prepare-a-portfolio-review

name	prepare-a-portfolio-review
category	get-hired
description	Prepare a role-specific portfolio presentation that selects credible work, explains decisions and contribution, handles confidentiality, and rehearses discussion under time limits. Use when someone has a design, engineering, data, writing, product, or creative portfolio interview or review.

prepare-a-portfolio-review

Choose evidence for the role and practice the conversation around it. The portfolio should make ownership, judgment, results, collaboration, and learning clear without exposing confidential work.

Inputs

• Gather the job description, company brief, review format, time limit, audience, and allowed presentation tools.
• Inventory case studies, live work, repositories, artifacts, feedback, metrics, and confidentiality rules.
• Ask which work the person can explain deeply and honestly.

Procedure

1. Extract the role's likely evaluation criteria and rank them by evidence needed.
2. Build a project matrix matching each candidate piece to relevant skills, contribution, decisions, proof, and risks.
3. Select the smallest set that covers the criteria without repeating the same story.
4. Create a narrative for each: context, goal, role, constraints, key decisions, collaboration, result, limitation, and lesson.
5. Make personal contribution explicit and distinguish team, inherited, and guided work.
6. Replace confidential screens or data with approved redactions, recreations, diagrams, or verbal explanation.
7. Choose artifacts that support claims: before and after, code, model, data, feedback, release, or measured outcome.
8. Build a timed opening, project transitions, deep-dive path, and concise close.
9. Prepare answers about trade-offs, failures, disagreement, quality, impact, and what changed after feedback.
10. Run a recorded mock with a reviewer who has not seen the work. Score clarity, relevance, evidence, timing, and question handling.
11. Revise and test links, files, fonts, media, network assumptions, and a backup presentation.

Boundaries

Never invent ownership, metrics, users, clients, or outcomes. Do not reveal private employer, customer, student, patient, source-code, or research material without permission. Do not let visual polish hide missing evidence.

Done

• A project-selection matrix connects every chosen piece to role criteria and verified evidence
• The timed presentation clearly distinguishes personal, team, inherited, and confidential contributions
• A recorded mock produces scored feedback and a revised narrative
• All links, files, media, redactions, timing, and backup presentation are verified

Then use write-a-case-study to strengthen a weak project narrative or prepare-a-technical-interview for other stages.