Building a Portfolio

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>> All right, so we're going to get to building and optimizing your portfolio for JavaScript engineers. I need you to also have the checklist pulled up if you don't have it. Now, make sure it's on the repo. This is what it is this is also this is a great opportunity like with these right here, you this is a great opportunity where you can go and you can add these as tickets to a project board for your portfolio.

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Instead of having an on the notion you could just go to do a project board make tickets of these and then add it straight, add it to your portfolio and then follow that flow as you go. Well crafted portfolio is essential for a Javascript engineer or any type of engineer, really, to showcase your skills, your experience, and your projects to potential employers or clients.

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This powerful tool that can help you stand out in competition and land your dream job those that I believe that I've seen it so many times I've seen people with amazing portfolios what my one friend her portfolio was so good that I shared it with a vice president.

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And I was like, I need to ask her first. I message people all over the weekend like to my vice president friend wants your phone number not gonna do that like you're gonna have to wait but I always saw wait till Monday so your portfolio helps a lot of weight right and as I say when it comes to your highlight real being or your like your like basically your highlight sheet being your resume.

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This is your Picasso this is the place where you get to really push in play with like everything like give your all to this. It is a project and a product all in itself. All right which means even if you do not have a bunch of fleshed out projects treating it as a project within itself can be the project this is a great example of the portfolio being the project.

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This is one of my students. She actually, I taught her for a year and she interned with me for about three months. Every aspect of her portfolio is a project. So she taught herself how to make gifts and then she taught, like she decided she's gonna make her mouse into this little devil horns.

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The thing I absolutely loved it I was like you're a nerd so whatever emojis right here her name no she could have this very small blur and for every level of like or she was was a work she's done she has where she can be connected with. And most of this portfolio ended up through her as parts or components from her codepen that she put together.

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Right? So her my role has always been you're above the fold content needs to be eye catching that is for the people in HR, right an HR person. If your website is boring, they're gonna go to the next website. You want them to pause on the website, right?

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People something that a programmer might find annoying is not something that a normal person is gonna find annoying, right? So when she put the gif up there, I was, that's perfect. That people are gonna love it. They're gonna have fun with it. That's how they're gonna see it as fun as they do these now this overlay of colors and it changes into another type emoji from the devil horns to just a point.

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I was like, yes, keep them guessing, keep thinking. Now here is where the meat of the projects come from. User story case studies user stories. When you're doing your projects, this is why you have your brand document, right? When you put your mock-ups and your things like that in there, right?

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So when you're doing those projects and you're in your portfolio, you're able to say, all right, here's the project that I did. So this one, the credit education of a scalable infrastructure. Branding, graphic design, web development. She says each what section it is, read more, I click, she goes she talks about a sector that is in, her challenge, her role, hurt the tools that she used, what she's calling it, the research as you see for her projects like why do I need credit.

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It helped me understand how site users navigate what fuels their browsing purchase decisions arrange meetings with people that fit the target audience as to how the poor credit for their current credit rating affects their lifestyle so she created this entire project out of this and then for her results she has her results and she has how we communicate resources, process, journey map.

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This is where she starts telling her mock ups of how she was going from mobile first to now desktop level and how she architected information. Form first revision community commitment and conclusion, right? That's how you do a project. Like link right on your portfolio. You do not just here's my project that's it.

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You're like, here's my project. Here's the motivation and project yes research I've done for the project here's tools I use for the project. Here is how I start to create. This howls for the process of creating project for his views. Now, here's my project. This is what I've done.

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So that's when I say, hey you need a project page? That's what I'm referring to. So, that creates another page altogether on your website, on your portfolio. Yes sir.
>> Just want to mention Jen Kramer has a free getting started with CSS course where you actually build a portfolio.

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That might be a good place to start. It's a really nicely designed portfolio. And then that question for you from Wagner. If you are more mid level or even senior, what should you showcase in a portfolio?
>> If you're more mid level or senior you should showcase the difference between a junior and a mid level or singing person is impact right?

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So you should showcase.so your projects and links you showcase should be about. The impact, how are you like StackOverflow? Answering questions on their mentoring things of that nature, like where you're volunteering. Those are when I'm looking at a senior or junior, I'm looking at how are they passing information down to other people.

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That's when I'm looking at a person who's Senior MIT. I'm looking at a junior, I'm not expecting a junior to have anything on their portfolio that showcases that they've been giving back to the community? If you're men and senior, I am absolutely expecting like stuff to showcase that you've been giving back to the community or you've been finding ways to like amplify your work to have greater impact beyond just you and that's what because that's where I'm looking for.

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For a mentioned senior person is, impact. I'm looking for, hey, how are you making the tech world tech community, better for people that are left and right at you? All right?
>> Since I'm in this process of hiring engineer, or senior engineers, a lot of times I'll look for something super nerdy, like a blog post that that shows that you've done deep thinking and a part of your craft.

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>> That's what I would say by giving back like a blog post or giving back right? I am flattening the educational curve for someone else. Right?
>> When you talk about like these like super nerdy blockbuster people In the highlighting of revenue seniors like we're gonna be able to select topics usually people do?

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>> Yeah that's a good question I think if it's specifically around front end engineering things cuz like the event loop or you know design systems leading a team components whatever something.
>> I like design his front end I want to talk about design systems wanna talk about accessibility like especially in a viewpoint of like Front are how front end has moved beyond just the front end of the web of the Computer GUI to like hardware things of that nature those are like that's stuff that I'm looking at when it comes to like mid senior.

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Because Front end isn't just front end has, how it is now, right? Or even more like DevOps, right? Justin Kramer, Jonathan Kramer and Schuster, they both used to talk to colleagues of mine they both do a lot of work in or did a lot of work in like what they call DevOps.

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This was DevOps for the front end, and they created this whole little term for this whole community. About people who are, that started with this whole analogy of two front ends going to a bar, and they have absolutely nothing to talk about. Because the UI engineer has nothing in common with the person who does nothing but work on Webpac stuff all day, right?

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And how those two have become a front end and then a middle of front end and how that so that divergence of front end has started to happen. Like things like that. That's that's nerding out. Like that's very nerdy to me, right? Like, okay, I didn't even think about how now front end development has become so big that you can have two front ends or three front ends in a room, and they have absolutely nothing to talk about, because they're doing three different.

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Types of running work on the front end, right? So- Yeah, definitely when you get to those senior level roles, you wanna see something that's not just about a framework. It could be some really nerdy aspect about a framework, but ideally, it's something more about Universal like about the browser browser API's request animation frame something like that where it's you know broadly applicable knowledge payment

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>> API in the browser things like that which is I think Chrome It has a payment API now, and people don't, have yet to see very little writing on it, so. I like how Will's sentence talks about technical communication, the ability to take a topic and distill it into either words or a video or, or just because that shows that you're gonna be able to do that with your teammates.

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>> Yes, that's absolutely, that's a great analogy, yeah, technical communication.