Do I NEED a personal website/portfolio?

I maintain a website (which is mostly a blog plus landing page) after being convinced by reading Guzey's Why You Should Start a Blog Right Now. It is surprising how much better I understand topics once I've gone through the thinking process of writing a post. If someone else appreciates them (or contracts me on their basis), that is simply a bonus.

I use hugo for the blog, as it allows you to write without worrying about design too much, and the minimalist landing page is simply HTML and CSS.

Hi, I built my website to showcase my personal and professional projects, as a web developer I present some of my repositories from github and also the post from dev.to. I like the idea of having a portfolio where you showcase all the things your have done, almost like a link tree. baraus.dev

In my opinion, having a portfolio site, although not necessary definitely helps. It can be a great differentiator between you and similar candidates, which can be equally skilled or experienced but don't have one.

Although I didn't create my portfolio site, I did start writing my own blog (vojtechruzicka.com/) a few years ago. Arguably, this is much more powerful than a portfolio site (still, you can have both) as it does not show only your skills but also you enthusiasm and interest in the craft, which can be very important for potential employers. When looking for a candidate, it can be more important what's one's potential to growth rather than current skills. Actively blogging shows your passion, desire to learn, interest in the community, and in technology. A very small percentage of devs do blog, so it can be a very good advantage over other similar candidates. The biggest advantage, in my opinion, is how much you can learn through blogging. Every time I need to learn something new I write a post about it. It helps you solidify your understanding much better than just reading tutorials as you need a much deeper understanding of the topic to write about it. Later, you can go back to your own articles as a personal knowledge base or notes. This is a great source of learning as usually in your day to day job you get to interact with the same limited set of tools and technologies and blogging gives you an opportunity to learn outside of this bubble while providing some additional value. You'll get noticed more because of your blog/portfolio and you can get some interesting opportunities, new friends, and active engagement in the community. Starting was definitely one of my best career moves, I only wish I had started earlier :) Just remember, you don't need to have deep expertise on the topic, there are a lot of junior devs, which will find useful even entry-level topics. Hope this helps :)

You don't have to but

1. if your area is the web (or close to the web) I think it's a matter of pride to have at least one up and running personal website!
2. we're often asked for a website in account profile info, so yes it can definitely be an advertisement

Keep it simple!
My personal site: offirmo.net

Other good read: vanschneider.com/a-love-letter-to-...

Website to Learn Python, Machine Learning, Data Science and Web development.
bit.ly/codeperfectplus

Hey, It's good to have portfolio website. Check Mine.
bit.ly/codeperfectplus

+1 on this. Well done, Jure, and congrats! I just hired a fresh-from-bootcamp coder myself, mostly on the basis of the strength of the portfolio site that they took the intiative to put together. And you're exactly right about "giving the interviewer a chance to talk about the decisions I made while making my website" - that's mostly what we talked about during our early interview, and it gave me a chance to see what this candidate could do.

Oh! Also also, if you have a personal/portfolio website, that gives you more control and advantage in mid-level screening interviews (after you make it through the basic HR screening, but before you get to the in-person actually-making-a-decision interview). When I do screens for candidates that have portfolios, rather than leading the interview with questions and hypothetical scenarios I come up with myself, I spend most of the interview more like, "Okay, give me your shpiel, and then walk me through your portfolio and let's drill down into some of your projects." I think this works well for people on both sides of the interview, and it turns the interview into a context for showing your strengths and what you could bring to the job, not enumerating your weaknesses.

A lot of people have chimed in here already with a lot of good input, but I'm going to talk too: I've been on both the searching and hiring side of a lot of job searches and interviews, and think I have some relevant experience.

1. Basically, yes. A personal/portfolio website isn't strictly necessary. But it's the best way to present yourself and highlight your strengths. And many of your competitors will have one. So if you want to stand out and get a chance at the best jobs, then yes, you pretty much need one.
2. A few things: a. A personal introduction and summary b. A copy of your actual resume (this is so potential hirers can get a clean copy of it, instead of one that's been doctored by recruiters or headhunters) c. Some examples of your work d. Links to any live projects you have e. Something about your hobbies and personal interests f. A blog, if you're up for writing!
3. Pretty much anything that doesn't suck is fine. Use the tools you are familiar with! The website itself will be part of your portfolio, and potential hirers will pay attention to how it was built. If you're focused on design or visual work and are not a coder or web dev, it's fine to use one of the easy-make-your-own-website hosts (I personally like SquareSpace and use it myself). If you want to show off your web-building work, use WordPress or Jekyll or something like that. a. Use something reliable, and that you know how to maintain! If your personal/portfolio website is down or broken, that's going to look Bad when a potential hirer reviews it. i. This means you should look at your website yourself each time you're about to apply for a job, and view it in a few different browsers, just to make sure it's everywhere.

Also,

1. You should definitely have your own domain! Think about what name you want, and then buy one from a non-sketchy domain registrar (I like Hover) as soon as you can, even if you're not going to put up your site right away.

I'm a senior back-end developer. My personal website (which I built both for personal reasons and with a view to getting hired) is at apjanke.net. Even though I'm a hacker, it just runs on SquareSpace. (And, despite my earlier advice above, I do not have a publicly-linked copy of my resume there. At the point in my career where I'm at, I already get too many contacts from recruiters, and I don't want to encourage more. As a new graduate, you will probably not have this problem!)

And your post has made me realize that I actually need a "Projects" page on my personal website, with links to my projects and open source work. Coming soon!

Probably, but It's not the worst if you don't have one.

I kept it simple and with added some custom elements.
siddhant-misra.github.io/Portfolio/

My motivation for building biehler-josef.de was that I had several places where I publish content. Github for projects, Twitter for drawings and devto for blog posts. I wanted a place where all that stuff is aggregated into one site and thus I built my personal website.

In the last months I was looking for a small job besides my main job and it turned out that the website replaced a written application

For people reading this who may be hiring developers:

I think all the upsides of having a portfolio have been well-outlined elsewhere in the discussion. Indeed, having a portfolio has obvious upsides.

But if you are hiring, please don't rule out candidates who don't have one. I have met several people in charge of a project who will only consider candidates with a portfolio or extensive work on open-source projects. I think this is counter-productive because there are lots of good reasons to not have a portfolio:

• Candidate may have worked behind NDAs for all their projects: I've been at this for 5 years now, and just completed my first site that was available to the public.
• Candidate my have a busy life outside of work and doesn't have time to put one together. This is especially true for caregivers, and falls especially hard on women.
• I'm just a little bothered by the assumption that code has to be your passion and it's what you do for fun as well as work. There is so much to do in the one life we've been given. Don't spend it all on work, and don't expect others to do so, either.

Again, by all means, if you want to make a portfolio, do it. It can be fun and can open doors, especially if you're a student. Just remember as you become a senior dev or move into management, not everyone who would be a great member of your team has the time or inclination that you have now.

For the majority of my career my website has just been a better styled/interactive version of my CV and cover letter. Even now that I'm having a blog it still doesn't include any case studies or actual paid work. It's never been an issue, especially because most of my work has been paid software that's behind NDAs, do I can't really make the code public and would have to anonymize screenshots anyway.

Usually I write a cover letter in which I explain briefly what my skills are, what projects I've worked, what my roles were, and what kind of projects I'm interested in working on, and then mention I can walk them through my work in detail during a meeting.

The times I've been involved in the hiring process from the other side, I didn't care much to see a portfolio beforehand either. What's important for me is that before we have the interview, I get a clear picture of:

• What your main skills are
• Which areas you work with and want to work with
• What type of projects and companies you've worked at
• What roles you take in projects
• Your personality

How that's communicated is less relevant to me. It just has to be done in a clean and understandable way. That can be a portfolio, an online cover letter, a video, a well organized github account (with extra context provided in a separate document), link to your blog, or anything else.

I do like seeing the actual work during interviews, but for me personally I don't need to see it upfront. And I haven't really come across a lot of places where having a portfolio makes a big difference.

Disclaimer, this is from a Norwegian perspective. I've also been applying and hiring for more senior roles. I notice hiring cultures tend to be quite different between different countries, and especially different from the US.

I found it useful when I started doing freelancing, cause your work talks, people usually like to see what you have done. So I made my first one two years back, I dedicatedly spent a week's worth of work, made it from scratch using Django 😅 - ananto-haq.herokuapp.com/

But recently just spent a couple of hours to make a modern one using Stackbit - ananto.netlify.app/. You can also use static site generators like Gatsby and deploy on Github page or Netlify. I would suggest using an MDX CMS like NetlifyCMS, as you can use the markdowns as your CMS. So make one! 😃