Developer portfolio: things you should consider

In the current times, a digital portfolio is a must-have for anyone looking to work as a software developer. Regardless of whether you’re a front-end or backend developer, you need to have a portfolio to show that you have the skills you put on your CV.

Not only is it for showcasing your skills but, it also shows that you are putting in the extra effort, which sets you apart from others. So in this article, we’ll go over 5 things that you should consider when you’re creating your portfolio.

Keep it simple

First thing, keep it simple. Although a portfolio website may seem like the perfect opportunity to showcase ALL your skills, you don’t want to complicate things. The last thing you would want is someone to open your website and not even get to see that one specific project you’re most proud of because there are many other things in the way.

So try to select a few projects that would describe your skillset in the best way possible. If you’re a person who knows more than one programming language, you could consider selecting at least one or two projects for each. Or if that’s not the case, select based on the complexity of the projects.

Decide your target industry 💻

It is really important you create your portfolio based on the industry you want to work in. There are a lot of pathways you could follow as a software developer, and depending on where you want to go, your portfolio should be inline. Now, this is not a hard rule, but any hiring manager would most likely spend more time on your portfolio if it is relevant to their field.

And it gives you the opportunity to have a relevant discussion about your projects with the interviewer if they ask you to talk about your projects.

Add project documentation 📎

This is another one of my favorites and there are not a lot of people doing it. We all know good software needs to have good documentation, and by creating documentation for your projects it not only gives you the chance to showcase your documentation skills, but it also gives you the opportunity to describe your thought process and how you approach certain challenges.

The documentation doesn’t have to be pages and pages, but just enough to catch the eye of the person reviewing your portfolio.

Git repository 🏪

If you don’t already use git or any version control system, you need to get on that as soon as you can. Knowing how to use git is a fundamental part of being a developer, and that does not mean you have to be an expert.

But that’s not what this point is about. Creating projects is not enough, you need to be able to share your code and that’s where GitHub comes in. Create repositories for your projects and push all your code there. That way anyone can have a look.

Deploy your projects 🚀

Finally, having created your projects, you need to share the final product. There are a lot of free services you can use to do this. They do have their limitations though. Two of my most favorites are Heroku and Netlify. You can deploy full-stack or backend applications on Heroku and also deploy your front-end applications on Netlify.

To conclude this, I would like to thank you for taking the time to read through this article and I hope you’ve found it helpful and good luck creating your portfolio.