing, journalism, and freelancing. I realized that by diversifying my income between multiple endeavors, I could better amass new skills and take more control over my career’s direction. If one income stream were to take a sudden hit, I was not completely sunk.
I took some online courses to learn SEO, and I picked up some freelance writing jobs on the side to build a writing portfolio. The effort worked, and I landed a new job, but I would have had more options if I’d practiced continuous learning — even when my job didn’t require it.
Now, I dedicate one or two evenings per week to learning something new. My efforts run the gamut from reading to self-paced courses to engaging with online communities. This benefits not only my current 9–5 job and freelance work, but will open more doors for me in the future.
Explain how your skills are the right fit
One of the hardest parts of a career pivot was translating my skills from one job to another. Fintech and content marketing don’t have many hard skills in common. And any skills that you acquire through your continuous learning efforts may not be obvious.
Many hiring managers are on the lookout for adaptive, out-of-the-box thinkers: but you have to help them know that you are one of those people. Even people looking to hire you for your freelance skills want to understand how you can get the job done. After all, if you are a solopreneur or doing additional work outside of your 9–5, you are your own Business Development Team of 1.
I found an approach that works — using my initial communication to “connect the dots” for hiring managers or potential clients.
In my cover letter or initial communication, I use the following formula:
It sounds like you are looking for someone who can do X. I have experience with X by doing Y, which achieved Z result.
In real life, this is what it looks like:
It sounds like you are looking for a content marketer who can not only produce high-quality content, but also manage your content calendar and engage with your online community.
As a former product manager, I was responsible for tracking every detail of a software release. I regularly talked to customers to elicit their feedback and had to write high-quality blog posts, email campaigns, and product marketing materials. Quality was the essence of product and content for a small company.
This works really well if you are making a change from a 9–5 to working for yourself. You need to show that all of your “traditional” skills apply to solopreneur life.
Stay the course
The good news is that many companies are rethinking how they hire. They’re less concerned with resume gaps and non-linear career paths. Instead, they’re looking for people who bring a wide range of hard and soft skills to the table.
Or maybe you branch out on your own. The creator economy has exploded as a result of the pandemic, with people turning their passions into revenue. The best creators and solopreneurs and constantly adapting to the world around them.
There is room to grow in many directions. By creating your career portfolio and filling it with experiences, you’ll set yourself up for more success, more options, and more personal satisfaction.
Read more about the future of work, the creator economy, and work-life balance on my Substack.