Building Portfolio as a Developer and Engineer

This is a brief summary of the I4G Circle monthly community webinar for the month of August 2022.  By Oluwaseun Dabiri. Which I found very beneficial and thought to share.

He went straight to the point, sharing 5 actionable steps we can follow to build our portfolio and put our work Out there. 

1. Build Projects:
   • Take your time to build projects. Search for project inspirations and implement them.
2. Document Your process:
   • Especially for Backend developers use platforms like GitHub gist, swagger, postman, to document your API and share with people who might want to work with them etc.
3. Write:
   •  Capitalize on writing things like solutions to a problem you encountered. Share how you solved it, and others can avoid possible occurrences. 
   • Try challenging yourself to write once a week, or once every two weeks. And be sure to share them on other social media platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter, etc.
   •  Use platforms like Hashnode, Dev.to, and medium. 
   • The more you write the more you become visible.

4. Contribute :
   • Try to look for projects/products on google, GitHub, and the likes to contribute to. 
   • For example, if a designer designs a product. Take it upon yourself to bring the design to life as that contributes to your Portfolio.
   • Contribute to an open-source project. 
   • Contribute to a friend’s project.

5. Networking and community:
   • This is very important, that is how you get people who speak on your behalf. 
   • Join a community and be active. 
   • Attend events: physically or virtually. Effort in attending physical events. Don’t be shy there, get to know people, and introduce yourself.

Advice from questions answered:

• Whatever your level is, make an effort to contribute still.
• Your portfolio grows as your experience grows. Do not be shy, just start somewhere. Build the portfolio according to your skill set.
• Do not lie about your portfolio. Even if it is only HTML you know, write it that way. 
• To be hired as a frontend developer, most companies prefer that you are at least proficient with one frontend framework.

Resources:

1. Who is speaking on your behalf by Prosper Otemuyiwa
2. Check out https://roadmap.sh/ to give you an idea of what you need to acquire knowledge in a particular field + resources.