I've been a consultant (in training) for about two months now, which means my experience is still pretty thin on paper. But, I think a portfolio matters even more when you're new to a role. When you don't have a long track record, your projects are the only thing that can speak for you.
Initially, I assumed a portfolio was something you build once you've created "enough" projects to show off. I don't think that's the case anymore. Not building a portfolio means you're relying entirely on your CV and a few lines about your degree or previous job to convince someone you're qualified for the job, which is much weaker than just showing them.
Why a portfolio matters
I don't think anybody expects a new consultant to have a pile of case studies. What they do want to see is how you solve problems: how you approach a messy dataset, what questions you ask, whether you can explain your findings to someone who isn't technical. A portfolio allows you to show off those skills.
It also forces a kind of honesty with yourself. When you have to explain a project clearly enough for someone else to follow, you find out pretty quickly whether you actually understood the subject.
Practically, clients and hiring managers are comparing you to other people with the same job title. A CV that says 'Tableau, PowerBI, SQL etc.' looks the same as everyone else's. A well explained project is far more valuable.
What I'm doing about it
Unfortunately, I don't have many client projects to share yet. Instead, I've been spending my time working on a variety of personal projects. I've written a few blog posts about the things I have learnt during my training. For me, blogs seem to be a good way to find out whether I truly understand a topic. I've also published Tableau (and a few Power BI) dashboards built from Makeover Monday and Workout Wednesday challenges. I like these because the brief is already set for you, so it's less about finding a topic and more about practicing how you'd approach the task and present the analysis. Alongside that, I've done a few projects using public datasets. This allowed me to pick topics I was curious about rather than just picking whatever dataset was easiest to work with.
I have now built a portfolio website to bring all these projects together, rather than leaving them scattered over multiple platforms. By creating this website, a client can now open and understand my work in 5 minutes without having to dig through all my profiles.
Where can you start?
Good news! You don't need mountains of work, client experience, or a perfect plan. All you need is one completed project and a bit of motivation. Here's how I would approach it:
- Pick 2–3 projects. One well explained case study beats a graveyard of half-finished charts.
- No client data? Find it! Kaggle, government open-data portals, or a completely made-up "company" all work fine. No one expects your first portfolio piece to be a real client project.
- Tell it like a story. Don't just paste single charts. Walk through the problem, why it mattered, what you tried, what you found, and what you would recommend next. Creating an accessible narrative helps viewers engage with your project.
- Show your working. Showing how you handled messy data, or a wrong assumption, is far more impressive than presenting a single chart.
- Keep the format simple. A basic website, a slide deck, or even a PDF is great. The goal is to make something that someone can understand in five minutes.
- Get someone else to have a look before you share. If someone else can't follow your logic without you walking them through, it needs another look.
- Treat it as a living thing, not a one-off project. Swap out weaker pieces as your skills improve. Outdated projects will undersell your current skillset.
None of this needs to happen in one weekend. Start with one project you could walk someone through right now and build up from there!