The #1 Mistake Beginners Make With Their Portfolios. (And How You Can Avoid It)
There’s 4 main components to landing a data job:
Working your skills
Showcasing those skills
Have a great resume
Networking
Most people get all four steps wrong (more on that in future posts), but today we will focus on #2.
I speak to people all the time who are looking to land their first job. When I ask to see their portfolio, I normally get two responses:
I don’t have one
An unorganized GitHub repository
Many people add a bunch of code to GitHub repo and call that a portfolio. No READMEs, no organization, and no story.
The truth is that potential employers don’t want to sit and read a bunch of your code. There’s too many applicants. Especially in the day and age when people copy and paste projects all the time.
You portfolio is your opportunity to add a story to your projects. Lead the reader into the objective, the process, the insights, etc. This also allows you communicate your value and skills quickly.
So how do we do this?
The most simplest way is Tableau Public for Tableau users and novyPro for Power BI users.
But, what about my data science projects or other ones that involve code?
I recommend making an interactive webpage with GitHub pages. Its free. There are also other resources such as Wix or Carrd.
We have a lot of resources including project ideas, datasets, and videos on how to create better portfolios in the Data in Motion discord. Its free to join.
Here is a great tutorial on how to create a portfolio using GitHub pages .
Here are some examples of some portfolios for inspiration:
https://kedeisha1.github.io/
https://www.claudiatenhoope.com/
http://julianikulski.com/en/portfolio?lang=en
https://naledi.co.uk/
Hopefully you can implement some of these tips today.
Until next time,
Kedeisha Bryan