Portfolio Careers: What They Are And How You Can Position Yourself For Success 

As the way we work changes, many individuals are seeking a multi-faceted approach to their career, whether using spare time on a side hustle, taking on multiple jobs or volunteering commitments. A “portfolio career” may be the best way to self-describe and maximize opportunity and provide the scope to switch between different occupations.

Fiona Chorlton-Voong is the Chief Operating Officer & Co-Founder of The Portfolio Collective, an organization formed in 2020, now a global community of individuals that have Portfolio Careers in common. The term “Portfolio Career” was coined by Charles Handy in the 1980s. 

Fiona describes portfolio careers as life design-focused, a path that allows individuals to have ownership over their career design.

“Essentially, it’s just taking your skills and utilizing them in different ways to incorporate your life design with your career design,” Fiona said. “What I’ve really learned in the five years of building The Portfolio Collective is actually a way of life. Instead of thinking about career design, the way the world is now going in the future of work is life design now.”

Although many people with a portfolio career take advantage of establishing multiple sources of income, this is not a definitive requirement. Many portfolio professionals may use their different skills instead for volunteer opportunites or in an exchange of skills.

“People are taking ownership of their life and their career a lot more,” Fiona said. “So instead of thinking, it’s just monetizing yourself in different ways, it’s actually using your skills in different ways. So whether you monetize them or not, we believe that is a portfolio career.”

Fiona categorizes those with portfolio careers into four categories. 

• People with a side hustle: they are working full-time and have a side project or hobby that may not be their sole focus, or who are looking to transform their side hustle into their full time focus to allow themselves to eventually leave their full-time employment. 
• Freelancers: those who work on delivering multiple projects for clients. 
• Focused expert: who monetizes themselves in different ways such as a public speaker, consultant, or writer, and pitch themselves for work.
• “Multi-hyphenate”: who has many strengths and skills which may be connected or may not be at all. Often this category finds it hardest to position themselves. 

Portfolio careers might not be the right pathway for everyone. Fiona said she believes that it is a lifestyle that will suit half of the global working population, with the other half preferring a traditional career pathway.

Although the membership base of The Portfolio Collective is almost evenly split between genders, Fiona said she sees portfolio careers as being a positive option for women, because so many factors, from parenting to menopause, make the female employment experience different from their male counterparts. This leads to many women departing the corporate world to choose their own career path because portfolio careers offer a lot of flexibility and can be designed to fit easily around other life commitments.

Here are some tips that Fiona outlines to support individuals who look to pursue a portfolio career.

When crafting a portfolio career, some of the challenge is identifying your unique “value proposition,” which aligns with your purpose and generates the career excitement that you have always wanted to have.

Fiona recommends approaching this by doing a skills audit: determining what you love, what your added value is, and the audience you want to serve. Then, ask yourself if you are able to monetize it. If you are not yet working in that industry, it’s time to immerse yourself within it, Fiona said. If you have the opportunity to test it as a side hustle, to try and maximize opportunities to test it within the market 

Fiona said people approach her with concern that their career diversity makes them look unemployable or unfocused. In her opinion, this distinction or difference added to your resume is actually a strength that separates you from the competition and makes you a more interesting individual.

“The whole thing with personal branding, and especially as a solopreneur, you want to stand out,” she said. “You want to be a person that people remember and having these kinds of different interests because that is life. Humans have different interests.”

Fiona said people are just as interested in the person behind the business as they are in the business or service itself. These personal aspects of marketing make it more important to share your story, your values, and “show your why,” and can help to deliver on creating a more personal connection with your audience.

“We’re living in a world now where emotional intelligence and softer skills are becoming more dominant,” she said. “Having that humanist, that connector piece helps with that.”

Fiona said the most important step to making the most of your portfolio career is to ensure you can get opportunities in front of you.

“The danger that I see people coming into portfolio careers is, especially if they jump in two feet first, they’re chasing the money as opposed to chasing opportunities that could be in front of them,” Fiona said. “Most work for portfolio work comes from opportunities. It’s not the traditional application for a job on a job board.”

Your network is one of the biggest catalysts for opportunities. Building a portfolio career means growing your network as much as you can. Doing this herself, Fiona said she has stuck to meeting three strangers per week.

“If you want to have a portfolio career, start building your network as much as possible,” she said. “Start joining communities, start going to events, and having those conversations. I’m now lucky enough to be in a position where opportunities come to me because of my network. And that’s where, honestly, the best portfolio work comes from.”

“Against all odds, you can do anything you want if you have the right motivation, the right people around you,” she said.