Building An Online Portfolio Can be Great

Creating an online portfolio can help junior engineers get their start in tech. My first project post graduation was building a portfolio and I made it unique and reflective of me. I was able to engage in conversations about my portfolio in interviews. It can be a fun way to show yourself off!

Building a portfolio can be a great first project for new grads.

• It gives a fun project to help show off you off uniquely and different than a paper resume
• Many job applications have a place to link your resume
• Can give you exposure to deployment
• Junior engineers have little/no work experience in the field so this can be a great conversation in interviews
• Helps improve your online media presence
• It helps show your enthusiasm for being in software engineer.
• Some interviewers enjoy seeing built projects instead of just looking at your code on github
• Tips and examples on creating a great portfolio page

I know this topic might not be for everyone, but I felt that building my portfolio helped me a lot in interviews. I was a bootcamp grad in September 2016 and it took me 5 months of applying and not even getting a chance to interview before I got my first interview. In my first interview the interviewer asked me about my portfolio that I built and I later got the job despite not doing my best on the technical portion. He enjoyed seeing my enthusiasm for coding.

Being in a new field means having little to no work experience so it’s important to build side projects and get involved in hackathons to get as much exposure to code. Why not have one of your projects be a portfolio? It can be anything you want. It should be something fun because it is reflective of you. Think outside of the box and have fun showing them who you are