1. Portfolio Instructions
Career Education

2. Introduction
• The purpose of the Portfolio is to develop an application packet
structured for either immediate – or future – use.
• It will be made up of:
o Cover Letter
o Resume
o References
• These documents can be developed in either
o Present Tense – use all your current schooling, work experience,
skills, etc.
o Future Tense – using hypothetical information from where you hope
to see yourself in the future, including high school diploma
completion, college or technical school, future career related
positions or jobs that you could see yourself having. [Obviously, you
never do this when submitting a resume to an actual prospective
employer. This is merely for purposes of this assignment alone.]

3. Introduction, continued
• Each document must be typed: 12 point font, Times New Roman,
Arial or some other professional-looking font.
• You will have three individual documents.
• Each document must share the same letterhead format
o Your name, address, phone, email address must be the same on
each document.
• All documents should have the same font, including size and style.
o The resume wizard on Word automatically establishes the font
style so it might be helpful to go back and re-format the font on
you cover letter and references to match it.
• All documents are expected to be ERROR FREE. DO NOT BE
SURPRISED: YOU WILL HAVE TO MAKE CORRECTIONS UNTIL
IT IS 100% ERROR FREE.
• Be sure to electronically save your most recent copy each time to
avoid having to re-type everything.

4. Introduction, continued
• When finished you will have a document at your disposal
that will be immediately available for use, or easily modified
for future use in a job search.
o It is highly recommended that you save each document
electronically so you may modify, and access it, in the
future.
• This will be a very valuable document in the future when you
are applying for a professional position.

5. Cover Letter
• The Cover Letter is a letter of application to a specific place
of employment.
• It must include the following:
o Applying to a specific job at a specific company
o Be addressed to a specific person
o Include your informational heading at the top of the page
• Cover letters are no more than 1 page in length and contain
3 to 4 brief paragraphs.
• The informational packets provided by the teacher will go
into detail about the specific format, structure, and
information that should be included in the cover letter.

6. Employers receive countless applicants
for a very limited number of jobs. So, it
is imperative to make your portfolio
100% accurate and error free.
o Employers literally throw a resume in
the trash when they find a single error
on it. If you do not take your time now to
get it right, they will not waste their time
to read it when they literally have
hundreds of resumes to read through.
They will only interview those applicants
who are a) most qualified, and b) whose
resumes are 100% error free.

7. Resume
• The Resume is where you will go into detail about your education,
job experience(s), important skills, etc.
• You should be specific, accurate, and concise when putting your
resume together.
• Use a complete sentence when writing your objective, and
specifically state that objective (the objective is the job position you
wish to secure).
• It is OK to develop a resume that you can foresee using in the future
o You may use your hypothetical "graduation dates" for high school,
college, tech school, etc., for purposes of this assignment.
o Describe any jobs you can see yourself having, especially if they
might be good stepping stones for a future career. Again, for
purposes of this assignment, it is OK to list hypothetical jobs.
(Obviously, it is never OK to do that on a real resume when you
are really applying for a job. Just to be clear.)

8. Resume, continued
• Part 2 of the Portfolio Project handout describes the process of using
the Resume Wizard feature in Word.
o It is highly recommended that students utilize this feature because
the resume wizard provides three pre-formatted templates to
choose from. Each template has the basic structure already set up
for your resume.
o Students may then click and type over the the sample resume to
create their own version.
• List work experience, and educational experience starting with the
most recent in your personal history, and then work back from there
(e.g. if you are still working at a business, list that work experience first,
then list the job you had prior to that, and so on).

9. Pick the template that works best for you
and use it to write your own resume.

10. References
• The Reference page is used to list at least three people who
can vouch for your work ethic, experience, attendance, etc.
• The people you list as references should not be family,
friends, or relatives.
o Employers are looking for work related information and
the people you are closest to are not necessarily capable
of speaking on behalf of your work habits (unless you
work directly for one of them).
• You should ALWAYS ask the person before listing them as
a reference.
o If someone you listed as a reference is called by a
prospective employer asking about your work experience,
you don’t want it to be a surprise to the person you listed
as a reference.

11. References, continued
• The best people to use as references include:
o Employers (both current and former)
o Teachers or professors
o Only family, relatives, or friends for whom you worked
directly
• Each Reference should be formatted in this order:
o Name
o Title
o Employer
o Address
o City, State, Zip
o Phone Number
o email Address (optional)

12. Reference Page Example