6 Reasons Why Your Students Need Job Portfolio Sites
Students work hard to hone their marketable skills at your school, and soon they’ll enter the competitive job market. Here’s why equipping them with personal portfolio sites can help them rise above the competition and better represent your institution.
1. Employers need a quick reference.
In a world of virtual information overload, hiring managers often make snap judgments about job seekers. If they don’t feel familiar enough with a candidate’s experience right away – or excited enough about their work – they’ll likely pass in favor of the next applicant who delivers what they need to see. Portfolio sites help employers digest a variety of work samples in a short amount of time and quickly gauge whether there’s a mutual fit.
2. Visuals make an impact.
Whether your students are aspiring culinary masters, talented graphic designers or skilled photographers with an eye for flair, standard resumes can’t capture the full scope of their artistry. A portfolio site that incorporates visuals of their work through the likes of image galleries and embedded videos can communicate the true extent of their skills. Even if your students specialize in a less visual field, adding personal photos and introductory videos to their site can humanize them in the job search and emphasize their unique qualities.
3. They’re a dynamic work-in-progress.
As your students complete more coursework and gain greater professional experience, they can update their portfolio sites with recent work samples. This demonstrates the full arc of their professional growth and serves as a showpiece they can continue to update throughout their career. Long after they leave your institution, they’ll have an impressive collection of projects to highlight what they learned there.
4. They can market your school.
What better way to convince prospective students of your program’s merit than showing what their peers have accomplished in it? With permission from your current students and alumni, feature their portfolio sites in your school’s marketing materials as real-world proof of what you helped them achieve – and what new students can expect to learn.
5. They teach valuable skills.
Students in any profession should feel confident in promoting themselves online – and not just through social media. Showcasing their skills with a well-designed website can pave their path to professional success and poise them for career growth. Learning how to create and manage such pages on Squarespace can help students build their personal brands – and that’s something every new graduate should know how to do effectively. With Squarespace Enterprise, your school’s dedicated account manager can train students on platform proficiency and on optimizing their portfolio site appearance.
6. Quality matters.
Your students’ portfolio site design should match the quality of their work, and anything less can cheapen its impact on hiring managers. Don’t let viewers become distracted by confusing layouts or irrelevant, noisy ads that detract from their work. Choose a design-first platform that polishes student projects and keeps employers engaged with state-of-the art templates. Squarespace’s design-forward templates are built to enhance student work and help them create stunning results – even with no coding knowledge.