Utah 4 H Horse Portfolio Training

Okay, hi everybody, 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.

From a 4-H perspective,
it is the standard application tool

for all leadership activites.

It leads to national opportunities,

it- we have often contry award 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 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 to your
non 4-H experience,

so if you have anything 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 more specifically are,

project involvement,
4-H activities and experience

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 rubrics.

So if you want to score really high,
you want to put more content in the

sections 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 resume, 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

becasue 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 your 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 your 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 the content as best as 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 your 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 type, 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 score 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 protfolio 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 the 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 just has 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!