Your career and income depend on how you approach filling out your portfolio when compiling your resume. And if you’re going to join a freelance exchange or contact website owners directly, it’s better not to try without a solid portfolio of projects. This applies not only to remote workers, but also to offline employees.
Rules that will improve your portfolio:
- Divide your work into categories.
- Include average projects. If the client only sees masterpieces, and you only deliver them occasionally, the end result may be disappointing. In this case, negative feedback is inevitable.
- Update your portfolio every 2 months.
- Show drafts and stages of work on large projects. You can present them in a “before and after” format.
- Explain what problem you solved.
- At the end, attach a short video that tells who you are, your work experience, what you have achieved, and what you have worked on. It can encourage the customer to give you the job.
- In any format and type of portfolio, access to information should be quick. In electronic form, it should be accessible with one click; in paper form, it should be accessible within a couple of pages.
- Do not list your work in chronological order. The employer is interested in how you handle a specific task, not the time it took you.
- Number the pages in your presentations.
Be sure to add a real photo of yourself.
It is better for programmers to publish their portfolios on GitHub. There, you can see the code and inner workings of the system or application you have developed. If you want to show the dynamics on video, you need to create a website or start a YouTube channel.
Actions that will ruin your portfolio:
- Posting raw versions of applications and websites until you have finished working on them.
- Skills that do not match the job you want to apply for. If you plan to become a Java developer, write about what mobile applications or games you have made.