“Talent is capability multiplied by passion. It separates the professional with ten years’ experience from the drone with one year’s experience ten times.”

With the war for talent heating up, those words carry more weight than ever. But an underlying paradox remains. Outstanding candidates employ their passion to develop polished capabilities in their career fields, not in communicating powerful advantages they offer organizations looking for talent.

In this article, I pass along proven methods I’ve used as a career coach for years –techniques you can put to work for your organization. It all comes down to asking candidates to give what you need. I offer a new definition of a “portfolio,” suggest which professions and level of position benefit from submitting this powerful tool, and describe what makes for the best portfolios.

How portfolios can help you find top candidates
Mention “portfolio” and most think of a folder or binder containing examples of creative work difficult to describe in words. This means tying portfolios to artistic, visual fields like art, photography, and graphic design. Let’s think more broadly.

Even the very best résumés only offer brief descriptions of accomplishment. That may be enough to help you select the many candidates you wish to interview. But to fill senior, critical positions you need more detail to see how a candidate’s performance might work for your firm, more about the person behind the résumé. That’s where the newly defined, annotated portfolio comes in.

Portfolios aren’t limited to creative career fields
It’s not just artists who can use portfolios to demonstrate talent. Any professional can employ the concept to show his or her entire range of skills augmented by proofs of leadership, communication, and relationship building. Perhaps the best way to illustrate is with an example.

Consider the public relations professional. To attract the very best, we must go beyond traits (outgoing, energetic, resistant to stress, “a people person”’), beyond the usual skills sets (good oral and writing abilities, familiarity with business IT tools). Those are hygiene factors: what’s needed to meet minimum requirements. Some say the best PR people build, develop, and harness communities to help their companies defend and expand their brands. Why not ask for the proofs you need in an annotated portfolio?

A portfolio limited to collections of articles written and awards received misses the mark. It’s a “tombstone” book proving the author fully qualified for every past job, not necessarily for future employment. It’s doesn’t put the contents in context. It’s not annotated.

A sample to demonstrate the concept
Now look over my shoulder as I examine a powerful PR portfolio. The annotation begins on the first page as an executive summary. That one page tells how the applicant thinks, explaining why she chose the elements I’m about to see. Next is a table of contents to help find just what I’m looking for. Running my finger down the table I see entries like these: “An advocacy piece written to help a trade group,” “A rapid response to an unfair media editorial,” and, “An appeal to selected members of Congress.”

I turn to the second entry. But before I read the response to an unfair editorial, the author provides me with a few very well written paragraphs describing the context, the problems to be solved, why the response reads as it does, and how the outcome benefited the company.

The very format helps every player. As I read, I can jot down questions I’ll use in the interview to get clear picture of how the author’s performance might help us solve our problems. As the candidate puts together the portfolio, she must shift her view from just recounting the past to putting her achievements in context for the future. As the hiring decision maker reads, he’ll reap the very same benefits.

When to ask for an annotated portfolio
This tool helps you fill senior, responsible positions in almost any career field. Few applicants will build a portfolio unless the position you want to fill ranks toward the top. However, many candidates aren’t familiar with portfolios as defined here. Therefore, please make your request as clear as you can.

Format isn’t critical. Portfolios used to be actual books. Many still are and these are easiest to browse. However, the cost of producing them is high, particularly when companies fail to return them to authors. Now, portfolios often appear on DVDs complete with a simple screen to aid navigation.

Content is everything. Therefore, ask for things important to your company. If you are hiring a vice president for manufacturing and your company relies on six sigma, you might ask for examples of how the candidate helped eliminate production defects. You’ll have better results if you ask applicants to cite, for each example, what the problem was, what he or she did to solve the problem, and what the results were.

Portfolios are an excellent way to find talented people
The war for talent is really a drive to increase return on investment. It’s talented people who make, or save, your organization much more than it costs to hire and retain them. Asking for an annotated portfolio is a win-win way to find them. You get much better tool to screen for only the best applicants. They, in turn, are motivated to apply to a company that’s focused on the excellence they are so proud of.