Before you’ve taken the time to build your writing resume, you’ll need to think about how you’d like to pull together a portfolio of your writing. While there are many, many different ways to do this, with a little bit of foresight and goal planning, you can put together a collection of your written works that will show off your strengths.

First, you need to think about whether or not you want to focus on a particular writing style or method. For example, if your strength is really on technical writing, you might want to consider structuring your portfolio and adding experiences in that area. If you’re talented in script writing, then perhaps you want to specialize in writing commercials, radio advertising, screenplays, etc.

Second, make sure you ask, every time you are published, if you can use the work in a portfolio. If they say “No,” then ask them if you can use the first paragraph or have an author’s copy of your published work to use as part of your portfolio.

The only challenge with focusing on a style or genre of writing is that you will automatically limit yourself to being typecast as that “kind” of a writer.

How does this affect your job hunting?

When you go to look for a job, most employers may not value writing as a skill, but they do place a great deal of importance on a job’s description. You may know that you can write about anything from widgets to embroidery because you know how to research and then write for your assignment—your employer doesn’t. Being typecast means that you may not even make it through the selection process for a job because even though you have experience writing about chocolate, you haven’t had enough experiences writing about lipstick.

A degree of flexibility is no doubt necessary to find steady work, and you may want to strongly consider selecting works to build one, comprehensive portfolio that you can then adjust for who you are sending samples to when you need it.

For my portfolio, I started out grabbing work-related samples wherever I could find them. Once I established where my strengths were, and where I was getting the most work from, then I started focusing on genre-based writing and business writing. Why? Well, writing is competitive enough as it is—by being able to narrow my abilities into two, specific areas, I’m building a reputation. For me, that works. For you, it may not.

However you decide to put together your portfolio, once you do, I recommend putting together a version in a PDF format. PDFs work great for portfolios because they give you the flexibility to email them, burn them to CD, attach them to your blog or website, and give you instant exposure. If you can, try to keep your “samples” fairly short (500 words or less), unless your potential employer asks for something longer. Typically, employers require 3 to 5 samples of your work as well as 3 to 4 references.

Overall, remember that the key to have a great writing portfolio is to decide what your writing goal is before you put the pieces together. Once you know what you want, assembling a portfolio is a lot like putting together a puzzle. Regardless, remember that your portfolio is for you—even if you’re using it to get a job or an assignment. No matter whether or not an employer “likes” your samples or not, there will always be someone else who comes along who does.