PC5050 Portfolio Assignment Instructions
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Task 1: Curriculum Vitae
For this task you will need to identify a currently available job that you would like to apply for. Your
chosen job must be intended for an undergraduate or a soon-to-be graduate, and should be for a
role that you could apply for (i.e., it should not be for a person who speaks Spanish if you do not, or
for a maths graduate if you do not have a degree in maths). Apart from this restriction, you may choose
any job that you wish.
To complete this task, you will need to obtain a copy of both the job description and the person
specification for your chosen role (sometimes these are combined). The job specification describes
the rob role, responsibilities, typical tasks, etc. The person specification will describe the person (ideal
experience, qualifications, qualities, etc.). The person specification may be divided into essential and
desirable qualities, experience, and qualifications. To get the person specification, you may need to
express an interest in the job. If you cannot get a person specification, you need to select a different
job for the purposes of this portfolio.
Write a version of your curriculum vitae (CV) that is directed towards and appropriate for the job
that you have chosen. You should follow guidance on the appropriate content and layout of your
curriculum vitae (think carefully about where you might get this guidance). Your curriculum vitae
should be at most two sides long.
Additional Instructions: Important
▪ Include a copy of the job description (including the job title, employer, and post closing date) and
the person specification for this job as Appendices to your portfolio. If these are available as pdf’s,
one way to do this is to embed this pdf within your word processed portfolio document (e.g., using
the ‘Insert, Object’ command in Microsoft Word). However you choose to include them, these
elements of your portfolio should be as legible and professionally presented as your CV.
▪ If you choose to include referees in your CV, these should be fictional for the purposes of this
assignment, as should any contact information (including social media).
▪ You will be assessed on both the content of your CV (completeness, appropriateness for your
chosen job, style of content) and the presentation (readability, appropriateness of layout,
attention to detail, visual appeal etc.) ▪ There is no word limit for this task.
▪ Anonymise your CV (replace names with ‘xxxxx’, black spaces or fictional names)
PC5050 Portfolio Assignment Instructions
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Task 2: Person – Job Fit
This task is based upon your assessment of your own skills, abilities, aptitudes, personality and
employment preferences. To prepare for this task you should have completed a self-assessment tasks
(e.g., skills audit, personality inventory) or engaged with the self-assessment resources (e.g., the VIA
strengths assessment) to which have been directed through the module slides and WebLearn
resources.
Drawing upon three different aspects of yourself that you can evidence, critically discuss your fit to
the type of work for which you think you are ideally suited. An aspect of yourself that you can
evidence could include that you have a particular strength, that you have a particular skill, that you
have a particularly strong personality trait (preference), or that you have a particularly strong teamrole preference or leadership style. Type of work could include consideration of the types of task that
a job involves (e.g., ensuring customer satisfaction), the likely personality attributes of an ideal
candidate (e.g., tolerance for ambiguity), or could be about the more pragmatic aspects of the role
(e.g., the amount of travelling involved, the level of variety, autonomy or responsibility that a role
involves).
The word limit for this task is 400-450 words.
Additional Instructions: Important
▪ You should provide evidence of your self-assessment for each of the three aspects of yourself that
you are choosing to demonstrate and must include each piece of evidence as an appendix to your
report. For example, you could include your Competing Values Framework outcome diagram,
your GRIT self-assessment answers and scoring, your VIA Strengths assessment results sheet, etc.
Please make sure that all forms of evidence are clearly legible and neatly presented. Please
anonymise any self-assessment outcome reports before including them in your portfolio.
▪ You are advised to refer back to our session on skills for tips on how you might demonstrate skills
effectively. The STAR model discussed in class may be of assistance. Guidance is also provided in
some of the module recommended texts.
▪ You may find it helpful to reference job descriptions for particular types of role that you are
demonstrating your fit with, for example a particular professional grade (e.g., director of human
resources), role (e.g., forensic psychologist), or industry (e.g., banking and finance). Such
information can be found on many online job sites and careers web pages.
PC5050 Portfolio Assignment Instructions
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Task 3: Digital Presence
LinkedIn is a social network primarily aimed at professional and business networking. Create a
LinkedIn profile which positively reflects your personal and professional achievements, skills,
strengths, interests and attributes (this should be an accurate reflection of yourself, not a work of
fiction). Using different aspects of your profile to illustrate your answer, critically discuss the extent
to which your profile provides you with a positive digital footprint.
The word limit for this task is 400-450 words. This word limit does not include titles or labels for any
screenshots included.
Additional Instructions: Important
▪ Your LinkedIn profile does not need to be publicly accessible. You can choose to make the detail
of it visible to only your contacts if you prefer (and, of course, you can choose who your contacts
are).
▪ You should provide screenshots of different aspects of your LinkedIn profile to support your
evaluation.
▪ Your evaluation should refer to appropriate impression formation and / or impression
management literature and professional guidance. Please cite and reference your sources.
▪ Where you identify limitations in your positive digital footprint, you should create an action plan
that is specific, measurable, achievable, relevant and time-bound (SMART) to remedy these
limitations.
▪ Anonymise your screenshots. Avoid including your name or photo.
Task 4: Employability Action Plan Infographic (2 to 5-year timeframe)
Create an infographic to show what you intend to do to develop your ability to become and stay
fully employed in the two to five-year period starting from your current position or immediately
after graduation. (Where full employment means that you have as much work as you want to take
on, whether this be full or part-time, at a level commensurate with your level of skill, that is, suitable
for a psychology graduate).
Your infographic should indicate what actions or activities you may wish to undertake and should be
both realistic and detailed. For example, if part of your plan is to complete postgraduate study, then
you should also be considering and recording how you will generate the funds for this, what you might
PC5050 Portfolio Assignment Instructions
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need to do to increase your chances of gaining a place on your chosen course, whether there is a
suitable course that you can access, etc.
Your actions could be about getting training or professional accreditation, developing experience,
building a physical or a virtual network, etc. In all cases you need to research the detail of your
proposal and present this within your infographic. This detail could include, for example, information
about costs, activity start point (in calendar terms, or relative to your graduation, or both),
geographical location (e.g., will you have to move or commute?), whether there are prerequisites that
you need to have completed before each of your proposed actions (and some indication of whether
you have these or need to meet these), etc. You should also include clear information about timing
(for example, in terms of how long each aspect of your plan will take, how often you will need to
engage in an activity, and when it will be completed). If you choose to overlap tasks, this should be
both realistically possible and represent an achievable demand on your resources alongside any other
commitments that you have (e.g., your job or childcare commitments).
You might also include potential obstacles or barriers to your success and explicit strategies for how
you would overcome these. These strategies should be considered in the same way as planned
actions, with practical strategies and timeframes.
As this is an infographic, you should use layout, colour, images and icons effectively to convey your
plan, and minimise your reliance on words. Your infographic must be embedded within your portfolio
(so you may need to consider how you create your infographic with this in mind). Your infographic
may be portrait or landscape and must be entirely legible when printed on an A3 piece of paper.
Additional Instructions: Important
▪ There is no word limit for this task.
▪ You will be assessed on the aesthetic appeal of your infographic (professionalism of presentation,
appropriate use of colour, layout, images, icons, fonts), as well as on the appropriateness of your
content for addressing the task set (e.g., the extent to which you have linked your chosen activities
to an aspect of your employability, whether there is appropriate detail included, whether your
plan demonstrates a realistic understanding of the demands of your chosen activities, etc.)
▪ You are advised not to overload your infographic with text: aim to convey as much as possible
through layout, icons, graphics, colour, etc.
PC5050 Portfolio Assignment Instructions
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General Guidelines for your Portfolio: Important
▪ You may, if you wish, create and include a portfolio cover page, but this is not required.
▪ Please make sure that you put a page number on each page of your portfolio. Do not put your
name anywhere on your portfolio. This may mean that you will have to remove or hide your name
if it is included in some of the information that you are asked to include in or append to your
portfolio (e.g., a report from an online psychological assessment).
▪ Please include the relevant tasks in chronological order with each task clearly labelled. ▪ Please
start each portfolio task on a new page.
▪ Please create and include a table of contents.
▪ It is expected that you will make some reference to the psychological literature in at least some
of your portfolio tasks. Please therefore provide a complete APA-formatted reference list for your
portfolio. Use the Publication Manual of the American Psychological Association (7th edition) as
your guide for formatting your individual citations, and for presenting your reference list.
▪ Where you have been given a word limit for a task, you should include a word count as directed.
Do not go beyond the stated word limits in either direction. If you do not meet the minimum word
requirement, it is likely that your answer does not have the level of breadth and depth required,
which will result in a low mark. If you exceed the word count, words in excess of the word limit
will be ignored. This is likely to mean that your answer finishes abruptly, your argument is
incomplete, or that some aspects of the task is not addressed or is under-developed. All of these
attributes would negatively affect a mark.
▪ Appendices should each have an appropriate label (E.g., Appendix 1), and a clear and meaningful
title (Person description for the role of marketing assistant at Ad works Marketing). Appendices
should be presented in the order in which they are referred to in your portfolio. Page numbering
in your portfolio should extend through all of your Appendices. Your appendices should also be
listed in the table of contents for your portfolio. Note: each Appendix should include one type of
information or content only.