GirishA developer portfolio is your calling card to immediately create an impression of your skills and demonstrate your experience. While you can verbally communicate your accomplishments and skills, a portfolio provides a tool to demonstrate your skills, especially if you are applying for entry-level developer jobs.
If you are still determining what to include in your portfolio, this article can help. A developer portfolio is an online website or a web page that lists your projects, usually the most important ones if you are an experienced developer or the tasks you have practiced if you are a fresher.
Here are some simple tips for populating your developer portfolio correctly.
1.Bio/about section
People must know that you must stay moderate with every bit of detail. It is enough to provide an email address as a contact point. We advise against including a phone number, as making it public on the Internet is a privacy issue. Include a bit of information about your education, experience, and skills. The goal is to provide enough information for prospective clients to know about your job profile and background before they go through your projects. The bio section makes you more personable and easily connect with recruiters and clients.
2.Relevant experience
The next inclusion in your developer portfolio should be the projects you have worked on. While creating this section, remember that you want to display projects you would like to work on again. Portraying relevant experience sets the anticipation of the recruiters, and they are more likely to give you projects that best match your skills and experience.
For instance, if you are a Python developer but your recent projects were frontend development projects, and you want to land a job as a Python developer, you must emphasize Python-related projects. It is essential to include the projects you are interested in working on in the future because it will indicate to the employers the type of projects you want to work on.
To strengthen your experience section, you can include testimonials from previous clients and employers.
3.Documented source code
What makes a developer portfolio different from other portfolios is documented source code. While your projects provide an overview of the kind of application or website you build, source code quality entices employers.
When you share your projects, such as links to your repositories on GitHub, ensure you provide context documentation so people can understand what the project is about and how the code works.
The industry practice to document source code is to include a readme.md file with your project. In this file, you can include all the source code-related documentation and instructions on using your project. This is beneficial for employers and anyone who wants to use your project or its code.
4.Relevant skills
Another essential section to include in your developer portfolio is the skills section. Here, you must include the relevant keywords. You can include as many skills as you have, but try to incorporate those skills that associate with the profile you want to work for. You can gain skills from several sources-online, courses, volunteer work, personal projects, and past work projects; there is no wrong way to achieve a skill.
For example, if you are a frontend developer and have built a clone website, it is essential to include what technologies and skills are utilized to achieve the goal. Tell how you implemented your website’s CRUD (Create-Read-Update-Delete) operations and how you used API services to fetch data from other sources. These details are essential to emphasize and highlight your skills and present you as a worthwhile candidate.
If you are a beginner, go through the job descriptions of the developer jobs that interest you. Take essential keywords from the job descriptions and include them in your skills section.
5.Downloadable resume
Finally, a downloadable resume makes it easier for potential employers to include you in the candidate list. Many HR managers still prefer hardcopy resumes from candidates. Make sure your resume is easy to find on your portfolio website and print-friendly. Include your updated resume in PDF and make it easy to download by providing a link on every page of your online portfolio.
Conclusion
Your online portfolio is another form of resume for employers and clients to learn about you. It is essential to demonstrate your skills by providing an overview of the projects and companies you were involved with. This will give a proper context of challenges you faced and solutions you implemented to resolve them. Do not use premade themes; you are a developer, which is why your online portfolio must be built from scratch.
Talent500 is a remote team-building platform for hiring the best developers. Fast-growing start-ups and Fortune 500 companies trust us. Sign up here to discover career-redefining job opportunities.
Neel Vithlani
Afreen Khalfe
Add comment