Craig Wortmann of WisdomTools, Inc. describes a “win book,” a central archive for your collection of accomplishments-oriented artifacts, especially those providing positive feedback about your work. While Wortmann suggests pasting the items into a book, a folder or box is the way to go to store these materials until you are ready to create or update your portfolio. Wortmann suggests archiving such items as notes on daily conversations and meetings, ideas about strategy and best practices, stories of how you’ve impacted the organization, to-do lists, notes you’ve kept on the professionally developing the team members who report to you, illustrations and models that apply to your industry. I used to use a large desk-pad calendar to plan my workload. I kept all the calendar pages because notations of meetings I attended and projects I worked on reminded me of accomplishments. Finally, Wortmann suggests going through your artifacts and constructing a Story Matrix about them. The top row of the matrix lists the most important skills for the job you seek. Along the vertical axis, the job-seeker documents successes, failures, fun, and legends. See an illustration of this Story Matrix in Wortmann’s article.

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Tell Me About Yourself: Storytelling that Propels Careers, Quintessential Careers Press, ISBN-10: 1-934689-00-9. Find out the ways you can own the entire book.