7 Things to Include in Your Student Portfolio website

A portfolio website is an incredibly important professional tool for students. While portfolios are common and even mandatory in creative fields like art and design, they can be very useful and rewarding even for students outside of those fields. If you are a computer science major, for example, your portfolio website could contain links to your coding projects. A student portfolio website showcasing your best work is the most vital tool to have in your arsenal. 

Here are some important things that you should definitely include in your online student portfolio website.

What is a student portfolio website?

A student portfolio website is an online portfolio created by students to showcase their academic achievements, projects, skills, and any experiences for their personal or professional development.

Student portfolio websites more useful for students in creative niche like art, photography, designing or modeling, where they cannot showcase their work in a piece of white paper.

What are the best tools to build a student portfolio website?

You can easily create your student portfolio website with free website builders like Weebly, Carrd or Dorik. Most of these free website builders have limited functionalities, but this should be enough to get you started. You can also use alternatives like Dribble, if you just want to showcase your creative portfolio.

Wix, Squarespace, IM Creator, WordPress, Pixpa, Format are the good option that requires you to subscribe to their plan.

Things to Include in Your Student Portfolio website

You need to have a proper plan on the how you will market yourself to recruiters or potential clients with your student portfolio website. Here are few tip on things you need to include in your student portfolio website.

1.An impactful landing page

Your landing page is the first thing that anyone who visits your website is going to see. Remember, the prime purpose of your online student portfolio is networking and marketing yourself. To do that you need to make an impact and your landing page is the perfect opportunity for this.

Make sure to create a landing page that can encourage people to further interact with your portfolio website and get to know you better. 

2.An ‘About’ page

This page is your opportunity to introduce yourself. Always include a good picture of yourself and a short bio about yourself detailing your personal, professional and educational background. Let people know where you come from and what makes you do what you do.

Talk about your passion for your work, the projects you have undertaken during your academic career and the inspirations behind them. Keep this page short but informative. 

3.Your best work

Due to their relative inexperience, a lot of students don’t really understand the importance of curation when it comes to building an online portfolio. It is easy to get intimidated by professional portfolios that often contain many many projects and work samples but remember two things: firstly, you are still a student and it is understandable for you to have a limited number of projects that can be showcased.

Secondly, quality always trumps quantity. Only your best work should go on your online student portfolio.

4.Your resume/CV

Since the main goal of any portfolio website is professional development and growth, adding a resume or CV is always a good idea. For any potential employers or mentors, it is an easy way of giving them a quick rundown of your qualifications alongside your work samples and projects. You need to make your online student portfolio comprehensive.

Make sure that it contains every relevant information that a potential recruiter may be interested in.

5.Testimonials

Testimonials from professors, guidance counselors and mentors are a great addition to any student portfolio. A lot of jobs and universities ask for references when looking at prospective candidates. If you have done some freelance works or free internships as a student, testimonials from them are a great way to get started,

Testimonial is not only an attestation to a work well done, but it also illustrates your networking capabilities. The evidence of other people’s trust in you and the relationship that you have built with them is an excellent measure of your dedication to your field of work. 

6.Contact Information

Your portfolio website can be a great way of getting commissions, clients, internships or job opportunities. But for that, you need to make sure you give people an easy, accessible and direct way of contacting you. Adding a contact form on your website is a good way of doing this. Another benefit of contact forms is that you don’t have to directly reveal any sensitive information like email ids or phone numbers.

Alternatively you can also list a professional email address or link your social media profiles to enable site visitors to contact you.

7.Future Plans and Goals

For a student, with limited professional experience, it is very important to have a future plan. What recruiters and universities like to see is a clear headed, driven individual who is constantly working towards personal and professional growth.

You need to always look forward and always have a clear set of goals in mind and more importantly, you have to show this. This is why this is a section that is of particular importance to a student portfolio.

Takeaways

Your online student portfolio can be an extremely powerful and versatile professional tool for you. But for that, you need to put in the time and effort to set it up properly and make sure that it covers all your needs. Do your research and figure out the best way to set up your student portfolio website.