Welcome to the Interactive Career-Boosting Portfolio Course!
The Sell
You can start this course with no online presence and no idea how to market yourself in the programming world.
You will end up with a significant online presence - blog, portfolio, profiles on important networks and a small project.
The course is 3-4 weeks long, depending on your pace.
I will send you a new lesson twice a week, so you have time to do your homework assignments.
That's right, homework! You'll have to put in effort, but with my guidance, the end result will be a great position for you to start looking for a job, and it will create more real opportunities for you.
Details
A lot of the people I know have this problem - they are either in college, studying for a Computer Science degree, or finished college and trying to find a good job. And the issue they're having is, because they don't have any practical experience, working on real projects, that college degree can only help them land entry level jobs. And for some, that's okay, they say "I'll learn on the job, and advance and move up over time". And sure, that could work. But oftentimes it's hard to find entry level jobs. It seems that companies are always looking for people that have real experience and are not willing to take on a junior and invest time in helping him or her by mentoring them. So they're stuck in a loop - how do I get experience if I need to have experience to get a junior level job?
Break out of the circle
The best way to beat that system, by far, is to take on some side projects of your own, develop skills by working on them, and publish them somewhere online where your potential employers can see it. And this way you come off as someone who has established himself online as a programmer, as someone who can take a project and carry it to completion. And that's something employers will see want to hire you.
Apart from side projects, you can also do some other things to get in this position:
- Write blog posts
- Answer questions on StackOverflow
- Comment on other people's blog posts
- Contribute to open source GitHub projects
- Create video tutorials
The key point is to build your online presence and present yourself a as developer that possesses certain skills.
And this is exactly the strategy that helped me get my first job. I was still in college and I created a portfolio web page, where I'd put all the small projects I hacked on.
Granted, this strategy won't make you successful overnight. You will have to put in work and effort. But by doing so, you are actually gaining experience and knowledge. You won't go to a job interview and pretend to know things you don't know.
Timeline
So how long will stuffing a portfolio with projects take? You don't have years to put in creating a portfolio and only then get a job. It's actually a lot less time than people think. Because you don't have to have a million projects. Even 5 projects on your portfolio are an amazing feat. You can create just a few small projects and that will make an enormous difference when getting a job. Compared to the rest of people in your situation, that don't have a portfolio, you'll be in a huge advantage. In terms of time, I would say that you need to take 2-3 months to build a solid online presence, and then when you get a nice job, you can continue working on expanding your portfolio, but at a more relaxed pace. Here is an example timeline:
- Create the portfolio website - 1 week
- Create your first blog post - 1 week
- Contribute to 3 open source projects on GitHub - 2 weeks
- Create your first small side project - 3 weeks
- Create your second small side project - 3 weeks
Who is it for?
New programmers, those still in college or fresh out of it, people switching professions, people that know some stuff, but don't have much experience or online reputation. So, follow this course to present yourself and your skills online and get job offers.
Mentoring
I believe that having a mentor is the best way to learn and develop skills. That's why, if you decide to take this course, and take it seriously, I will also take it seriously and be your mentor. But, obviously, you are the one who has to do the work, as it is your career. I will be there to support you, guide you and answer your questions.
So how will it work? In each post lesson, there will be some tasks you need to complete as homework in order to move to the next lesson. When you complete those tasks, I encourage you to reply to the post, and show what you've done. This way, I'll be able to review what you do, and suggest improvements or give you pats on the back. And as always, you can just shoot me a comment and ask whatever bothers you.
Table of Contents
Here is the outline of the lessons. As the title says there are 13 posts in this series.
- Introduction - Why Should You Have A Portfolio?
- Start Your Portfolio Faster With Hugo
- How To Present Yourself In A Portfolio?
- How Do You Publish Your Site Online?
- Yes, It's Time To Write Your First Blog Post
- How To Polish And Publish Your Blog Post
- Guide To Spreading Your Online Presence
- An Introduction To Building Your First (Tiny) App
- Ideate And Choose A Stack For Your App
- How Do You Analyize And Plan An Application?
- A Guide To Project Setup Using Web Technologies
- Getting Your Little App From Idea To Realization
- Show Your App To The World By Deploying It
- A Few Words About Maintenance And A Goodbye
Call to Action
Ready to start building your portfolio? Let's do this awesome thing!
The first lesson is out!
Introduction - Why Should You Have A Portfolio?