A guide to the programmer's web portfolio.
A portfolio is more than just your standard resume. It serves as a method of proving your abilities instead of just stating them.
- Highlight your work and projects
- Prove competency in your skill set
- Give insight to your personality/personal style
- A great way to stand out from the competition
By making a website portfolio, you will be showing your skill in the projects you create as well as the building of the site.
- About Me
- Projects and Descriptions
- Contact Me and Social Media
This section can be the landing page of your site, and should include your name, photo, and a short blurb about yourself. Here you want to include some brief details about who you are, what kind of work/projects you have done, and where you hope to go in your career. This is also where you can mention your education. This can be roughly 1 to 2 good size paragraphs. Enough to keep the audience/recruiters interested, but not so long that they decide to skip.
This About Me blurb can also be used for any other professional online profiles like LinkedIn, Handshake, etc. It can also be reused in cover letters.
This content will take up the majority of your portfolio site.
Here you want to showcase your best work, even if unfinished. It is also good to include recent work to show recruiters that you are actively learning. Since we are still students, we can include projects from class, hackathons, and extracuricculars alongside any strictly personal projects.
Each project should have its own title, short description, link to code (if on GitHub), and photos/videos/gif of the project in action. If you do link to GitHub, make sure each project there has a README, a project description and some good commit messages.
Project descriptions can include the purpose of the project, its inspirations, and any challenges/solutions encountered during development. Once again, your can stick to 1-2 paragraphs for the descriptions, just be sure to keep thing consistent between each project.
The more captivating as possible to get your audience excited about your work, so don't be afraid to boast and make your proects look as impressive as possible. Keep in mind that your audience may not be technically inclined, so explain things in simple laymens terms when possible.
Impressed employers will want to know how they can get in touch with job offers.
Here you want to link to several of your social media and contach channels
- GitHub
- Itch.io
- ...And many more
If you want to get extra fancy, you can include a contact form built into your site.
- If you have a lot of projects, pick from those that fit the job roles you want
- Make your site Web and Mobile friendly
- Minimize the user interface
- If front end is not your thing, don't be afraid to use a template
Keep your domain name simple and sweet, there's no need to overthink here. Using your own name is a great choice. Stick to .com, .me, .dev, or .io for your domain
https://www.bestcomputerscienceschools.net/how-to-create-a-portfolio-for-tech-jobs/ https://levelup.gitconnected.com/build-a-software-developer-portfolio-website-in-5-days-de3f86d1efee https://www.springboard.com/blog/careersmithing/programmer-portfolio/