Module 4 · Career, projects and honesty Lesson 12 of 15
Build the portfolio project: a month-long watch on one job market
Pick one role you are targeting and follow what is actually being said about it for four weeks — hiring, pay, tools, layoffs, complaints. Turn it into a one-page read at the end. It is the thing you will talk about in the interview, so it has to be small enough to finish in a fortnight and concrete enough to show a person in one minute.
The concept
Pick one role you are targeting and follow what is actually being said about it for four weeks — hiring, pay, tools, layoffs, complaints. Turn it into a one-page read at the end. Finish it before you start the next one. A half-built idea shows nothing; a small finished thing shows that you can finish.
Use the tool as a collaborator, not an author: ask it for a plan, a critique and a checklist, and write the work yourself. In the interview the questions will be about the decisions — why this, why not that — and only the work you did yourself has answers.
Write one paragraph beside the project: what problem it solves, what you used, and what you would do differently next time. That paragraph is the interview.
Worked example
The finished artefact is a page with five claims, each with the posts or pages behind it, and one paragraph on what it changed about your plan.
Your practice task
Take that page to one person working in the field and ask them what is wrong with it. Being corrected by somebody in the job is the whole exercise.
Do this before moving on. Reading a solution teaches the shape of it; typing it teaches you.
Key takeaway
Pick one role you are targeting and follow what is actually being said about it for four weeks — hiring, pay, tools, layoffs, complaints.
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You finished every lesson.
Your certificate is ready, and the projects you built are the proof to attach to an application.
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Finish every lesson to unlock the certificate. Each one ends in a practice task — do them and the final project brief writes itself.