Let's talk about the importance of having a clean digital appearance, specifically having a tidy url for your homepage / portfolio.
I’m often asked to help interview candidates for web developer and software developer positions. I’m notified beforehand, sent a name and a resume, and someone schedules a half hour interview. I’ve learned quite a bit from this process, and I’d like to share some low hanging fruit for those wanting to impress as they interview.
So with very little knowledge beforehand, i start scanning my resources and trying to gain insight into what type of individual this may be. I’ve found that most often the best telling variable into whether this individual is likely to be a standout is the individuals online presence. I’m not talking social media, however that is very important. Today i want to focus on a more professional presence.
This may be more common among web developers, but mobile and software developers all have mediums by which to show off their talent. And i would hope that they do.
In my technical interviews, i can get a pretty good sense of where someone is with their skills and practice. However i believe that to gauge someone’s passion for their craft can be best judged by those who go the extra mile and present their best work publicly for others to review.
Even so, individuals do this to different degrees. Having seen how a poor attempt at displaying your work online can be worse than never presenting them at all, I’d like to set a standard for what i think should be the baseline should you decide to share your work with others.
Fast Impressions
Have you ever seen a resume come through looking sharp and tidy, then you look closer at their email and it looks like they haven’t changed it since Junior high?
who-let-the-dogs-out-926@hotmail.com
I can’t help but chuckle, however it does make a negative impact. I would have hoped the individual would have grown and changed since junior high.
The same can be said about URLs. I’ve seen some abnormally large URLs that look cheap, unprofessional and distracting. And many coke through without any URL at all, really leaves me with an empty feeling that you’re gonna have to work hard in an interview to fill.
Remember we interview plenty of talented people, it often comes down to the small details that sways our decision one way or another.
Thankfully there are a lot of options to get you a good online presence to give interested parties a little insight into your talents and passion. You can get fairly clean URL’s for free, no need to pay money. But for those that want top notch delivery, there are strong benefits to those willing to pay for a custom domain.
Options:
Github pages - My recommendation for getting started. You can get a clean URL hosted for free at a respectable and trusted website. Plus most every IT pro i know has an account there.
Buying Custom Domain - Recommended if you want to step your game up a notch. Worth the ~$10 p/ year (Often less).
Other considerations:
GitHub Profile
You can also make a good impression by polishing your GitHub portfolio. These are the few things i take notice of when i glance at someone’s page.
- Profile picture?
- Is it good?
- Do they have a subtitle?
- Is it clever?
- Do they have their location set?
- Do they have any pinned repositories?
- I’ll quickly glance repositories, looking for a Readme 2019-12-21 - Why Readme or a link that can show what the app is.
- Major bonus points for apps that have live hosted demos! I know how much work that takes, but it matters.
- How many commits have they done in the last year
- Any fun badges from GitHub?
Conclusion
Whoever is interviewing you likely has a handful of candidates to research on top of their daily responsibilities. I certainly would not expect them to be downloading files, cloning repo’s or signing into anything, however a hosted app/webpage can be visited with a just few clicks. Because links can easily be placed on your GitHub profile, linked in or resume, to me it’s a low hanging fruit that i hope you take advantage of.
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