By JOYCE LAIN KENNEDY

I’ve read a lot lately about the use of Web pages and digital portfolios for job-searching, but a new practice refined at Coe College in Cedar Rapids, Iowa, suggests the electronic self-development profiles have an additional and powerful use as career-management tools.

A portfolio, whether manual or digital, extends your resume to include samples of your work--writing, reports, photographs and videotape of visual achievements.

Regular career review–just as you’d review your stock portfolio on a periodic basis–is a practice I recommend to make sure you’re not drifting downstream.

Until now, most people have processed the review by jotting down thoughts on paper. A better way is to put your work life’s progress into a password-protected digital portfolio.

You’ll get the idea when you see how place-setting Coe College uses the portfolio technology for career planning and development. All incoming students are required to create and maintain a personal digital portfolio, which serves as an easily accessed intellectual archive of students’ undergraduate achievements.

Students benefit in other ways too. The portfolio helps them prepare for the internship or academic practicum that Coe requires of all us students, and advisors and faculty can better assist students because they’re working with a more comprehensive student record.

The Web page requirement is part of a grand design at Coe to help students bridge the world between campus and their future graduate study and careers.

Students will have control over who can access their sites from off campus, whether it’s a prospective employer, graduate school personnel or internship coordinator.

Whether for the student or experienced worker, a digital portfolio, regularly maintained and password-protected, is a high-definition advance in the way you manage your career because your data is so accessible. Manual collections work too, but materials can be cumbersome and easily misplaced.

Los Angeles Times, Nov. 13, 1998