Introduction

It’s time to build your portfolio! But why? It can be argued that you can get a job without one. And it’s true. Many organisations don’t look at portfolios when hiring. So why bother? Let’s discuss a few reasons.

You want to stand out. It’s a highly competitive world out there. The fight to get through the tech industry job without any experience is tough. So you want to stack the deck in your favour by doing all you can to stand out. Your portfolio will convey an image of you. It will show that you care, that you’re organised, that you have a plan for your learning. It will show your design skills. Either you want it or not, you have a brand, everyone does. And a portfolio will make your brand stronger.

It pushes you. I’d even go as far as saying that you should build a portfolio before building any projects. That’s because it sets your vision. The vision of a full portfolio in a year time prevents you from procrastinating. It makes you get out of bed to code and put in the work. It keeps bugging you in the back of your mind: “My portfolio is empty, I have to keep going”.

It will also prevent you from quitting. No matter how many rejections you get, you know that if you keep building, eventually your portfolio will be so impressive that YOU WILL GET NOTICED. Imagine your prospective employer looking at your portfolio with projects covering dozens of different technologies? “We gotta check her out!”, they’ll think.

It's a project in itself: Building a portfolio is … PART OF YOUR PORTFOLIO! It will be part of your practice as a developer. You’ll have to choose a model, design it, look after the front-end details, put yourself in the viewer’s shoes, think of what to have in it, it’s great practice all-around.

You’ll have to choose which technology to use: WordPress? HTML/CSS? Vanilla JS? A front-end framework? Choosing technologies is part of a developers job. And you get to practice that too. But enough talking about it, let’s do it!