A few years ago, portfolio careers were framed as a deliberate choice: a forward-thinking decision to build experiences across industries and skill sets. The advice that came with it sounded empowering, because you gained an advantage from a career with more breadth than climbing a single ladder.
That framing assumed people had options. Right now, a lot of people don’t because the job market is absolutely brutal. Jobseekers fill out hundreds of applications, many of which disappear into AI-filtered queues, never to see the light of day. As a result, more people are building portfolio careers because they have run out of alternatives. The choice comes down to working or not working. For people pushed into new career paths by layoffs and a shrinking market, the standard advice to “own your non-linear path” feels hollow.
A portfolio career only becomes an asset when a hiring manager sees the throughline. And right now, that translation work — the work of making a non-linear path understandable to the people evaluating it — falls entirely on the jobseeker.
Traditional resumes don’t work for a portfolio career
Bonnie Silva wrote for Business Insider about shifting from bartending to becoming a doula to going back to school for a career in design. She sent 83 applications in a single month. Zero interviews. She had the experience and the skills. But they couldn’ land her a job. She wrote, “Making a career change shouldn’t feel this impossible.”
At the absolute baseline level, resumes are chronological. So are LinkedIn profiles. So are job applications, which ask for experience listed in reverse order, one role after another. The assumption is that your timeline should tell a story. When the story is clean — like a decade at one company with steady promotions — the format works fine.
When a person’s career spans three industries with a freelance period and a mental health break in the middle, the story requires “explanation.” A portfolio career, dropped into the typical chronological format, reads as instability. A busy hiring manager might simply pass over the candidate, rather than ask for the story.
Even though companies may claim to value skills over credentials, they haven’t followed through. Either it was an on-paper-only claim, or the hiring manager is too overwhelmed to give a resume more than a few seconds of time. And most jobseeking advice never teaches people how to frame a portfolio career in today’s saturated job market.
In 2021, when I changed careers, my shift from working at a tech company to content marketing (with no marketing background) opened doors. It was a unique combination of experiences. Today, I’d be shocked if the same resume would land me any job interviews. And the interview was critical to persuading a hiring manager that I could do the job, despite having no formal marketing background. Without the interview, my portfolio career wouldn’t have made sense.
A career that’s more than a chronological list on a resume
Translation — showing a hiring manager how the disparate parts of your career make sense for a new role — is a necessary skill for anyone with a portfolio career. Everything else in the portfolio is stuck without it.
The experiences don’t necessarily speak for themselves, and you may never get the opportunity to do the speaking if you can’t get an interview.
Today, it shows up in:
The “Overview” section at the top of your resume
A cover letter (or video, since some companies want videos now)
A powerful description in the “About Me” section of your LinkedIn profile that makes the pitch
The homepage and “About Me” sections of your website
The “About Me” section of a proposal you send to clients
You get a quick glance — a few sentences at most — in each asset to explain yourself. Make them count. Practice writing them in different ways to see how much you can say in the fewest words. Because it’s not only an explanation of what you’ve done; it’s also how your portfolio career benefits the person trying to hire you.
The work of explaining your career is easiest when it’s not urgent (i.e., you’re not looking for a new role), but that’s also when it’s easiest to put off. If you’re in a stable role right now, or between projects with some breathing room, work on the translation part of any assets you have. If you’re in the middle of a job hunt, take the time to review everything a potential hiring manager sees.
Your career already has the material. The work left is making sure other people understand it.
Thinking about a career change? Download my guide: 5 Types of Career Pivots.
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