FAQs from the Building a GIS Portfolio That Opens Doors Webinar
The Esri Young Professionals Network recently hosted a webinar on building a GIS portfolio that truly helps you stand out. Former students and GIS professionals walked through their own portfolios and offered practical advice on creating one that reflects your skills and goals.
Click Here to Access the Recording
We also received a ton of thoughtful questions during the session, more than we could cover live. To keep the conversation going, I worked with webinar speakers to pull together answers to the most common ones.
Table of Contents
- Table of Contents
- Q:Should I build my portfolio on my school ArcGIS Online account or my own personal account?
- Q:Can I use coursework, Esri Academy exercises, or tutorial projects in my portfolio?
- Q:How should I handle confidential or sensitive work?
- Q:What should I do if I no longer have access to past projects or data?
- Q:Should I include a photo or personal details on my portfolio?
- Q: How do I link my portfolio on my resume or LinkedIn?
- Q:Should I have both a traditional resume and a GIS portfolio?
- Q:How many projects should a portfolio include?
- Q:What if my work is mostly technical or data management rather than mapping?
- Q:What’s the best platform to host a GIS portfolio?
- Q:How can I come up with original project ideas to use in my portfolio?
Q: Should I build my portfolio on my school ArcGIS Online account or my own personal account?
A: Personal account 100%, I lost my first portfolio in college after I graduated!
A: It’s better to build your portfolio on your personal ArcGIS Online account because you will keep access to it even after you graduate, it’s more reliable for long-term professional use, and you won’t risk losing it the way you might with a school account
A: I would build it on your personal account; once you graduate, you are likely to lose access to your school's account. Beyond graduation, you can get a personal use Esri license.
Q: Can I use coursework, Esri Academy exercises, or tutorial projects in my portfolio?
A: Yes! That is a great way to say you learned specific skills and show initiative to continue learning outside of university.
A: Of course — you can absolutely include coursework, Esri Academy exercises, or tutorial projects in your portfolio. They’re a great way to demonstrate your skills in areas such as scripting, data analysis, spatial analysis, cartography, imagery, data management, geoprocessing, field data collection, web mapping, etc.
A: Absolutely! These are fantastic ways to show off your skills.
Q: How should I handle confidential or sensitive work?
A: Recreate the project using open source data with the same methodology. Keep the lessons learned general to not disclose any sensitive information. Slightly blur out maps as needed.
A: Keep details as general as possible and avoid sharing confidential information. Focus on the skills, tools, and workflows you used, and if you need visuals, recreate the project using open data.
A: Talk about it as vaguely as possible; highlight the skills you gained, the applications you used, and the people you worked with. If you want a visual, try to replicate a project using public data.
Q: What should I do if I no longer have access to past projects or data?
A: List it as if you would on a resume in a "previous work" section of your resume. Be as specific as possible. Start placing current projects/data in a personal google drive folder so it doesn't happen again!
A: You can present it as work experience and describe what you did, what skills you used, and what you learned. If you need visuals, you can recreate similar examples using open data, and it’s always a good idea to keep a screenshot or a layout image from each project so you can showcase it later even if the original files are lost.
A: I would document it as a work experience and write about what you did, what you learned, etc.
Q: Should I include a photo or personal details on my portfolio?
A: Yes! I think it's a great way to show you are a human with interests outside of GIS. I find that it's better to work with interesting people so I appreciate when they share hobbies about themselves. It's also a big plus from the hiring perspective as I tend to remember people based on their hobbies/personal notes than their GIS projects.
A: Including a photo or a few personal details can be useful, since your portfolio is part of your personal story and can help viewers understand who you are, what motivates you, and what your interests are. This personal touch can make your work feel more approachable and memorable. However, it’s not mandatory — you can still present a strong, professional portfolio without a photo, as long as your projects, skills, and experience are clearly showcased.
A: This is up to you. I would steer clear of putting this on a resume, but a portfolio is your personal space. I think photos and personal details humanize the information being presented.
Q: How do I link my portfolio on my resume or LinkedIn?
A: You can link a website URL via your profile settings. On a resume PDF, I have a hyperlinked url with the full text to the website surrounded by a box near the top of the resume, by my name. I add an invisible rectangle hyperlink around that box so users that open the PDF virtually can just click the box and it redirects them to the portfolio. (follow steps here)
A: You can add your portfolio as a direct hyperlink on your resume — usually in the header near your contact information — and include it in the “Featured” or “About” section on LinkedIn. Just make sure the link is clean, easy to access, and leads directly to your main portfolio page.
A: I, personally, include my portfolio URL in the same line as my phone number and email on my resume. On LinkedIn, you can add a website link in your intro section. If you are using a StoryMap, I would recommend generating a shortlink or using the one created when you click "copy link" after you've published; the links are long and don't look great on a resume. Alternatively, you can embed a Storymap in your own hosted website.
Q: Should I have both a traditional resume and a GIS portfolio?
A: Yes! I would link each together, have a URL shortcut from your resume to your portfolio and have a button on your GIS Portfolio that links to your most recent resume.
A: Yes — it’s best to have both. A traditional resume gives a clear, concise overview of your experience, while a GIS portfolio showcases your projects, technical skills, and real-world work in a way a resume alone cannot. Together, they create a stronger and more complete impression.
A: Short answer, yes. They are very different things. A portfolio tends to be visual whereas a resume should document specific outcomes from a role.
Q: How many projects should a portfolio include?
A: I have a highlighted projects section where I include around 5 projects that I'm proud of. I include a map gallery and web application section of my portfolio for the other projects that I don't want to go in depth on but still want to show.
A: Most GIS portfolios work well with about 3–6 strong projects. You can highlight around five projects you’re most proud of and explain them in more detail, while placing any additional work in a map gallery section so you can still showcase it without going as in-depth.
A: That depends on what you intend to use it for. If you are shopping it around to potential employers, keep it short and focused on 3-5 of your best/most representative projects. If it is for you to curate your work, you can add as much as you want!
Q: What if my work is mostly technical or data management rather than mapping?
A: Visualize a section of the original raw/messy data and the finished clean data/output and talk about what steps you took to get to the finished product. The visual element doesn't always need to be a map
A: That’s completely fine — a GIS portfolio doesn’t have to be map-focused. You can showcase technical workflows, scripts, data management processes, automation, and database work, and even include short videos or GIFs that show a script or process running step by step to demonstrate your impact, even if the final output isn’t a map.
A: Focus on skills and outcomes. Within StoryMaps, you could use the infographic block to showcase stats, for example.
Q: What’s the best platform to host a GIS portfolio?
A: Storymaps and Wix are my two go to beginner platforms. Both have templates, easy to use interfaces, and are free/cheap to maintain.
A: One of the best platforms for a GIS portfolio is ArcGIS StoryMaps, since it makes it very easy to combine text, visuals, web maps, dashboards, Experience Builder apps, and other ArcGIS Online content in a seamless way. You can also use Wix as an alternative — it’s beginner-friendly and offers a simple way to build a clean, well-organized portfolio website.
A: This is dependent upon your web skills. Of course I'm a bit biased toward ArcGIS StoryMaps because it is easy and can handle maps (and I'm on the StoryMaps team), but there are many other options that are free and easy to use. A friend of mine built a beautiful portfolio in Canva!
Q: How can I come up with original project ideas to use in my portfolio?
A: When I was in college, I did a ton of personal projects. I used Living Atlas data from ESRI and made maps of my hometown and favorite trails I loved to hike on. Think of things that you would go to google maps for and how you can make it better. For example, a friend of mine was running a half marathon and instead of looking up the trail on google maps, I made a map that also showed the elevation profile so he knew what the terrain would look like! Integrating your everyday life with public data is a great place to start. You can also recreate other maps you see online (people love to recreate John Nelson maps on LinkedIn if you wanted to join the bandwagon)
A: You can get original project ideas by trying to recreate maps you admire or by exploring topics you personally enjoy. Look for inspiration in parks, cities, environmental issues, transportation, or any dataset that interests you, and build your own version of it. You can also use open data portals to spark ideas and experiment with different GIS tools or workflows to develop unique projects for your portfolio.
A: I no longer maintain a cartography-heavy GIS portfolio, but when I was fresh out of grad school, I would do a lot of projects on my own to recreate maps I liked. (Denali National Park, for example.) I would also use GIS Tutorial workbooks from school and work through the activities; on my portfolio, I simply noted that the map/analysis was a demo.
