
Quite a number of my clients have "portfolio careers", even if they don't know of the term. Indeed, as a professional who has accumulated experience in different professions and now have the flexibility of pursuing the projects most intersting to me, it's a term that helps me to understand the context of my career explorations.
Randall S. Hansen, Ph.D. says that the term was formed in large part by Charles Hardy in the book
I am somewhat biased as I have just written a book on portfolio careers, “And What Do You Do?: 10 Steps to Creating a Portfolio Career”, A&C Black. What my co-author, Katie Ledger and I have found from interviewing a large selection of portfolio workers is that hardly any would even consider returning to what I call a single track career. They actually report feeling more secure in a recession as they are not reliant on only one job. Attitudes towards this growing phenomenon amongst employers are proving fascinating. A recent UK national report says that our concepts of work and employment are going to have to change with organisations relying more on a small core workforce supplemented by an army of temporary or project workers. Portfolio workers typically are self motivated, self starters and reliable. They have to be as they will not survive unless they are excellent time managers and organisers. They will be increasingly attractive as employees. We are just beginning a programme of interviewing a wide range of employers to check out their attitudes to this growing group of workers. We reckon that there are already over a million of us. Yes – we are portfolio workers too! Follow our project on www.portfoliocareers.net