Recruitment To Create A Killer Marketing Portfolio

A Marketing Portfolio is a critical tool for any marketer, especially one that is looking for a new job. By spending a bit of time creating a portfolio for a job interview, you are able to give any potential employer visual proof of what you can do and how well you can do it.

• A Resume conveys:                                This is what I can do
• A Resume and a Portfolio conveys:    This is what I can do and let me show you

What to Include in a Marketing Portfolio

It is very tempting to include a visual of every campaign you were associated with that had positive results. Don’t do it, at best it says – I was really busy. Most likely it says – I am not capable of reviewing information and isolating what’s important which are critical skills for a marketer. The basics you need to include in your marketing portfolio are:

1. Cover Page
2. Table of Contents
3. Updated Resume Examples
4. 5-6 Samples of your work
5. Awards & Recognition

Choosing the Best Pieces for Your Marketing Portfolio:

The first 3 items in the portfolio are pretty easy to understand. Things start to get more complicated when you piece together the samples of your work. How do you choose which ones to include? I would recommend the following items:

• An Integrated Marketing Campaign – It is important to show you are strategic thinker and featuring an integrated marketing campaign will prove this. Include assets like traditional media, print, website, social content, video and email. This will also showcase your experience across every advertising medium.
• A New or Innovative Idea – This may be a product launch, upgrade, line extension, new advertising avenue, process improvement or new customer channel. This type of activity shows you are a creative thinker and will subtly sell your communication and planning skills as any of these projects will involve cross functional team management.
• An Activity with Great Results – This should be different from the strategic campaign and ideally you will have had reasonably high involvement in the activity. Activities that resulted in increased brand awareness, loyalty, sales and  profit are all great examples to use.
• A Challenging or Failed Activity  – This is probably the last thing you want to include but it can actually work very well for you. A challenging activity or one that did not meet its objectives allows you to talk about perseverance, problem solving, adaptability and importantly learning from failure. By admitting you learnt from some things that went wrong shows you have a lot of emotional intelligence which we now know is the most important leadership skill.

Once you have gathered together the key components of your marketing portfolio you need to decide on a format. There are many digital portfolio options including setting up your own website or blog, using LinkedIn, using portfolio programs like PortfolioBox or more mainstream approaches like Powerpoint or Presi.