Luke O'Rafferty is a Level 4 Data Apprentice on the Elevate programme, Luke attended a 'Write Your Best Data Portfolio' workshop hosted by Data Alumni, Elitsa Zhuglev, and wrote a key takeaways post to sum up the knowledge Elitsa shared:

The Level 4 Data Fellowship Apprenticeship culminates in an End Point Assessment, which is made up of three parts. One critical element is the Portfolio, in which we showcase our abilities and progress across the Apprenticeship. Well over 200 attendees were online to hear Data Alumni Apprentice Elitsa Zhuglev sharing her top tips on how to "Write Our Best Data Portfolio". Elitsa did an excellent job in highlighting what works well and it is well worth catching up with the whole presentation, but here were my biggest takeaways.

Get Started

Elitsa has some great advice on getting started, from making sure your apprentice manager is aware of what you are trying to achieve so that you can align work tasks with the capabilities you need to demonstrate, to setting aside regular time to keep your portfolio up to date. The key part though was to get started as soon as possible.

Make it Personal

Elitsa challenged us by asking, amongst the thousands of submissions that pass through the assessors hands, what makes ours stand out? Personal branding was one step, in creating our own look, but also including humour and personal experiences. Enhancing those experiences by stepping outside of our comfort zones (for example, attending a data conference), and documenting both failures (and how we learned from them) as well as the successes are all significant in showing how we have achieved more.

Use the frameworks given

Through the apprenticeship we are introduced to the STAR (Situation, Task, Action, Results) framework as well as the Data Analytics lifecycle. Elitsa explained how she found these incredibly effective when applied to writing her portfolio, and she kept those elements front and centre throughout the drafting process. By structuring our portfolios in this way it makes it easier for the assessor as well.

Make it easy to review

In the End Point Assessment interview you could be questioned on any part of your portfolio, and Elitsa had advice on several key things to help yourself. These included writing a clear Executive summary for every project, working both to introduce your work to the assessors but also as an aide memoire when recapping your own work from many months earlier. Another tip was ensuring your visualisations are free from clutter and easy to explain - if you were asked to explain it with no preparation could you?

Summary

All in all, it was a very valuable and engaging hour spent with Elitsa, understanding what makes for a good portfolio. I will certainly be making sure I've got the competencies in front of me as I propose my next project and start pulling together my evidence into my own portfolio.

Catch up on the recording of this event here!