Just Graduated? 8 Tools for Building an Online Portfolio....

If you’re a new college graduate celebrating your awesome achievement, you’re probably also thinking about something besides where to hang your diploma. What job opportunities await you?

It’s not easy to get noticed by employers and find the job of your dreams when you’ve just begun your job-hunting journey. But finding that dream job can be more productive with the help of a digital portfolio.

Together with social networking and recommendations, an online portfolio can be a part of your perfect job-seeking equation. It will work for you even when you’re not actively looking for a job.

Your online portfolio is your introduction: it will advertise and help sell you, will build your online reputation, and will tell headhunters about your professional skills and qualifications. Your dream job might even reach out and find you — but only if your portfolio is top-notch.

Do you need awesome online tools to help you build a portfolio that rocks? Here’s a roundup of a few resources to help with your online portfolio so you can focus on other parts of getting hired:

Carbonmade is one of the best online resources for creating portfolios because it’s so easy to use. Your portfolio will be eye-catching no matter what option you choose: a free option allows you to register up to five projects and upload up to 35 images; a paid option lets you create video and flash projects, too. The paid option will cost you $12 per month.

We all know and use LinkedIn as a professional network to create resumes and showcase our skills and qualifications. But no resume will ever attract as much attention as a portfolio that shows your hard work.

Did you know LinkedIn has a portfolio feature? Use it to tell potential employers about your skills, add high-quality images and creative presentations or interesting videos to show examples of your work.

An huge community with more than a million page views per month, DeviantArt is the perfect chance to showcase your design or art skills — even if you don’t know any HTML. DeviantArt offers a personal domain and unlimited portfolios if you choose the premium package, while a free package will let you upload up to 100 images only.

To use all benefits of a premium member, you need to buy DeviantArt Points: 396 points per month are available for $4.95; a prepaid 12-month membership will cost you $29.95, and prepaid 24-month membership costs $47.95. Free domain names are also available, but if you choose this option you’ll have your portfolio at a subdomain, like yourname.daportfolio.com.

Use Dunked to create your website, choosing a beautiful template and customizing it to your style and taste. Upload images, embed videos, and add audio. Your portfolio will look amazing here: no coding knowledge is required, and you can mix and match all available features during a 10-day free trial. After 10 days, you can choose to sign up for one of their three plans (the cheapest one will cost you $6 per month) or delete your profile.

This is perfect platform for creative people to share their work online. All features are free to use, and creating an account is quick and easy. A variety of templates are available, as well as HTML-based content and a portfolio gallery to inspire you. You can create your resume here, too.

This is one more code-free way to customize your own website: 100 templates, a drag-and-drop editor, and plenty of extras — all these features will help you build a digital portfolio that will highlight your skills and professional qualifications. You can even check out portfolio examples to see what others are doing with Wix.

This platform is mostly used by artists, photographers and designers, but you can use it to design a stunning portfolio to get noticed in any field. Thousands of themes are available to choose from, and all they are optimized for smartphones and tablets. Pages, galleries, videos and blog layouts are available.

This service provides a drag-and-drop layout engine to help you create one-page portfolios. Text, photos, documents, videos are available for you to present your work experience and academic achievements. Get inspired by other users’ portfolios before creating your own. And after you build it, it’s easy to share your portfolio on social media and track its results.

Don’t until after graduation to try one of these tools to create a captivating portfolio. The Internet gives you tons of opportunities to improve your online presence and reputation — it’s your job to seize them.