Career Services launched this week the Portfolio Project, a new way to help students hone their career- seeking skills.
A student's Portfolio will be an on-line personalized collection of student-written experiences meant to enhance his or her self-knowledge of important career skills.
Kathryn Hutchinson, associate director of Career Services, gave a dinner presentation in Collis yesterday evening introducing the Portfolio project to a group of sophomores.
"Senior year is not the time to be starting from zero," Hutchinson said. "You have to have increased awareness [of personal skills] coming out of Dartmouth."
Hutchinson said one of the biggest problems students face is the inability to articulate the value of their wide variety of experiences in a job interview.
The Portfolio allows students to keep an online collection of stories from internships, jobs, classes or their personal lives that reflect strengths in particular competencies, Hutchinson's word for career skills.
Any undergraduate student can create a Portfolio folder which can then only be accessed by the student using his or her BlitzMail password.
The student then selects a listed competency and describes an experience which demonstrates aptitude in that field.
When students have a new valuable experience or think of something to add, they can update their portfolio at any time.
Some of the competencies listed on the Career Services website are quantitative thinking, cooperation and negotiation, time management and setting directions and goals.
"We want you to be on your way to being really confident," Hutchinson said. "We're really trying to get you ready to go to the next step."
Fifty students selected from the sophomore class will also participate in a pilot program designed to test the effectiveness of the Portfolio project. Career Services will follow those students' progress until the end of senior year.
A professor or administrator will act as the student's coach and offer suggestions for improvement for the student's portfolio.
Many other colleges offer a similar portfolio service, although it is a fairly new concept. The University of Richmond and Kalamazoo College require students to create a portfolio as a graduation requirement.
The Portfolio project can be found on the Career Services Internet website under the "Discovery" heading.
