Utah 4 H Horse Portfolio Training

okay hi everybody thank you so much for

watching this 4 portfolio training my

name is Kelsey Romney I'm from the state

4 office and I'm excited to be here

tonight with Jesse and Megan uh we're

going to talk a little bit about what

the 4 portfolio is and how it applies to

you in the 4 horse program so first of

all the 4 portfolio is a combination of

a resume and a cover letter and the

reason that we do 4 portfolios is for a

number of reasons but from a 4

perspective it is the standard

application tool for all leadership

activities it leads to National

opportunities it we have often County

Awards nights and portfolio contests we

have this is the first application that

you need to complete in order to become

a for state ambassador and we have the

state for each portfolio contest as well

from a practical application for each

portfolios are teaching you how to write

a resume and cover letter which are

going to be extremely useful for your

future The Things Are most important for

you that this will apply to is the job

applications college applications

scholarship applications and Leadership

positions Beyond 4 so as you can see

here with these graphs it's really

important to see that 4ers are already

reporting that they will use this tool

for their future 98% that they reported

that they will use their for portfolio

to apply for jobs 96% said that they'll

use these skills to apply for

scholarships 81% said that they'll use

these skills to apply for leadership

positions and 93% said that they will

use these skills to apply for college so

we're hoping that what you're learning

today is going to be extremely useful

for you moving

forward okay so let's talk a little bit

about what the 4 portfolio actually is

and the first part is we're going to

kind of work in Reverse we're going to

talk about the 4 resume first the resum

is a cumulative summary of your

experience in 4 and your background so

just like you would tailor a real resume

to whatever job you're applying for the

4 resume is should be tailored to your 4

experience most of the whole content of

the resume should be all about 4 there's

one portion that we'll talk about on the

rubrics later one portion is designated

for your non-for experience so if you

have anything really exciting that you

want to throw into that section that's

great but for the most part It's All 4

stuff um the sections that we can talk

about a little bit more specifically are

project involvement for each activities

and experiences for each Awards and

recognition for each leadership and for

each community service it's important to

notice that each one of these sections

are actually worth different amounts so

they're weighted differently on your

resume or on your rubric so if you want

to score really high you want to put

more content in the sections that are uh

have more points associated with them

and then each year you'll want to update

your information and maintain Ain the

most important pieces in the resume

while maybe dropping some of the things

that are less important to you um like

we said at the beginning this is

cumulative so you want to make this

represent your whole experience just on

the two-page

maximum

okay here are some sample resumés that

we wanted to share with you the

important part to notice is that you're

welcome to use any template you can find

or come up with your own we don't expect

there to be a perfect standard of what

they all look like it should look like

you professionally on a piece of paper

if you need help if you're not quite so

graphically inclined then go ahead and

check out any resumé rubric or template

I should say that you can find in Google

in uh on word on all different platforms

there's a lot of of resumé templates out

there and we have a couple that we can

share with you as well we'll drop it in

the description on this video um there

are a few templates on Google Docs that

you can click on and start filling out

your forage experience just make sure to

make it your own change the colors

change the font change the content all

those things so that it displays your

experience these examples right here I

hope you can see there's some major

differences in the formatting some of

them use more design some of them use

different colors keep that in mind as

you make your own

resume okay now let's talk a little bit

more about the cover letter so the cover

letter actually is the first part that

an employer would read read when they're

when you're applying for a job and the

cover letter should be one page long

there's a standard format for a cover

letter so if you haven't seen that or

you aren't familiar with that make sure

that you notice what that is before you

start writing and it should be a

narrative to accompany your resume so if

you think about the resume as a bunch of

bricks that you're laying about your

experience the cover letter is kind of

the cement that holds it all together so

you want to be sure to explain things

that are not already listed in your

resume you want to talk about the skills

that you've acquired the experiences

you've had those types of things it's

your chance to explain what you've

listed on your

resume so the other part of the the

cover letter is that just like the

resume it should be tailored to the

application that you're applying for in

4 we make this really easy because we

list the objectives that we want you to

State I'll show you these objectives

right here for the horse project so it

make it really easy for the judges and

specifically address each one of these

different objectives um as you can see

there's four of them I would recommend

writing four paragraphs each paragraph

addressing each objective so it's very

simple for them to read and look at from

a real world application when you go to

apply for a job it's a little bit more

difficult because they often don't list

the objectives they're looking for in a

candidate so it's up to you to read the

job responsibilities and sift out those

objectives and sift out which ones

you're going to address but we want you

to learn those skills here in 4 and

practice um how to clearly communicate

how your experience matches what those

employers are looking for so that's what

we're trying uh to help you learn by

writing a cover

letter okay here's a cover letter

example and you can see the formatting

here this way as well some important

tips to keep in mind when you're writing

cover letter is that you want to

maintain a professional language so

often people will use this to uh write

kind of their for each story or maybe

write it as uh it would sound like as a

public speech and that's a different

type of language so if you're just

starting out uh do your best get help

and always have someone review what you

have written but if this is maybe your

second or third or fourth time writing a

cover letter make sure that you're

elevating that content as best you can

to summarize it into really professional

language um you don't need to be miles

and miles long this is on the long side

this example that I'm showing you here

this is a longer cover letter so just

keep that in mind you have a onepage

limit when you write the cover letter

for these

contests and then um also just make sure

that you include your signature at the

bottom if it's a digital submission

which all of our 4 contests probably are

make sure that you check with your

contest um but if it's a digital

submission you can use a digital

signature so don't worry about having to

print out sign your document and

re-upload it I know that can be kind of

a headache but a digital signature is

acceptable and then like I said before

just make sure that you have someone

else review it always always always no

matter what you are applying for have

someone review your cover letter because

more the chances are high that you've

made at least one error whether it's

just a typo or a grammatical error or

anything make sure you have someone

review the content this is your chance

to put your best foot forward in any

scenario so whether you're applying for

a 4 contest or you're applying for a job

or all those other opportunities that we

talked about before make sure that

you're making the best impression you

can and this is your chance to do so so

keep that in mind when you're writing

your cover

letter okay I want to just talk to you

quickly about the rubrics that we have

so both the resume and the cover letter

are out of a 100 points total if you

receive a blue ribbon in total on both

documents combined that means that

whoever scored the your portfolio

whatever judge looked at your portfolio

would interview you for a position so

that's the real world application for

this and that's how you know you are on

the right track um if you do a red you

probably just forgot a section or you

just need a little bit more help on some

some so just keep working at it and if

you receive a white that's okay it it

just helps you set goals for the future

and see helps you see where you can

improve as our 4 modotto goes of course

we're all about making the best better

so whether e you're the best in the in

the class or maybe you need a lot of

improvement everyone should be receiving

feedback especially if you enter the

state portfolio contest um but everyone

will be receiving feedback from the

judges on how you can do better so just

keep that in mind as

well and that's the same thing for the

uh rubric for the cover letter so now I

just want to show you the link to this

is the link to our portfolio page and

this is what that page looks like on our

home screen on Utah for.org so you can

see

that we have this right here this is

under more opportunities so if you go to

our homepage on Utah 4 and then you

scroll all the way to the bottom I'll

show you right now scroll all the way to

the bottom click more opportunities and

portfolio that's the fastest way to get

to this page and this has just more

information for you if you need to read

more about the fine print if you need

more examples we have examples down here

we have have a guide book all sorts of

things that can help you and the rubrics

so you can check those out the other

important piece is the cover letter

objectives so for you who are in the

horse project you can click right here

and it will show you these objectives

again so you can access access those at

any time and then if you're entering any

other 4 portfolio contests just know

that these are all right here and the

objectives are unique for each contest

so you want to make sure that you are

looking those up every time time you

enter for each

contest for each portfolio

contest

okay okay that's our page and um I just

want to say thank you so much for

watching this again and if you have any

questions feel free to contact me or

Jesse or Megan and we would be happy to

help you out thanks