Do you want to be known for your data journalism skills but don’t know how or where to start? Finding datasets, cleaning spreadsheets, analysing data and building accurate graphics are quite important skills, so how can you showcase all of these in your CV when applying for a job in the industry? The Interhacktives team has created a five-step guide with City alumni and BBC data journalist Daniel Dunford’s tips on building a strong DDJ portfolio that is likely to impress any employer.
1. Choose your stories wisely
For Daniel, a strong portfolio must include a number of stories that can show any employer you possess a varied range of skills, including creative data viz for storytelling purposes. But don’t overdo this! “I think it’s relatively important to not pick too many. I’d say four or five projects tops”.
2. Think of dimensions
Daniel recommends including stories based on datasets of different dimensions that can show publications how well you can work with datasets of different sizes. “You could have a story that shows you are able to work with very big complicated datasets, and another with simple data but that still tells a very good story”.
3. …and your sourcing
An impressive portfolio should also incorporate “a range in terms of how you get hold of the data”. It could include one project that has open data (such as the United Nations or government spreadsheets), but others where data was obtained from an FoI request or scraped from Twitter.
4. Who’s interested?
Make sure to incorporate several topics when showing the projects you’ve participated in – employers are interested in data journalists that can handle stories of different backgrounds. “It could be a story with local interest alongside a global one, as well as a mix of subjects (sport, politics, health, etc)”.
5. Know who you want to impress
All of the tips above are important, however, Daniel insists it is key to know what we’re aiming for before selecting the skills and the stories we want to show in an interview. “It depends both on what the publication you’re trying to impress is and what you personally want to do – if you or the place you want to work for have particular specialties, then it would make sense to focus the portfolio more around that of course”.
Daniel Dunford graduated from City, University of London in May 2016 after finishing the MA Investigative Journalism. In August 2016 he joined the BBC team as a JTS trainee.
One year later, he participated in the data visualisation team of the multimedia project Is anything left of Mosul? published by BBC and shortlisted as one of the best data visualitation stories by the Data Visualisation Awards jury in 2018.