Build an AI portfolio to stand out from polished resumes
With AI making it easy to produce polished resumes, Frank and Ryan Ng argue candidates need an AI portfolio demonstrating real problem-solving. They advise documenting how you frame problems, test and improve AI outputs, and add value beyond what the machine alone can provide.
As employers are flooded with good-looking resumes that reveal little about what candidates can do, Frank Ng and his son Ryan Ng recommend building an AI portfolio of real work to stand out. The retired NASDAQ CEO and his co-author, writing in their column Human Reinvented, argue that such a portfolio shows not only that you can direct the machine, but that you can draw more value from it than your peers.
The Ng’s describe a case in which Mr Ng helped a group of students build their first AI portfolio project. With the head of the library, he defined a real problem: borrowing rates were falling. The students received actual borrowing data and details of the library’s recent marketing campaign, along with time to investigate. The best proposals would go to the school principal, and Mr Ng arranged prizes.
Despite the real-world brief, the students’ proposals were what the Ng’s call polished 7/10s: competent and plausible, but showing little of the students’ own framing, reasoning or understanding. The students had largely handed the information to the machine and presented its reply as their own work. The column warns that work done almost entirely by the machine cannot showcase the student; it only shows what the machine can do.
To build an effective portfolio, the Ng’s advise starting with a real problem that you find yourself. Ask friends, family, schoolmates or colleagues what needs solving. Then use AI to solve it: build a website or app, research a question, or create an agent to automate a task. Crucially, do not settle for AI’s first response, which is often a competent seven out of 10. Test it, break it, improve it.
Document the problem, your decisions, AI’s contribution, your revisions and the result in a website or presentation. Let AI help you build it, but be ready to explain how you did the work yourself. The Ng’s conclude that a portfolio is your chance to show what AI alone cannot provide: the initiative to spot a problem worth solving, and the judgment and effort that turn a competent answer into work worth noticing.