I’ve been banging on about the virtues of e-portfolios for some time, and now I find myself in a situation where I might need them because all of a sudden I am under threat of redundancy. That is a little bit scary, as realistically I’m not the sort of age where a new job is going to be easy to find. But there is little value in panicking. While I might hope for the best, I shall certainly prepare for the worst and that’s where the e-portfolio comes in. I’ve been reviewing the three e-portfolios I’ve been using, Pebble Pad, Mahara and Linkedin and trying to make the decision as to which would be the best to help in my present situation. They all have their virtues. Pebble Pad is great at linking claims to evidence, and producing nicely printable CVs (Some employers, amazingly enough still want those!) Mahara is nice, user friendly and free, but I do think it needs a bit of development work yet. Linked in is good because of the social network it offers, and actually the public profile is rather good. (Don’t like the adverts when you’re editing it though! Perhaps I should shell out for an upgrade!) You can see my public Mahara profile by clicking the green icon in the “Web 2.0 portfolio” on the left. The Linkedin profile is here: –
In a way the portfolios are working as a sort of comfort blanket, because faced with a job application, it’s relatively easy to mine the portfolio for data to fill in the application. Of course you still have to tailor your application to the post being advertised, but I think the e-portfolio does take out some of the grunt work of applications. Well, as I say in the header, now is when the theory gets put to the test! I shall keep you posted.
The other side of preparing for the worst is of course working out what you can cut from the household budget. Now that really is a depressing exercise!
Interesting – I picked this up from Facebook where it looked like a note and I didnt get the sense that it fed back to a blog. In Facebook the link to Mahara was missing although I could have found you through LinkedIn. The way we thread our identities across the Internet intrigue me. The time it takes to maintain them all frustrates me! I’m most impressed with the Web2.0 icons on this page; as a prospective employer these would give me a more holistc sense of your identity (the Mahara icon is missing). But for me it raises the issue (again!) about the barriers between public/private lives; how much do I want prospective employers to know about me – do I need two separate online presences – one for promoting my skillset and one where I have my non-work interests. Do prospective employers really want to know all about my allotment or pagan places – or are the lines between the two becoming increasingly blurred with an expectation that you do include your photos and lists of books and favourite websites and what you had for breakfast etc.
We live in interesting times.