The competition for one’s fist tech job is fierce and in a tough market coming out of a lean period with many tech companies shedding staff in the last few years, it is important that you can stand out in a busy field of candidates. Obviously, qualifications and technical ability on paper are needed but increasingly you also need to be able to showcase your work and show potential employers you are keeping up with the latest trends, are actively participating in online discussions, and to give a window into what you can, and have done, and what your potential character fit might be for a job even before you get an offer of an interview. This blogpost will go through this and more outlining the importance of an online presence when trying to get a job in web development.

Portfolio Sites

As an aspiring full-stack web developer having a portfolio site that introduces my work and me will be essential and something I will be creating before I finish my studies. I will use it to showcase a selection of my best work from my growing portfolio of websites I have built for both college modules, as a hobby, and for friends and family’s businesses over the last few years such as Douglas Joinery built for a neighbour on a barter using WordPress, and my Graded Unit built using the MERN stack.

It is also accessible for non techies, unlike GitHub (and Codepen to a certain extent, although this is visual – more on this later) that require a level of knowledge of code to make a judgement on.

Finding Inspiration

I have stumbled across a few inspiring sites over the last few years and have bookmarked for inspiration such as this by Ben Scott which is very clean and visual, but the site by Rob Bowen below is one of the best I’ve seen and sets the bar for what I would aspire to create. It shows a deep level of understanding of web technologies, is a clean and minimal design, and has a playful side.

I plan to build my site using React which is a popular JavaScript library that was originally developed for Facebook before being made open source, a combination of vanilla CSS, Tailwind CSS and the GSAP animation plugin to style the site and give interactivity. My theory is that not only the work that I showcase on my site, but the website itself also helps my cause when being considered for interviews.

Potential Pitfalls

There are a few obstacles to keeping a portfolio site in that you need to make sure it looks good as an unprofessional looking site could do you more harm than good and possibly make you less employable! This is a big reason I have held off making one up to now as my web development skills versus this time last year are so much more advanced.

You also need to maintain it so it is up to date and current, and of course you need a place to host it which can have a cost attached if you are wanting a specific domain, although there are plenty of free options on the web if you don’t such as Netlify or Vercel or even using GitHub Pages.

LinkedIn and Online Networking

LinkedIn is a professional networking platform where you can contact other professionals in your field (and beyond), create and interact with posts, showcase your work experience, training and education, get endorsements from colleagues for past work and skills and more widely now, use it as a place to find job openings.

Personally, I am not a fan of social media having managed to avoid Twitter/X completely and I have not actively engaged with Facebook or Instagram for a number of years, as I don’t like oversharing (or over sharers!), so I will be using the platform as a necessity for job hunting with a view to sharing only my professional work and anything relevant to help the cause.

Optimising Your Profile

When creating a profile and adding work experience, skills and certificates you can add keywords that will help your ranking when potential recruiters are searching for candidates, so it is important to put these in whenever you get a chance.

This article on LinkedIn by Wycliffe Opondo gives a good summary of what you should do to optimise your keywords for maximum visibility. Another way of interacting without writing your own content is reposting and commenting on other people’s articles ‐ this can show that you are engaged with relevant subjects and keeping up with current discussions.

LinkedIn is widely used by recruiters with Forbes reckoning 90% of recruiters use it to vet candidates so it is an essential part of creating a web presence in almost any industry not just web development. I have already created a profile with my work and study history, and I have started to use it to showcase college projects I have worked on and sharing certificates from online Udemy and LinkedIn Learning courses. Over the next 9 months I will continue to add to this, so when I come to applying for jobs my profile will look strong and if recruiters’ vet my profile (and they will!), they will like what they see enough to put me forward for interviews.

Code Repositories and Showcasing Work

GitHub

As a developer I use GitHub, which is a version control platform, all the time to store my code repositories for my projects and have started building up a body of personal work from when I started college. The image below is a screenshot from my public Github profile showing my “commits” in the past 12 months (the darker the green the more commits that day) which means when I pushed code into a repository.

This alone shows that I have an understanding of a platform that for developers is used widely throughout the industry for collaboration on projects and version control but there are also open source projects that you can get involved in and help to fix bugs and add features to existing codebases to showcase your skills, although this is something that may be further down the line for me as I am still and a junior stage of my development career.

Sidenote: Ok, so I didn’t push much code over the summer, but I have a good excuse in that I had a new baby towards the end of the last academic year and wanted to have a few months spending quality time with her and the rest of my family before starting my studies back up.

CodePen

CodePen is a great platform for sharing code snippets and showcasing work which unlike GitHub which is quite “techie” gives an obvious visual output that can be viewed by non-technical people without a prior knowledge of the platform. It also allows users to follow and like users and their work. In an online talk from George Park who is a Front End Developer at Equator, he made a point about using CodePen to showcase his skills and tried to actively add something to the platform each month to build up a body of work that showcased his coding and design skills.

This small commitment each month doesn’t seem like a lot of effort - although some of his work on the platform must have taken some time - and is a free and easy way to showcase work.

Meetups

Ok so it’s not an online presence but there are online meetups and Discord channels , and they are organised and promoted online. Joining in at relevant tech meetups and attending conferences and workshops will help broaden your network of contacts, that you can then connect with on LinkedIn.

Having recently attended my first JavaScript Meetup I not only gained an insight from speakers but also got talking to people working in the industry, and who were in my shoes only a few years ago so well placed to give advice. A good site or finding these is Meetup and Scottish Technology Club who have a website and a Discord server (which is really supportive and a great platform to bounce ideas and get help if you are stuck) and I am on the lookout for more regular events I can attend in the future.

Conclusion

There is lots to think about when creating an online presence and it will take time to build up but creating a strong online presence is crucial for anyone pursuing a career in web development particularly in a competitive job market. Having an informative and well-presented portfolio site, active LinkedIn profile, and showcasing platforms like GitHub and CodePen can significantly enhance visibility to potential employers and showcase your skills and potential employability.