“Walk us through a piece in your portfolio”

Most media and design interviews open with your own work: “Walk us through a piece in your portfolio.” It feels easy, which is why so many people waste it. The panel is not asking what the piece is; they can see that. They are scoring whether you understood the goal, what you personally did, why you made the choices you made, and whether anything happened as a result. Five parts, in this order, in about two minutes.

1. 1The brief: who asked for it, for which audience, with what goal, budget and deadline. “A nutrition centre in Kismayo wanted mothers from three villages to come for screening; 300 dollars and two weeks.”
2. 2Your role, exactly: planned, filmed, edited, wrote, designed, managed. If others worked on it, name what they did. “We” for the team, “I” for your part.
3. 3Two choices and why: the language, the format, the length, the person you chose to show, the colour, the platform. This is where the panel hears you think.
4. 4The result, with a number: views, reach, shares, coverage, enquiries, attendance, and what the client or editor said.
5. 5What you would change now. One sentence. It shows you review your own work, which every editor and manager wants.

Show it well. Phone at full brightness, files saved offline because office Wi-Fi fails, a printed A4 for designs so three people can look at once, and a 60-second cut of any video, not the full four minutes. Hand the phone to the panel chair and keep talking; do not fall silent while they scroll.