Hey guys, I am sort of a Php dev and I don’t really have too much or a lot that I can really really boast of {I do have a few stuff I’ve done}. When I am asked this question: “Where is your portfolio?” I feel like I’ve already lost the job.
As a pro or almost a pro what would be your advice to a beginner like me?
Do what I’m doing right now. Build sites for free, build dummy sites, make a useful script and put on github, contribute to oen source projects.
You need one, I need one, everybody needs one. You have to make some sacrifices
Seriously, if you’ve done nothing on your own, you will do nothing in the company. Build your portfolio by yourself. It’s not like past jobs, it’s something 100% in your power.
Build a free site for your school, church, okay, maybe those ones have sites already, how about the communities that constitute those organizations?
Or your family. You can build a web application for your family tree. Something that can serve a timeline as way back as you can collate, and include opportunities for other family members to contribute to a rich family history.
Nice replies guys. I don’t completely have nothing on my portfolio. I do have a few things on there, but I feel like they aren’t enough. Will a company employ me just because I built a family tree using web languages?
The only acceptable answer is “here are a few of the things i have done”.
Unfortunately the is no way around this one because no one will pay a developer that can’t prove he has the skillset and experience to handle the job.
The quality of the application.
I am sure a family tree application will include family purse donations which would have required webservice integrations to payment systems.
Personally, I focus on applicants with some history of working with webservice integrations because every application built in my corner has to have a communication channel for other applications.
The bigger organizations will surely have more technical requirements.
But it always pays to have a portfolio that features webservice integrations and a good understanding of logic.
Some of us don’t care about UI anymore. We just buy themes. So having a great design project on your portfolio may not be too important.
Okay, nice to hear from some big guns. Never had this thought. Thanks.
@the_Ozmic, this was my answer to a similar question (I will advise you read the whole thread)
Awesome. I am a radar fan for life. How come there are so many useful stuff here? I’ve been wasting time on forums like Nairaland. I’ll surely do this. Today is monday, on or before friday I will surely post what I come up with on radar for some review. Thanks guys.
Hello guys, so days ago I created this topic, seeking guidance of more experienced people on this platform and I was advised to just build anything. I will still attempt to build the family tree thingy but for now this is what I’ve come up with: Click here.
It’s how I wished Jiji was, or something close to it. The highlights are the endless scrolling so I could see all ads ever posted on Jiji without ever clicking on any button once I land on the page instead of the pagination thing they did. Then I also thought It’ll be nice to arrange the category in the way I did, I think it’s more attractive that way. It’s a dummy stuff so links don’t work, I just wanted to see what you guys think about it.
Exactly you have Github, take some fun challenging projects.
My advance don’t take on Projects like this, take on Projects that shows technical expertise and shows you are familiar with a language.
For me during my free time, I tend to look at 3d Frameworks on JavaScript i can use to try to use laziness though, but doing something different and unique shows you are determined,passionate and also willing to try out different stuffs.
When people ask the portfolio question, they want to see a couple of things.
First, it shows you care enough about what you do because you go out of your way to build stuff.
If your code is on Github (which I totally encourage), it helps them see the quality of code you write.
You might not be able to talk about projects you work on at work because of confidentiality issues, but you can defend a personal project.
It shows how often you learn new stuff because you’ll always need to practice what you learn.
Note that you don’t have to build the next Facebook before it’s considered good enough. It could be as simple as learning about some new aspect of your current stack, writing about it, and putting the accompanying code online.
Nobody is out to get you if you don’t have a portfolio. It’s just easier to convince people you are a magician after they’ve seen you perform magic.
As a beginner, here is my own answer https://github.com/adelowo
Thanks for all your replies guys. I’ll think of something else… 
Looks great, just some UI misses here and there. There’s a project a friend is working on and he requires someone with your skill set. This could be a good opportunity for you to boost your portfolio. Shoot me a message if interested so I can fill you in.
Get on linkedin, push what ever codes you have written to github, update your linkedin profile with your skills, passion and experience. That is your portfolio.