This is for in-house comms people whose best work is locked behind an NDA, a legal review or a company policy that says nothing leaves the building. By the end you'll have a portfolio a recruiter can read in five minutes, built from work you're allowed to show. My argument is simple: your confidentiality problem is smaller than you think, and the real obstacle is that most in-house people document outcomes and never document decisions. Recruiters hiring for media and communications jobs in the UK care far more about your judgement than your logos.
Agency people have it easy here. Their work is public by design, with coverage links, award entries and case studies the client has already approved. In-house, the best material is often a crisis you handled quietly, which means the evidence is a story that didn't happen. Hard to frame, but not impossible.
1. Audit what you actually own
Spend an hour listing every project from the last three years. Skip the job description. Write down what you personally decided, drafted, escalated or killed. In-house roles blur ownership badly, and a recruiter will push on exactly that.
You'll know this step has worked when each project has one sentence beginning with "I" that a former boss would sign off.
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2. Sort everything into three piles
Public, shareable with permission, and never leaves the building. Published press releases, bylined pieces, awards and speaking slots go in the first pile. Internal comms plans, stakeholder maps and templates go in the second. Live litigation, anything touching personal data, unreleased financials and named individuals go in the third.
The second pile is bigger than people expect. Ask your head of comms or legal directly. I've seen candidates assume a blanket no for years when nobody had ever been asked. And if you'd rather not ask yet, step 3 gets you most of the way regardless.
3. Anonymise the work, not the thinking
A crisis case study can run to a client-style structure without naming anyone: sector, the trigger, the audience you were protecting, the decision you made, what you'd do differently. "A regulated retailer, a product safety complaint going viral on a Friday afternoon" is specific enough to be credible and vague enough to be safe.
Strip names, dates, figures that identify the business, and screenshots with metadata. Keep the timeline logic and the trade-offs. The trade-offs are the product.
Test it: show it to someone outside your company. If they can guess the employer, strip more.
4. Show the paper trail you're allowed to show
Redacted holding statements, a Q&A framework with the answers blanked, a media list structure without the names, a stakeholder matrix with roles instead of people. Hiring managers read these quickly and can tell whether you built them or inherited them.
It's worked when someone can see your process without learning anything commercially sensitive.
5. Put numbers on the work, carefully
Outcomes beat activity, but you can't always publish revenue or sentiment scores. Use ranges, direction and proportion: "cut inbound complaint volume noticeably within a fortnight" is better than silence, though weaker than a figure. If you do quote a figure from a source, link it.
There's a fair objection here. Recruiters do want hard numbers, and vague claims can read as hiding something. True. Answer it by offering the precise figures verbally at interview, where there's no document to leak, and say so on the page: "detail available in conversation." That signals discipline, which in-house hiring managers want anyway.
6. Package it so it gets read
A short site or a tidy PDF, five to seven pieces, each one a page. Lead with the strongest. Our earlier piece on portfolio websites for non-creatives covers the mechanics, so I won't repeat them. Link it from your CV and your LinkedIn profile, and keep it current: a portfolio last touched in 2023 looks like a decision not to apply.
When you're ready, browse PR and comms roles and tailor which two or three pieces you foreground for each one.
If a step goes wrong
Legal says no to everything. Fine. Build the portfolio from public work: bylines, op-eds, a speaking slot, a volunteer or trustee comms project for a charity, or an unpaid comms review for a small organisation where you can show everything. It isn't second best if it's good.
You can't remember the detail. Reconstruct from your sent folder and calendar before the memory goes entirely, and write the decision log while you still recall why you chose what you chose.
Your work genuinely isn't strong enough yet. Then the portfolio is telling you something useful, and the fix is picking up a visible project inside your current job, ideally one with a public output.
And if your employer's policy forbids even anonymised case studies? Worth asking whether that's a policy you want to keep working under. Elevate lists senior comms roles where portfolio evidence is expected, not frowned on.
