Let’s talk portfolios.
I spent the better part of yesterday cobbling together a writing portfolio. I was prompted to do so by a job that I wanted to apply to — the first one I really liked that required such a thing.
Work Product and Attribution
The reason it took me so long to put my portfolio together is that it took me a while to find things I’ve written which are both publicly available and attributed to my name.
Many employers have policies, backed by legal agreements, that ascribe creative outputs as their intellectual property. I’m pretty sure every employer I’ve had since college has had some agreement along those lines in the onboarding paperwork.
While I do take issue with some aspects of current intellectual property law, at a rough sketch I’m okay with these terms. The work I’ve produced for the companies that hired me is work for hire. Philosophically, I’m okay with them receiving the benefit of the outputs they’re paying me to produce. (There can, of course, be predatory versions of this, but I don’t feel that I’ve been a victim of such.)
Where it becomes a problem for me personally is when it’s time to move on — especially when the choice to do so isn’t mine. It’s hard to put a portfolio together when I don’t have the rights to the work that I created.
Then there’s proving I did the work at all. A good portion of what I wrote in my last job was client work, meaning that my name doesn’t appear on the published version anyway. I could claim I wrote things on client websites, but without attribution, proving it is nearly impossible. And I know how much weight I gave such claims when I was on the hiring side of such conversations in the past.
A Mere Sample
Don’t worry, I was able to cobble a portfolio together that I think shows my range. Some of it is a little older, and I did have to rely on the Wayback Machine. (Thank you, Brewster Kahle and team!)
At the end of the day, I think what I have is solid enough to get me some interviews. Which is all it really needs to do. I’ve always been pretty good at talking to people — it’s getting them to talk to me in the first place that’s the hardest step.
Anyway, that job that I started putting together the portofolio for in the first place…yeah, the posting was taken down before I got a chance to submit my shiny new portfolio. Which is a whole different problem.
Oh well, at least now I have something for the next time I need it.