portfolio careers — Sarah's Archives

Here are some ideas on how to increase your chances of getting what you want from a portfolio career, following my recent post on why portfolio careers deserve a second look.

Be brazen about creating your own work structure outside of the traditional work hierarchy. For example, this study identifies the importance of professional networks for translators transitioning to portfolio careers. Regardless of your field of work, there are three psychological processes that you are guaranteed to experience as a portfolio worker: autonomy, isolation and uncertainty. Start building the structures you need to deal with these as soon as possible, and accept that, despite all your planning, there may be times you can feel the worst of them circling overhead.

Choose your “work strands” carefully. Consider becoming a freelance translator! Freelance translators typically have better than average autonomy and control over their working conditions compared to other kinds of freelance workers. These are two key drivers in job satisfaction.

Take responsibility for your own success. Portfolio working can be both liberating and exploitative – it’s up to you to negotiate the conditions you require to ensure you’re on the comfortable end of that spectrum.

Learn to be an optimist, even if it doesn’t come naturally to you. This study shows that portfolio workers can buck the trend and avoid being stressed out by the same conditions that pressure their cube-dwelling colleagues, simply by moderating their levels of optimism. Personally I think this is less about having an annoyingly cheery disposition than enjoying a healthy level of confidence and self-esteem, to enable you to you feel capable of managing the inevitable downsides.

Take a long, hard look at the realities on the ground and be sure to factor these into your plan. The transition from a hierarchical to a portfolio career can be financially uncertain, but the details are likely to vary based on where you live. For example, if you live in a country where decent healthcare and/or education comes at a high personal cost, then you’ve got a lot more to weigh up before making the leap. Equally, don’t assume a web-based business will be a viable option for you just because the technology exists. My broadband cost rose fivefold when I moved from the UK to Australia, a massive increase in overheads that made freelancing from Brisbane a very different proposition to freelancing from London.

Any more words of advice from those already managing portfolio careers of their own?

First published July 2008
As new career structures go, portfolio careers are only slowly starting to get the airtime they deserve. Marci Alboher calls them slash careers, Michelle Goodman refers to them as patchwork paychecks – dressed up however you like, many of us are already living this way whether we realise it or not. Best of all, it’s a phenomenon that transcends the much-hyped generational gap and could see us all the way through the retirement. What’s not to love?

The term was first coined to describe the experiences of so-called third-age workers (i.e. broadly, those in their fifties to mid-seventies), many of whom were being forced out of more hierarchical career structures by ageism. There are lots of definitions of what it means to have a portfolio career today, but Monster.co.uk gives it an especially thorough rundown:

A portfolio career is the pursuit of more than one income source simultaneously, usually by applying the various skills you’ve developed throughout your career to different types of work…

Another portfolio career characteristic is that you’ll work at different rates. Some jobs will pay well and others won’t, but the lower-paying positions might be fun or offer intangible benefits, such as an opportunity to give back to your community.

You will also likely deal with a fluctuating income stream, which you can smooth by securing ongoing part-time contracts. Alone, these contracts might not be enough, but when added to other contracts and jobs, they should give you enough to live on.

So where does being self-employed come into it? And are all freelancers portfolio workers?

This is not just a CV-friendly way of describing those stretches when you’ve held down more than one part-time job, I’m afraid – student/waiter/bartender doesn’t really cut it. Even when employed, i.e. holding down a paid part-time position, portfolio workers are usually self-employed too. This may be by virtue of the kinds of roles they take on and/or for tax purposes. Ultimately, they have a greater degree of autonomy and control over their work and have made a conscious decision to make a career out of pursuing multiple income streams. So portfolio workers tend to be freelancers too, although depending on the degree of variety among their work providers, it can be said that freelancers are not necessarily portfolio workers.

The obligatory either/or perspective

From a wider industry perspective, there seem to be two clear camps when it comes to viewing a portfolio career: those who see it as a panacea for all our modern work woes, and those who see it as yet another way to get away with paying less than the minimum wage. Stephen Overell from Personnel Today summed this up nicely when he said:

Normally, there are two camps. The first – shared by loaded downshifters and a certain type of gormless, grinning management expert – is that portfolio working is all about choice. They will tell you its about opting out of the soul-deadening rat race, doing your own thing, freedom, becoming ‘me plc’, and so on. The other camp – inhabited by melancholy economists and anxious liberals – is that portfolio work is better explained by lack-of-choice. Satisfactory employment options dip in certain sectors of the economy, and the lonely, itinerant ranks of portfolio workers witness a corresponding rise.

In fact, in some quarters it’s even considered bad for your mortal soul. In a 2004 interview with the Times, the Archbishop of Canterbury linked portfolio working with an inability to hold down relationships and a lack of integrity, saying that it destroyed the quality of human interactions. Dramatic claims indeed, so don’t say you weren’t warned.

It’s probably fair to say the reality is a little less black and white. Clearly, a portfolio career is not for everyone but for those who are prepared to make a go of it, it can mean a rewarding and satisfying career path whatever your age.

Thanks to sensesmaybenumbed on Flickr for the photo of the business card wall.

5 Tips for building your portfolio career

Portfolio careers deserve a closer look