The document provides guidance on building a portfolio for job searching. It defines a portfolio and recommends including projects, skills, and an online presence on LinkedIn, resume, and GitHub. It prioritizes establishing an online presence through profiles on LinkedIn and GitHub showcasing projects. Additional "fluff" like personal websites and blogs can help but are less important initially. The document provides tips for highlighting transferable skills from other careers and creating technical projects to include in a portfolio.

1. BUILDING YOUR
PORTFOLIO
K R I S H E L L E H A R D S O N - H U R L E Y

2. WHO AM I?
•Currently Network Reliability
Engineer at Dropbox
•Previously High School
Math/Spanish Teacher
•Hackbright Alumna from
Summer 2016

3. TODAY’S OBJECTIVES
•Define portfolio and identify what should be in
your portfolio.
•What to prioritize at this stage in your job
search.
•Identify how to fill your resume with
transferable skills.

4. DEFINITION: PORTFOLIO
portfolio
noun | port· fo· lio | pȯrt-ˈfō-lē-ˌō |
plural portfolios - a selection of a student's
work (such as papers and tests) compiled over a
period of time and used for assessing
performance or progress.

5. WHAT’S IN YOUR PORTFOLIO?
Must Haves Nice to Haves

6. THIS IS A LOT, WHAT FIRST?
Presence
• LinkedIn
• Resume
• GitHub
Skills
• Technical Interviewing Skills
• Projects
Fluff
• Personal Website
• Blogs
• Twitter

7. HOW TECH RECRUITING WORKS
RECRUITERS
• What are they looking for?
– Resumes that are easily parseable
• They will likely only spend 1-2 minutes
looking at your resume
• Non-tech jobs are hard to parse, it is
your responsibility to make it easier.
– They want to see that you “look like an
engineer” on paper, so overload your
resume with engineering experience
(Hackbright, projects, etc) and
supplement with other career
accomplishments.
– LinkedIn is also easily parseable for
recruiters, so make sure you have one!
HIRING MANAGERS
• What are they looking for?
– Resume
• They might look a little deeper, so be
specific about your projects (what is it,
technologies used, etc).
– Your Code
– Are you going to be someone they
want to work with?
• Your personal brand might help with
this.
• How much they will have to invest in
you and whether they have the
time/resources to do this.
– Who you know
WHO HOLDS THE POWER TO GET YOU IN THE DOOR?

8. PROFESSIONAL
AND CODING
PRESENCE
P R I O R I T Y # 1 : L I N K E D I N , R E S U M E , G I T H U B

9. PROFESSIONAL PRESENCE
LINKEDIN CHECKLIST
• Make sure that your LinkedIn has:
 Descriptions of positions highlighting
transferable skills.
 List of Projects with descriptions of
technologies used (3).
 Include relevant links
 Education
 Make sure to describe Hackbright
accurately
 Photo
Note: Your LinkedIn can be a bit more
descriptive than your resume.
RESUME CHECKLIST
• Make sure that your Resume has:
 Education at the top (until you get
your first job)
 Projects section
 Briefly describe project, make sure to
highlight the technologies used.
Experience
 Only highlight transferable skills.
 General tip: Always consult a typical
job posting for the jobs you are
looking for and use the key words in
your resume.

10. PROFESSIONAL PRESENCE
LINKEDIN RESUME FOR “NEW GRAD”
Contact Info
Education
Engineering Experience
(projects/ work experience)
Other Experience
Photo
Headline
Professional Experience
Education
Contact Info
Note: On LinkedIn, projects are linked to “experiences” or “education”. You can add projects from
any work/school experience.

11. EXERCISE: TRANSFERABLE SKILLS
• Remember, resumes need to be easily parseable.
• Since you do not have the tech experience that
recruiters/hiring managers can parse, you need to
make the experience that you do have use the
language they are used to reading.
• In this exercise you will:
–Map skills of a Software Engineer to various other careers
–Create descriptors for your previous career using the
Software Engineer skills as your basis.

12. CODING PRESENCE
CHECKLIST
• Make sure your GitHub has:
 Organized repos (label exercises from HB so it’s clear
what they are)
 Large Projects Pinned
 Make sure projects have:
 Screenshots/gifs, video, link to deployed app.
 Documentation (describe the features, how to download,
etc).
 Clean up your code
 Follow Pep8 standards
 Remove print statements
 Add comments where things might be confusing
• Other ways to show your coding presence:
 Contribute to open source
 Answer questions on stackoverflow
 Participate in a coding competition or hackathon
GITHUB EXAMPLES
• https://github.com/MarsWilliams/canar
y
• https://github.com/evlynandrade/urVoi
ceProject
• https://github.com/terriwong/weekend
-wanderlust
• https://github.com/khardsonhurley/Hac
kbright-Project

13. IDEAS FOR GOOD ‘HOLISTIC’
PROJECTS
• Build another webapp (perhaps with a front-end framework such as
React or Angular 2)
• Build a Command Line Tool (using argparse or click)
– Take in a bunch of data, aggregate/organize it and print a report.
– Create an interactive command line game
• Build a slackbot
• Pick an API and build a small tool with it

14. THE FLUFF
STUFFP E R S O N A L P O R T F O L I O , P E R S O N A L
B R A N D

15. CREATING A PERSONAL WEBSITE
• Important things to note:
– This is not a high priority item! These are as easy to parse as a resume, so most recruiters will not
look at this. Though it is a nice thing to have just in case they go perusing.
– I did not do this until I was working for about 6 months because I wanted a place where I could
be more descriptive with the projects I had done at Dropbox.
• Do not waste time building it from scratch, you won’t have the time to maintain this. Pick
something that is easily maintainable. Use one of the following free platforms:
– Wix.com
– Weebly.com
– Squarespace.com
• Buy a domain that either matches all of your other platforms (linkedIn, twitter, email, etc) or
something that is easy to remember.
• Examples:
– http://sampletechportfolio.com/
– www.krishelle.me

16. WHAT SHOULD I INCLUDE ON MY
PERSONAL WEBSITE?
 Make it easy to download your resume
 Top tool bar for easy access at first glance
 Make sure this has a “Contact Me” section, this should link to your social platform
 Link to all social platforms
 LinkedIn
 Twitter
 Medium
 Email
 Optional items (these are in your resume, only include if you want to add extra context):
 Education
 Timeline
 Portfolio/Project Section

17. OTHER PLACES TO BUILD YOUR
BRAND
TWITTER
• Ideas for things to post:
– ”TIL” == “Today I learned”
– Share resources
– Share your thoughts
– Retweet
– Whenever you go to a cool event,
tweet about it.
– Quotes
BLOGGING
• Blogging is good to share your
experience and learnings.
– It can help lead to opportunities
• Sites for blogs:
– LinkedIn
• Note: You can send this to all of your
connections
– Medium
• Note: Getting your blogs on publications
can help to create more visibility
– Blogspot
– Blogger
– Square Space

18. QUESTIONS?
•Email: khardsonhurley@gmail.com
•Twitter: @khardsonhurley
•Medium: @khardsonhurley
•LinkedIn: /in/khardsonhurley
•Website: www.krishelle.me