Get Ahead of Your Competition

Do I need a portfolio? 🤔

Hey, fellow tech enthusiasts! This week, we're focusing on building a knockout portfolio to showcase your skills and land that dream job. Let's dive in! 🏊‍♂️

Why Create a Portfolio? 🎨

Portfolios are not strictly necessary. But, they are an opportunity to show off your skills and personality. Portfolios can come in various shapes and sizes, but many follow a similar pattern:

• A personal website 💻

• A todo list 📋

• A clone of a popular app 📱

Asleep yet? Yeah… me too. These projects are fine(ish), but they're what everyone else has. Employers (and everyone else) should learn more about you and your skills from your portfolio.

Cool story bro, what should I put in my portfolio? 🌟

Remember, your portfolio should be an extension of you. Employers are looking for engineers who are creative, care about UX and can solve real problems. Tick these boxes in your portfolio and you are onto a winner.

Try these on for size.

Problem-solving projects 🔧

When I started programming, I kept googling the same things over and over again. So, built a small app called "Linky" to save code snippets I often forgot. It was simple but saved me having to open Google every two minutes.

I built a simple UI, added the ability to search and filter and viola - I had solved a problem.

I hacked this together in a few hours, but it proved a great talking point in numerous interviews.

Learning Logs 📚

Document your learning journey by writing detailed notes on the topics you've studied. Commit them to a repo, and you'll have proof that you know your stuff.

This also serves as an awesome tool when imposter syndrome kicks in. Looking back and seeing how far you have came is a wonderful motivator.

Blog posts and articles 🖊️

Publish your work. A repo is the starting point. But if you want to go further chuck all that content into a blog or publish your notes as a series articles online.

This will help you create credibility, establish an online presence and writing about a topic is a great way to figure out if you actually understand it.

Too much work? Maybe, but I have had had numerous job offers from my blog and portfolio over the years, so it’s absolutely worth the effort.

Your portfolio is everything you do! 💯

If you haven’t already figured it out, absolutely everything you do is your portfolio. I cannot stress this enough. Don't be afraid to commit even imperfect code.

Employers want the whole picture, not just cherry-picked pieces, which let’s be honest - are usually just spoon fed code from some tutorial anyway.

If you commit everything into a repo you’ll have your proof you know your stuff, care comfortable with git. After going through this process you will without doubt improve your technical writing, which will make writing documentation at your job a breeze.

Personal site - yay or nay? 🏡

Again a personal site isn't strictly necessary, but it's a fantastic addition. However, don’t just clone some template, build out your own, inject your personality into the look and feel of your site. Hook up some contact forms and add your socials.

Your site is your virtual business card and the start of your networking journey - more on networking in a future issue.

Tips for creating a personal site 🌐

• Use platforms like GitHub Pages, Vercel or Netlify to get started

• Include your work history, projects, articles and contact information

• Make it visually appealing by using a clean design and vibrant colours.

I recently gave my site a new look. Check it out and let me know what you think!

Now it’s your turn, hit reply and link me to your personal site, and I'll give you honest feedback.

Happy coding! 🎉