Utah 4 H Horse Portfolio Training

Kelsey Romney: Okay, Hi everbody,
thank you so much for

watching this 4-H portfolio training, my

name is Kelsey Romney,
I'm from the state

4-H office, and I'm excited to be here,

tonight with Jesse and Megan, we're

gonna talk a little bit about what

the 4-H portfolio is, and how it applies to

you in the 4-H horse program. So first of

all the 4-H portfolio is a combination of

a resume and a cover letter and, the

reason that we do 4-H portfolios is for a

number of reasons, but from a 4-H

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 4-H state ambassador, and we have the

state 4-H portfolio contest as well.

From a practical application 4-H

portfolios are teaching you how to write

a resume and cover letter which are

going to be extremely
useful for your future.

The things that are most important for

you that this will apply to is, the job

applications, college applications,

scholarship applications, and Leadership

positions Beyond 4-H.
So as you can see

here with these graphs it's really

important to see
that 4-H ers are already

reporting that they will use this tool

for their future. 98% that they reported

that they will use their 4-H 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-H portfolio actually is.

The first part is we're gonna

kind of work in reverse,
we're going to

talk about the 4-H resume first.

The resume is a cumulative
summary of your

experience in 4-H and your background, so

just like you would tailor a real resume

to whatever job you're applying for the

4-H resume should
be tailored to your 4-H

experience. Most of the
whole content of

the resume should be all about 4-H.

One portion that we'll talk about on the

rubrics later. One portion is designated

for your non 4-H 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-H suff.

The sections that we can talk

about a little bit more specifically are

project involvement, 4-H activities

and experiences, 4-H awards and

recognition, 4-H leadership and

4-H 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.

Then each year you'll want to update

your information and maintain the

most important pieces in the resume

while maybe dropping
some of the things

that are less important to you.

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 4-H 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 when they're

when you're applying for a job. 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. 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

cover letter is that just like the

resume it should be tailored to the

application that you're applying for in

4-H 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 make it really easy for the judges and

specifically address each one of these

different objectives. 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. We want you

to learn those skills here in 4-H, and

practice how to
clearly communicate.

how your experience
matches what those

employers are looking for.
So that's what

we're trying 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 write

kind of their 4-H story or maybe

write it as it would sound like as a

public speech, and that's a different

type of language. So if you're just

starting out, do your best, get help

and always have someone
review what you

have written. 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.

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 one page

limit when you write the cover letter

for these contests.

Then also just make sure

that you include your signature at the

bottom, if it's a digital submission

which all of our
4-H contests probably are

make sure that you check
with your contest.

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. 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

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-H 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.

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 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. If you do a red you

probably just forgot a section or you

just need a little bit more help on

something, so just keep
working at it and if

you receive a white, that's okay, it

just helps you set goals for the future,

and see helps you see where you can

improve. As our 4-H modotto
goes of course,

we're all about making the best better,

so, whether you're the best in

the class, or maybe you need a lot of

improvement everyone should be receiving

feedback. Especially if you enter the

state portfolio contest. But everyone

will be receiving feedback from the

judges on how you can do better so just

keep that in mind as well.

That's the same thing for the

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 Utah4-H.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-H, 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. 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 a guidebook, 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 those at

any time and then if you're entering any

other 4-H 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 a 4-H contest.

4-H 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!