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Andrew Baisden
Andrew Baisden

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Why having a portfolio website is not necessary for getting hired in 2021

Many years ago having a portfolio website used to be essential for finding work. In my opinion this is no longer the case and this is the reason why. Having a GitHub account is significantly more important these days. Every company expects you to have a GitHub and experience using GIT and version control. These have become the standards for programming now. On GitHub you can showcase your projects and I would argue that this is more important than having a portfolio website.

GitHub is required

When you consider that GitHub is the preferred way to view a candidates work, a portfolio website might seem much less relevant. In fact I'm sure that many developers choose to use an external link that goes to their GitHub profile anyway. Let's not forget that GitHub have also introduced profile README pages for everyone so you could essentially use that as your portfolio page.

The significance of blogging

Blogs give people a better insight into your personality and skills and I believe that it is even more relevant at the moment. In terms of updates, generally people choose to be more active with their blogging compared to a portfolio website which might not get updated as regularly. So if you wanted to see a developers latest work or thoughts then it is better to just read their blog.

Social Media's importance

Social Media is a great way to show what you are doing and working on and it can also be a way to gauge culture fit as you can see what a persons interests are. Having a strong social media presence showed how good I was at self learning and it definitely helped me to get hired.

Using a Hybrid model

Don't get me wrong having a portfolio website can still be useful. It is still one of the best ways to find you in searches and that makes it super simple to get in touch. However I feel like a hybrid model that integrates a few different platforms could be a good solution. So essentially using your portfolio website like a portal to your other profiles basically like linktree or carrd while integrating different platforms.

You could use the GitHub API and the API for a blog website to display all of the content on your portfolio without having to create a custom solution from scratch. And if you could find a way to integrate your social media accounts into this system then you could have a great portal for showcasing all of your accounts and the content that you have for them.

Final Thoughts

I really hope that you enjoyed reading this article and learned something from it. As a content creator and technical writer I am passionate about sharing my knowledge and helping other people reach their goals. Let's connect across social media you can find all of my social media profiles and blogs on linktree.

Peace ✌️

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