Building Your Portfolio

BUILD YOUR

EXPERIENCE 1 2 3 4

4 BUILDING YOUR
PORTFOLIO

What’s in It for Me? Skills Matrix How might the courses in which you are enrolled right now affect your future? Although it might be hard to imagine a direct connection to your career or lifestyle after college, your classes and experiences can play an important role in your future.

Developing a skills matrix will help you reflect on your college experiences and track the skills that will eventually help you land a great summer job, a hard-to-get internship, a scholarship, and a future career.

  1. Using Microsoft Excel or another spreadsheet software, develop a skills matrix to identify courses and out-of-class experiences that enhance the following skills: communications, creativity, critical thinking, leadership, research, social responsibility, and teamwork. View an example here.
  2. Add any additional skills categories or courses you would like to track.
  3. Indicate what you did in your courses or activities that helped you learn one of these skills. Be specific about the assignment, project, or activity that helped you learn.
  4. Save your skills matrix on your computer or in the Cloud.
  5. Update your matrix often. Add new skills categories, courses, and activities. Change the title to indicate the appropriate time period (e.g., Skills Learned in My First Two Years of College).
  6. Start an electronic collection of your college work. Save papers, projects, and other relevant material in one location on your computer or on an external storage device. Be sure to back up your work to avoid digital disasters!