Companies and employers seeking to meet the personnel needs by providing internship and employment opportunities have to look beyond academic performance documented in academic records. According to Hora (2020), employers today are more likely to hire for cultural fitness, which implies that the students’ academic records are no longer the most important documentation in deciding which talent to onboard. By looking for students with a strong cultural fitness, employers are looking for potential hires with above average employability skills and those with a highly developed professional identity as graduates (Cabau, 2017). Desirable qualities include, but no limited to reflective learners, lifelong learners, and even students with strong inclinations and commitment towards career development. E-portfolios are emerging as the primary means through which graduates showcase their employability skills to potential employers. According to Watty (2019), 54% of students in the US and 52% of students in Canada report to have used their e-portfolios as a gateway to lowering the barriers to employment and internship opportunities. This brief essay aims to briefly discuss how a professional e-portfolio could be used to obtain an internship or professional opportunity.
In the employment market, competition for opportunities is stiff enough that employers can afford to miss out on talents if they mismatch in certain key perspectives, such as culture. As a result, any graduate looking for an internship or professional opportunity has to stand out. Academic records are enough to document achievements in specific parts of the education curriculum (Pinto & Ramalheira, 2017). To stand out, however, a graduate need to go beyond good grades and adequately document their learning, especially by demonstrating they can readily use what they acquired in their academic career. Furthermore, these graduates also need to demonstrate to potential employers that they are ready to enter the professional world, either in a work context or as an avenue for future development through further studies. In other words, the graduate needs to demonstrate their strengths and weaknesses, but more importantly, the challenges they have faced and the solutions they came up with.
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As a result, E-portfolios have emerged as the perfect demonstrative tool. On the one hand, they give potential employers hidden details of the graduate’s skills and value as a potential hire. More importantly, the e-portfolio helps employers gauge the graduate’s employability (Cabau, 2017). Note that to properly leverage e-portfolio to get an internship or professional opportunity, the individual needs to have an online presence. However, while have a digital presence on social networking sites like Facebook, Twitter, and Instagram is important, the benefits and advantages are not as important as having a professional presence on dedicated sites like LinkedIn (Brewer, 2018; Stokes et al., 2019). The advantage of maintaining a professional digital presence to showcase competences is that it makes it easy for employers to find more information about the graduate, especially when tracking their progress and determining their fitness.
Using an e-portfolio to get an internship or professional opportunity requires that the graduate does the following. First, graduates should share their e-portfolio as much as possible. Not only should the graduate add the e-portfolio to their e-mail signatures, they should also make sure it is included in any business card and professional contact, especially on social media. Note that the graduate should recognize that they are not the only interested applicants with interesting e-portfolios. As a result, sharing them everywhere will increase their reach beyond professional circles.
Secondly, when creating the e-portfolio, the graduate should show what they have done, learned or are competent with, rather than telling any reader. For instance, instead of listing achievements, graduates should emphasize on the projects they have completed, thus allowing said projects to speak and demonstrate their competencies. Similarly, the graduate should discuss the same projects during interviews, thus inviting the interviewers and audiences to look into the e-portfolio for more information. After all, the interview is less likely to provide the graduate the opportunity to discuss and highlight al their competencies. However, if they get the interviewers interested enough, having easy access to the e-portfolio will increase their chances of getting the opportunity.
Lastly, graduates should not develop the wrong impression or potential a good e-portfolio could be when leveraged to get an internship or professional opportunity. For instance, the wrong perspective would be to think that the e-portfolio should only document the graduate’s academic and professional work. However, the activities and projects the graduate has engaged in outside academic work is sometimes more significant than any academic achievements. CVs often document the graduate’s hobbies and interests, like volunteering, travelling, or being in a club. However, when these activities are documented in detail in the e-portfolio, graduates make a powerful case to the hiring manager.
In conclusion, e-portfolios have the potential to help graduates get internships and professional opportunities. After all, competition for opportunities in the employment market is stiff enough that employers can afford to miss out on talents if they mismatch in certain key perspectives, such as culture. As a result, any graduate looking for an internship or professional opportunity has to stand out. Knowing what an e-portfolio can do for them is one step. The next step is to know what to do with the e-portfolio. First, graduates should share their e-portfolio as much as possible. Secondly, when creating the e-portfolio, the graduate should show what they have done, learned or are competent with, rather than telling any reader. Lastly, graduates should document their hobbies and personal interests as they could be valuable qualities to different hiring managers.
References
Brewer, S. W. (2018). Come for a job, stay for the socializing: gratifications received from LinkedIn usage. Online Journal of Communication and Media Technologies , 8 (4), 345-361.
Cabau, B. (2017). E-portfolio as a tool to respond higher education ambitions and societal expectations. In E-Portfolios in Higher Education (pp. 141-154). Springer, Singapore.
Hora, M. T. (2020). Hiring as cultural gatekeeping into occupational communities: implications for higher education and student employability. Higher Education , 79 (2), 307-324.
Pinto, L. H., & Ramalheira, D. C. (2017). Perceived employability of business graduates: The effect of academic performance and extracurricular activities. Journal of vocational behavior , 99 , 165-178.
Stokes, Y., Vandyk, A., Squires, J., Jacob, J. D., & Gifford, W. (2019). Using Facebook and LinkedIn to recruit nurses for an online survey. Western journal of nursing research , 41 (1), 96-110.
Watty, K. (2019). ePortfolios: what employers think - GlobalFocus . GlobalFocus. Retrieved from https://www.globalfocusmagazine.com/eportfolios-what-employers-think/.
