Working for Yourself
What’s a Portfolio Career and Should You be Building One?
Welcome to a career of variation, experimentation and staying relevant
A year ago I had an idea to call my way of working a ‘Patchwork Career’ — I thought I was genius. It turns out that there’s already a name for this kind of work — the Portfolio Career. So let’s use that (because to be honest, it’s better).
What’s a Portfolio Career?
Gone are the days when you leave school and get a job in a company that you spend the rest of your life in.
Hell, these days people don’t even spend their entire working lives in one field, let alone one company.
It used to be simple. You’d start off on the lowest rung of the corporate ladder and work your way up, over forty odd years, to somewhere considerably closer to the top. Or maybe you wouldn’t even get that far but at least you had a reliable, steady job that you could count on.
You can still do that. If you like.
But a portfolio career is essentially the exact opposite:
- It’s a way of working that can incorporate multiple jobs across different fields.
