Crafting a Standout Developer Portfolio: From LinkedIn to GitHub

When you commit to learning to code, many people focus on the curriculum they're going to be learning, but what they don't always realize is how important the career development aspect is. To start a new job in your career, you need to know what you're getting into, and that means you need to have a good resume, a polished LinkedIn profile, a compelling GitHub, and other assets that employers look for.

In this article, we'll explore several key strategies you can use to make your LinkedIn stand out, even if you don't have any prior experience as a developer.

Optimizing Your LinkedIn Profile

Craft a Compelling Personal Summary

First, you need to have a good personal summary. A personal summary is really important because it gives the employer insight into who you are. A lot of people think that it's just your tech skills that get the job, and that's not actually true. You've got to be a good culture fit, too, and that's where a personal summary comes in.

A great summary has three parts: the past, present, and future. - Past: What were you doing before you started your journey into software development? - Present: What was that "aha" moment? Why do you love coding? Don't just say, "I love coding." Explain why. For example: "I love coding because I love to solve problems," "I like to build efficient tools," or "I like to make something that my family can use." - Future: What are you looking for in your next role? This is really important for employers to see if you're a good hire for them.

One of the things often seen on resumes, especially from recent graduates, is a summary that says, "I'm looking to obtain a software engineering role where I can learn and grow." That doesn't really offer much to an employer. They want to know why you want to be here.

What an employer wants to see is how the opportunity they have matches up with what you're looking for. Instead, try saying something like: "I'm looking for an open environment with transparency, a lot of pair programming, and collaboration. I'm interested in working on developer tools or consumer-facing applications." That way, the employer knows that what you're looking for aligns with what they have, and it shows that you know what you want.

Showcase Your Projects

As a developer building your experience, you may not have previous professional work to show employers. That's why you use your projects to show them what you have built from scratch. When you build projects from the ground up, such as a capstone from an intensive program, it shows employers that you can take something and have complete ownership of it, which you don't always get in traditional educational settings.

An area where developers can fall short is when talking about their projects and what their contribution was. A lot of the time, you do pair programming, and it's great, but you need to articulate what you brought to the project. Highlighting your main contribution is really key for employers to understand what you did.

The Power of Keywords

Finally, keywords are critically important in your LinkedIn profile as well as your tech resume. Most resumes and LinkedIn profiles are screened for about six to ten seconds, so if you don't have what the recruiter is looking for, they're going to bypass you really quickly.

LinkedIn is also a search engine. If you only have "JavaScript" written in your summary or in one project description and nowhere else, you're not going to pop up on the first or second page of a search. You need to make sure you beef up your profile with all the keywords you can, placed in different areas.

Here are a couple of places to put your keywords: - Your Summary: Especially when you're looking at a job that requires a language you don't have (like Ruby, for instance, if it wasn't part of your curriculum), you should indicate that it's something you either have some familiarity with or are interested in learning. - Your Projects: There is a detailed area in your project descriptions where you can write down what you've done and what technologies you've worked with. - Your Education: This is another place to list relevant skills and technologies. - Your Skills Section: Of course, make sure your skills section has those technologies listed as well.

I always refer to LinkedIn as your digital portfolio; you can put everything in it, and you should. For some situations, for students that have never worked or have any professional experience, we encourage them to put their coding program under their "Experience" to showcase the projects they've done. This highlights their projects a little bit better, especially for individuals who need to beef up their LinkedIn because they don't have much.

One misconception is not putting anything unrelated in there. People want to see that you've worked in an office. If you worked as a research assistant at your school, that is still relevant because it shows you know how to work in a professional environment. So yes, I would definitely think about putting any kind of volunteer work or even helping a friend build a site. If you get paid for it, why not? But pro bono work is always great.

A lot of people are so concerned about not having a previous background in technology, but it's not a must-have. Honestly, we've seen people from non-technical backgrounds, like acting, who didn't have any technical or mathematical studies, go on to work at major tech companies. The reason why is because they got the foundations they needed, studied for their interviews, and rocked the interview process.

Structuring Your One-Page Resume

So, as we mentioned, LinkedIn is like your digital portfolio where you can put everything. I wouldn't say the same thing for resumes. Resumes need to be on one page. When it comes down to the layout of resumes, it is a little bit different in how you approach the same things that you would on LinkedIn. For example, if your summary takes up half a page, there's no room for anything else. We tend to not focus so much on the summary, but the way that we can add your personality into a resume is by talking about your interests. That's something that would be on the bottom.

The recommended way to build out your resume is as follows: 1. Strong Header: Your header needs to have your links for LinkedIn and GitHub, your address, your phone number, and your email. Obviously, it's really important for people to get in touch with you. 2. Tech Skills: These are the keywords we've talked about earlier. Having them outlined by proficiency, such as "Proficient" and "Knowledgeable," is a great way to demonstrate your skills. That way, when an employer is talking to you, they know how much you know about a certain technology. Also, as we mentioned about keywords, if you're looking for a job that requires a technology you don't have experience in, you can put that in as "Interested in." It's something they're going to scan for and think, "Oh, they don't know Ruby, but they are interested in Ruby, so I should still reach out to them." 3. Projects: After your tech skills, you would put your projects. Projects are really important because, again, that's where they see the hands-on work that you've done with coding. 4. Work Experience: Next would come work experience, if you have any. 5. Education: Last would be education.

Beyond the Code: Leveraging GitHub

And of course, a lot of your projects are going to be on GitHub, and that's where people can find the raw code to look at. But there are other things you need to know on GitHub to make yourself stand out.

You need to follow repositories. For example, if you're really interested in data science, you should be looking at people's commits that have that kind of stuff. If you're really interested in learning a technology, you should be looking at that and following it. You can star it; that's one way you can follow it.

Also, a lot of companies put open-source code in there too. You can contribute, you can follow it, you can look at it, you can add to it. So there's a lot to be done with GitHub that's not just putting up your projects or the raw code.

Anyone can do this on their own. They can build their own LinkedIn, their own resume, and their own GitHub. However, the job process and the interviewing process can be really frustrating. It's about more than just the assets; it's about how you use them to tell your story and land the job.