Take a minute to conduct a Google search on your name. What comes up? Are you proud of what you see? If you want to change that information-and especially if you are in the job market-think about creating a career e-portfolio. Building such a portfolio has many benefits. It can give you an important digital tool to connect with a large audience. It can also help you expand your technology skills, confirm your strengths, recognize areas in need of improvement, and establish goals for improvement. Many students are creating e-portfolios with the help of their schools.

Your Task No. 1. Before attempting to build your own career e-portfolio, take a look at those of other students. Use the Google search term student career e-portfolio to see lots of samples. Your instructor may assign you individually or as a team to visit specific digital portfolio sites and summarize your findings in a memo or a brief oral presentation. You could focus on the composition of the site, page layout, links provided, software tools used, colors selected, or types of documents included.

Your Task No. 2. Next, examine websites that provide tutorials and tips on how to build career e-portfolios. One of the best sites can be found by searching for career e-portfolios San Jose State University. Your instructor may have you individually or as team write a memo summarizing tips on how to create an e-portfolio and choose the types of documents to include. Alternatively, your instructor may ask you to actually create a career e-portfolio.