How to construct and build the most beautiful projects for your portfolio in order to get hired
If you desire to apply for a job as a software developer, coming up with an outstanding portfolio should be one of your main priorities and concerns.
Even though an engaging résumé is absolutely important for a job application process and will be the first thing that employers will glance through, however, your portfolio will be your secret weapon to stand out and show the complexity of the projects you have successfully worked on and achieved.
Irrespective of this, however, even if you have built some really important and complex projects, if you can’t write, present, and show them in a way that will get the employer’s attention, sadly, all your efforts will likely be in vain.
Simply put, if your portfolio looks far from good, you won’t look good in the eyes of a target employer.
I strongly believe having a strong portfolio can have a major impact and greatly improve the chances of landing a first job dream job.
Specifically, this is important if you want to apply and get employed as a front-end or full-stack web developer. First and foremost, your individual HTML & CSS skills are important, but you are ultimately required to build great UI/UX designs.
In a typical job, there will most likely be a designer in your team that will take care of designing the UI/UX. But however, you will really need to show your expertise to build beautiful products based on the specs that a designer may share with you.
Considering all these, how do you do all these if you are clueless and don’t have a designer to help you with your portfolio?
Here is the revealed and not-so-secret-anymore hack that we ask you to deploy!
The Hack is simple: Build a few fully-specified projects using someone else’s designs
If you desire that your portfolio stands out, building a few beautiful-looking front-end projects that communicate your creativity and attention to details and love for great UI/UX will greatly do you good.
For more clarity, you can go ahead and copy any website that you like (such as Pinterest) for inspiration. However, sometimes, it will cause a much better impression if you build something beautiful and non-generic that not many people know about.
If confused in any way, a productive approach would be to visit dribbble.com and find few concept websites that you can get your hands on and build. Presently, many designers take the time and effort to reimagine how certain websites would look like if they were to start all over and build them from scratch. However, those designs often don’t get implemented and showcased. But, fortunately, here is where you come in: you just have to pick one and build it from scratch…nothing more.
