5 Actionable Tips to Make Your GitHub Profile More Impressive |

This article will be talking all about GitHub, and we're going to be walking through some strategies to make your GitHub profile look more impressive to employers. In this article, we'll be walking through over 5+ concrete tips—some are quick and easy, some are a bit more involved—that you can use to spice up that GitHub profile.

Having a polished GitHub profile that's easy to follow and stands out can really help you separate yourself from the field, especially in this job market.

Prove You Can Build

One thing to stress before we dive in is that when reviewing resumés and GitHub profiles, the focus isn't as much on your educational background or which certificates you have. The interest lies in the simple question of: can you build?

This means clear and concrete proof from your GitHub profile that you know how to build things with code. That could be all sorts of things: dashboards, games, Streamlit applications, or just simple visualizations. What's needed is concrete proof that you can do those things. Your job in tailoring your GitHub profile is to make it as easy as possible for an employer to see that proof on first pass. The average employer only spends about 7 seconds looking at a resume, so you need to make an impact as quickly as possible.

Tip 1: Display Private Contributions

We're going to start off with a super quick and easy tip. One thing that is often checked on profiles is activity level. Sometimes, a profile might look inactive, but the reason is that most of the work happens in private repositories. There's a quick and easy way to show that you're active and working on these private repositories without revealing any sensitive data.

Here’s what you can do: 1. Click on your profile icon in the top right corner once you're signed in. 2. Click on Settings. 3. Go down to Contribution & activity. 4. Toggle the button for Include private contributions on my profile.

As you can see, this will add your activity there without revealing any repository or organization information. After a refresh, the profile looks much better.

Tip 2: Utilize Pinned Repositories

The second tip is also quick and easy: make usage of pins on your profile. Often, you may have worked on more than 10+ projects on GitHub but only have one or two that you really want to show off. By default, GitHub kind of selects what repositories to show, and it might not highlight what you want to feature.

You can go ahead and click the Customize your pins button on the top right. From there, you can select the repositories you are most proud of to pin. Once you save the pins, those are what will show up on your profile.

The use case here is to pin whatever you want an employer to see. It just needs to be one or two of your best, well-documented projects.

Tip 3: Create a Profile README

This is probably one of the most important tips: add a profile README to your GitHub. A well-crafted README attached to your profile can tell visitors a bit about you and what you're working on. A great feature to include is a section for open-source contributions, which can link to PRs in major open-source projects.

Note that employers don't spend a lot of time looking at your profile, so if you want to stand out and catch their attention quickly, this README is a great way to do that.

How to Create a Profile README

The steps are as follows: 1. Create a new repository. 2. Name this repository with the exact same name as your GitHub username. You'll notice it's a special repository. 3. Make it public and check the box to Add a README file.

When you create this repository, you'll see a README file that is pre-populated with some commented-out suggestions like: - I’m currently working on ... - I’m looking to collaborate on ...

You can use these as a starting point. Keep it short and sweet; you probably don't even need to use all of them.

Making Your README Better

Let's fill in some details. You want to make this concise, easy to follow, and point people to the most important things on your profile in as few words as possible.

Here is an example:

I am a computer scientist interested in all things Python and data science!

I’m currently working on:

A new startup building an AI-powered companion for social media creators.

I recently built:

A program to automatically download and transcribe your favorite podcasts. Check it out here!

I’m looking to collaborate on:

Interesting new projects and articles. Send me your ideas!

This adds a nice, informative block to your profile.

A few things to call out with this README: - Keep it short and sweet. - Try to make it visually appealing. You can use different emojis or just spread things out a bit more. - Help guide users to other spots on your GitHub profile or other projects you're involved in.

Linking to a specific project is highly recommended. If you have a Streamlit application, a game, or something interactive that employers can see, use this space to link to it. An example with a visual of how the program operates is very effective. Something visual that they can either play around with or see is quite important to link.

Another idea is to link to an interactive API you've created, where they can play around with the endpoints. If you share something interactive, try to go the full extent and let people fully play around with it, as that will prove you know how to code and set up an API.

Tip 4: Complete Your Profile Details

This is a pretty simple one but sometimes overlooked: make sure to actually fill in all the details on your profile. - Profile Picture: Have a clear, centered, and not pixelated profile picture. It's fine to be somewhat casual; the software development industry is typically pretty casual. - Bio and Links: Use your bio and fill in links to your personal website or professional profiles like LinkedIn. - Order: Arrange the links so the most important ones are at the top.

The main thing to avoid is having no image or a pixelated one. Just fill in your profile details and add links if they make sense.

Tip 5: Write Excellent READMEs for Your Repositories

Within your repositories, make sure to have good READMEs. If you're going to pin a repo, don't let it just be an empty repository with nothing there. Try to include more than just a title. If you have an image, use it. If there's something that can make it stand out, do that in your README.

To encapsulate this, you want to cover the what, the how, and the why.

The What: This should make the project stick out right away. For example, for a podcast downloader, the "what" can be a clear title and a GIF showing the program in action.
The How: This is the setup. If an employer is impressed and wants to try it out, the "how" provides detailed instructions to get it running. Use images as much as you can.
The Why: This is often covered in the first statement. For the podcast example, the "why" is that you can search through podcasts for specific topics instead of guessing which episode to listen to.

Add to your READMEs based on this what, why, and how format.

How to Embed a GIF

You might wonder how you can actually embed a GIF. You can use the image embed syntax within Markdown:

![Description for screen readers](./resources/your-gif-name.gif)

The path is what's most important. Typically, you can make a resources folder within the project and reference the files from your README.

So, that final tip: fill in your READMEs, make them pop, and if you're going to pin something, make sure that you have these READMEs filled out. If you pin something and there are no details, even if it's the most impressive code in the world, it can be overwhelming to navigate hundreds of code files with no context.

Recap

To recap the several tips: 1. Turn on anonymous private contributions to spice up your activity graph. 2. Pin the top repositories that you want an employer to see. 3. Add a README to your profile. 4. Make sure you have a nice, clear profile image and fill in your profile details and links. 5. On the repos that you decide to pin, make sure the READMEs are filled out, using images or GIFs to make them stand out.