You are techY podcast

[00:00:00] Ellen Twomey: You are listening to the You Are TechY Podcast, episode number 170.

[00:00:05] Narrator: Welcome to the You Are TechY podcast, where it’s all about growing in your tech so you can find the tech job of your dreams. And now your host technology learning coach Ellen Twomey. Welcome to the show. Let’s talk about portfolios. So we are in, as I’m recording this, we’re in the portfolio building, um, piece of the You are techY program. And so what that means is we. We’ve gone through 10 weeks of, getting hired in project content and people are making progress on their self-selected and freelance project.

[00:00:47] Ellen Twomey: And then, we do a portfolio prep workshop, and then we have a portfolio review, and that’s where we pick the portfolio award winner. We have mentors from the field come in and give feedback, to the students’ portfolios. And it’s just a. Really fantastic time for people to show up and show what they’ve done.

And it’s very interesting. It, feels intimidating in some ways. but I’ve had students who have shown up, like with, very little in their portfolio and then the next time around it’s like their portfolios in a completely different place. And so I find that regardless of. How and where you show up to that.

showing up for a deadline in a portfolio is a really important piece. And, one of the concepts that I talk about a lot in, in the program is, Called final form. You wanna get your portfolio into a final form. And it’s a little bit of a misnomer, so maybe I’ll work on the, title, but it’s a form where you can send it to someone.

And that doesn’t mean every I is dotted, every t is crossed, everything is tied in a bow. It, doesn’t really mean that. it means that you have a portfolio that represents the work that you can do, and. it’s at a, an 85 or 90%, so I don’t think it’s ideal for you to have sections like coming soon or in progress.

it’s not ideal. but it’s also not, a deal breaker if that’s where you are. And a lot of times and I’m gonna talk more about this, but. I, I push very much for you to like get something out into the world, and I’m gonna talk all about that strategy and I know that what I’m saying to a lot of you, you think that this is crazy.

It needs to be perfect. how are they going to understand, I’m, I’m a great worker and I can contribute if I don’t have a great portfolio. And oh, by the way, when I go to do my portfolio, am I a great worker? Like, am I good at this? it doesn’t look right or it’s broken, or it doesn’t.

And I think that, fundamentally I just wanna lay the concept out here that I am so intimately familiar with the iterative nature of technology and the fact that anyone who’s new to technology is. Really, you’re not gonna be good the first time. And so it’s so much better for you to get a few swings at the bat.

Like do it the first time, then do it the second time, then do it the third time. it’s usually when my students have like gone at it three different times, by that third or fourth time, they’re like, ah, there’s just something. And they finally like, push themselves to get over that hump.

And if you are trying to get over that hump at stage one, you just aren’t gonna have the momentum. it’s just gonna feel like overwhelming confusion. You don’t even know what you’re doing. And so it’s really important to build momentum and make progress. And I’m gonna, I’m gonna talk a little bit about how to do that, but I’m gonna talk specifically about the way that I recommend you do a portfolio and.

There are many successful ways to do a portfolio, and many people have done many different things, and there’s no one right answer. but I, I look at it through the lens of getting hired faster and for more money. And how do you do that? How do you get hired faster and for more money? Well, you actually develop more valuable skills.

That’s what you do. you don’t just ask for more money, you ask for a higher rate because you have the skills to back it up. and so with that, I think WordPress is a great solution, and I like WordPress and Elementor, even Elementor Pro, I don’t know the current rate, but I know it’s very reasonably priced for the, for what you get.

And, Elementor enables you to build themes into the page and to have a page builder so that you don’t have to use the WordPress, built-in blocks, which are fine if someone sets up for you, but hard to get started with, um, if you’re new to it.

And I just think Elementor is really kind of seamless and I sound like a commercial for Elementor. Maybe Elementor should sponsors podcast, but that’s just truthfully what I use. It’s not the only, You know, Pagebuilder a theme that I have used in WordPress, but it is my favorite.

And I find my students, some of them love it initially, and even the ones who don’t love it initially, eventually get there. So I know, I’ve had students build their portfolios in Wick and Squarespace, and that’s, totally fine. There’s nothing wrong with that. but we, you know, our students are UX designers and developers.

Those are generally those are the skills we’re teaching. So those are generally what they get hired in. Not a hundred percent. sometimes people get those skills and then get hired in other jobs because they’re foundational skills. Being a designer, developer, and tech can really, you can do a lot of different things with it.

but the majority of those students are just pretty much focused on those two paths. and some are front end developers and some are, full stack developers. It really just depends. So the reason I’m picking that stack is like, and so then I have, developers who will say, well, shouldn’t I write code for my portfolio?

I’m writing code for projects, shouldn’t I write code? And I’ll talk a little bit more about that. but actually, like our fugitive website is built straight in code right now, and we’re working on a WordPress, we’re reporting it over to WordPress. And so, I’m just telling you that, because even in.

real world projects, like before when you get hired, a lot of times people use WordPress. I mean, there’s a ton of WordPress development, so I don’t actually think that as a developer you have to, write straight code for your, for your website. I. You may find it easier to do that, you may wanna do that, and there will be a couple of companies who are like, you should do that.

But, I still think it’s always valuable to know WordPress there’s so many foundational websites that are built on it. I still think it’s a very relevant technology. And it adds to your skillset and it’s relatively quick to use. And if to use the elementary plugin, then you’re like so far ahead of the game.

so that’s, that’s what I recommend in terms of, the technology stack to use for your portfolio. Now, it comes right down to it, you might say, okay, now it’s this big wide open space. What do I actually. Put into my portfolio and I think you can build a really substantial portfolio with about five pages.

and I’m gonna tell you what they are. So the first is you want a main page and that just introduces you. And again, caveat, caveat, we’re gonna talk about creativity and how to make this different and how to make it your own. But I think you can, if you just really wanna break it down, there are five pages and like, let’s not make it bigger than it is.

how can you build something amazing with just five pages? I think that’s a worthwhile task. So the five pages that you, that I recommend you have in your portfolio are a main page. It’s homepage where you, at a high level list your name, exactly the position you are looking for. I recommend you don’t use the term junior ever.

I don’t think it’s helpful. And, you list the two to three projects with titles and images that link to individual pages for each of those two to three projects.

So the first project might be your self-selected project, and the second project might be your freelance freeing quotes, Lance Project. And your third project might be something that you’ve worked on before that. Is demonstrating the skills of a designer or developer, but not necessarily directly related.

So for example, some of my developers have a UX project on there, or for example, some of my UX students have a learning project on there. If they were a teacher, something that they did. that involved really focusing on the users and making an environment better. So, sometimes there’s something that drew you to tech that kind of brought you there.

That’s how you can get to three projects now. I’m talking to beginners here, So you wanna draw on any of your previous experience that’s gonna be relevant. And it also gives people like a sneak peek. You don’t want that to be the first thing. And eventually, you will probably replace that third project with just a new designer development project, and that’s great too.

or you’ll leave it in there and you’ll have five or six projects and that’s fine. But you really don’t need five or six projects to get hired. You need two solid projects. And I think throwing this third one in, Where you’re not necessarily going through the entire designer development process, you’re just touching on something.

I think that having a third one like that is, is helpful. So then you link to each of those pages and I’m gonna talk more in detail about each of those. Those are the big ones. And then the fifth one is like a Contact me page. And I really like the contact form. I recently told one of my students, she had her phone number on there.

I said, I just, we’d get rid of that. It’s too, there’s too many spammy telemarketers out there, snagging phone numbers. you can put your email on there as a, the first run through, but a contact form is, is ideal. Because normally you’re reaching out to someone, you already know them, you’re already emailing them your portfolio, so they know.

And if someone happens to come across it, then they can fill out the contact form. it’s rare that someone’s gonna actually wanna hire you and not be willing to fill out a contact form, or get an intro to you. So I, I wouldn’t worry about that.

It’s, more that someone might use that for. their own purposes, but again, you can put your email for a while, but then I recommend the contact form so you can see the main page and the contact us. Those are pretty quick pages. They shouldn’t take too long, especially if you use elementary.

You’ll have some great samples on how you wanna lay it out. Then each of the next three pages, you could just use the same template, you could use the same format, it’s basically a case study. This, each of those pages is a case study. And so I’m gonna talk to you about, I wanna tell you just a few things to kind of think about putting on there, on those individual project pages so that you can, and, and if you’ve, if this is your first time, this will help you really.

to constrain what you put on there and not overwhelm yourself. And if you already have a portfolio, maybe just use this as a checklist. Again, you’re trying to get to final form. You’re trying to make progress, you’re trying to ensure that, you have something that you can show someone that, of the capabilities and the value that you provide.

So it’s an important piece. Okay. so you wanna have that so you can show people, but you also wanna be able to show people for feedback and remember the voices you’re listening to for feedback. You really wanna show people who are, Can hire you or are potentially hire you or introduce you to someone.

Those are great people to tap. you know, your cousins and friends and parents and siblings are not great people to tap unless they happen to overlap. But even then, a great opportunity to, to network anyway and to meet someone new. Or to follow up with someone and just say, Hey, I’m really looking for feedback on my portfolio.

what do you think? Or, I just finished my portfolio, I just upgraded it. can you give me two to three things that would make it better? And that really gives people permission to help you and to give you feedback. And I know it’s really challenging to put yourself out there, but it is the fastest way to do it.

It’s just to get feedback. And then if you don’t like their suggestions, Don’t change it. It’s okay to get feedback and you disagree with someone. but the way, the more that you highly value the voice you’re listening to, the better that we’ll go. All right, so we’re talking specifically about, What to include on your individual pages, and essentially it’s a case study, so for ux, you’re gonna have more information because you’re walking people through your thinking more.

And in development you’re gonna have less text and more interactivity. So you are going to. Want to show how your code works more than describe it. but you are gonna wanna describe it just not quite as much as ux. I’m just gonna look from the UX perspective first.

The first thing you want, actually, is it access to your prototype? So we’ve gone over, we’ve done the portfolio review process quite a few times, and the feedback from the mentors is always, We really wanna see the prototype accessible in the very, top of the page. Right? So you could have a button, you could have a link, you could have a video showing the port, the prototype.

It doesn’t really matter, but you, your prototype is going to be, the piece of resistance, like it really is going to culminate, what you’ve. Created. And so that’s gonna be a link to Figma likely. And so that goes outside of your portfolio, but that’s an asset in your portfolio, if that makes sense.

But you do want it to go to a new tab for them. So access to your prototype at the top soon, early, and then, then your problem description, your specific description of your users, really talk about. Why is this painful for your users? And it should be pretty obvious. why is the problem you’re solving painful for your users?

And so then you’re gonna want to have some personas and then wire frames. And here’s the key thing. You’re like, wait, didn’t you just say prototypes? Yeah, but you’re gonna wanna have your wire frames and userability testing or user feedback. Examples of your wire frames and then examples of what you learned through that testing, and then new wire frames.

And you can do that through Figma, or you can just do it through images and explaining what you changed based on user feedback. that’s an important piece there. And that’s why so often we’re worried about like having everything perfect the first time. But you wanna have user feedback. Not that you wanna make it bad the first time intentionally, but you do wanna ha leave an opportunity for you to iterate on it and to learn from users.

If you’re not learning from users. It’s not really UX design, it’s just building wireframes. Okay. And then this one is super important. This is the end. This is the bottom. At the bottom. You should have next steps. So, You likely are not able to, let me put it you this way, you should not be able to create every single feature that you could ever think of or that you really want in your prototype.

That is the nature of software. There’s always another thing we could do. There’s always another, piece that we could tweak. And so instead of just working on your prototype forever and then never getting hired, just put those next steps at the bottom of your, portfolio. And that is legitimately like.

What you should continue to work on every time you revisit. but it may never be finished. You will, and should get hired before every next step is finished. and you’ll find out that that’s exactly how it works in tech. Okay, that’s an individual project page for UX now for dev. you don’t need to do, have quite so much.

You’re gonna, basically, similarly you wanna have access to a user focused piece. the interactive piece, the UI piece in your page. And then you can also have access to your repo, to the actual code. and then you’re gonna wanna talk about, what the project that you did, what’s the project description and also talk about the users.

users are not just for designers. Developers should also be looking at users and why you created it the way that you did and then what you created and the technology that you used to create it. And what do you know next steps. So it’s really a similar thing to ux. There’s just different tweaks, do you need personas in a developer portfolio?

No. It’s nice to have, so you can add it as something down the road, but it, you don’t have to have it before you start, sending it off. And one of the things that I’ve really grown to love, and one of my students, Heather, I’m gonna tell you a couple things that she did. and I’ve seen it in a few other times, is to take on the main page to have images of projects, and then underneath each of those projects, list the different stack, the skills that you used, and the different stack that you used under those.

I love that. Now, if you’re a front end developer and you’re like, Ellen, every stack is html, css, java script. Then just list that at the top and don’t re-list it every time. But as you add like a React or hey, even WordPress, you can, list those skills and that is, that becomes a more interesting piece.

Like, oh, I used this one technology, oh, I use no JS on this one, or just whatever it is, it paints a picture of what you are capable of doing. Yes, but also, That you’re becoming a more well-rounded developer as you do these different projects, and the fact that you’ve been able to apply different technologies to solve different problems, that’s showing your growth.

And so that, that’s for a full stack developer, prototype. So again, hopefully I’ve distinguished those two, but I I do like those as you move, let’s say you move from front end to full stack. I really like the, just having a cover image that doesn’t necessarily have to be the exact image. Of your software.

It can just be a, an image that represents it and then having those skills underneath and having that on your main page. No, love it. Okay. So one of the things that Heather did that her and I had a really, it was not a debate cuz we, it was pretty, it was a very gentle conversation. but I frequently say, and I’m gonna recommend for you right now, Take an hour or two every Friday, of course, adjust to your schedule.

But take a, an hour or two every Friday to just dedicate to your portfolio, and you can do that starting from the very beginning so that you’re creating a shell and you can fill that shell in and you have momentum and you understand where you’re going when you’re creating these deliverables. Do that every Friday.

Heather took 30 days and did the entire portfolio in 30 days. Now, if you can do that, great, but most of my students really struggle to actually come to completion in 30 days. And so it just depends on where you are in the process.

She’s a little bit further along. The other thing she did is she wrote her portfolio with code and not WordPress. And so we talked a little bit about that. There’s a comfort level. Once you get to that comfort level with it and it feels good, then. Then that’s not a problem, then code becomes faster for you.

It’s just not the case for most people who are starting new. But the other piece that I drove home is you, your code needs to be, you have to have good enough UI skills that your portfolio actually looks good. It doesn’t have to look quite as good as maybe an element or templated WordPress website, but it needs to look good enough where it’s not just.

kinda your standard ui. it has to be spaced Well, there have to be breaks. you have to use good imagery and you have to use very good color schemes, which means. Not using a million different colors to to show that you have all these different colors.

it has to be well designed to a point. And so if that’s the case and you just feel more comfortable using code, just make sure that you, you are for your portfolio. Make sure that those check boxes are checked off, okay? and again, if you can do it in 30 days, great. If not, most people cannot.

I strongly recommend you work on it for one to two hours every Friday. It’s just a great way to build momentum and your goal should be from start to finish to have that portfolio done in three months. I understand that you will iterate. you’re not necessarily gonna get a job at that point, but you really wanna look to do it in about three months.

And to be able to fill those sections in and to understand that. So one of the reasons I like to have the template and to fill the sections in is we make it linear, we make it manageable, and we put constraints around it. But the other thing is, once you get to that point, now I want you to allow space.

And breathing room for your creative impression. So I’ve given you like, Hey, you just have these five pages and you, add these different imageries and here are the sections and you need clarity around that. you need to understand the pieces that are in there, but then you’re gonna wanna add space so that you have a.

creative impression on your portfolio so that it’s about you. And there are different ways to do that. I’ve seen lots of great, interesting, language, right? Your copy, your image and people say, build your brand. I don’t, I wouldn’t worry too much about building your brand to get hired as a designer developer, I would just say make the, Portfolio authentically you.

but it doesn’t have to be all about you. most of my students do a great job with that, but I have seen some portfolios that go all about into them and their philosophy and their, I think that’s a little bit of overkill. You let your work speak for itself, give people a high level of who you are and then use the creative elements to really.

Add the personality that aligns to you. And if you’re like, Ellen, I’m kind of a plain Jane person, I’m not that. Okay, great. Then what colors align to that? Right? Like maybe it’s a two-tone color. Oh, Ellen, I have a big personality, I I’ll tatted up and that’s who I am.

Well then show that in your portfolio so that you’re trying to attract the people, that are going to, wanna work with someone like you. and you’re gonna wanna work with someone like them. so give that creative space,

And the important part is, one of the reasons I say the Friday is that as you build momentum, it becomes less overwhelming. And remember that the most important part for a portfolio is just to accurately reflect the work that you’re capable of providing for a value for value exchange. So it doesn’t say who you are as a person.

It doesn’t say like what you’re capable of earning. it’s really just. Here’s the work that I do. Is that valuable to your organization? And so remember that. Don’t put too much, pressure on yourself in terms of the portfolio, and don’t try to be too perfect. Just try to make it a representation of the work that you do.

And you put your best effort and you put your personality into it. But it isn’t, it isn’t the end all, be all. And that’s why I say, every Friday it’s good to just kind of step out of your deliverable, step out of your, code and just. Make progress on the bigger picture of the portfolio.

Because you don’t wanna put too much pressure on yourself. I see people getting lost in their portfolio because it has to be perfect. Or they, you know, it, there can be an emotional tie to it by revisiting it just once a week. I think you tend to, um, maybe you have like a late night session right before you’re trying to finish it up 

But generally you wanna just reengage with it. Over and over and over again. So it just becomes something that you do and, and not this big drama thing in your life that, you feel represents something bigger than what it does. maybe I’m speaking from personal experience, okay? And so if you continue to make progress, even when you don’t love it, I am sorry.

I can’t remember the quote. I know Tim Ferris says this all the time, but two crappy pages for writing like you write. Even when you, when you don’t love it, you write even when it isn’t perfect. And You need to make progress on your portfolio even when you don’t love it, and then allow space for your creative inputs because you will come to love it the more you engage with it, and you’ll take out the stuff you don’t love and you’ll figure out why you don’t and what needs to be better.

So remember that your goal is to get it to that point where you can send it to someone and eventually you will love it if you just keep the momentum going and keep making progress on it and the energy and passion that you put into it. It’s not going to feel like that every single time, so just keep engaging with it.

But at the end, when you’re ready to send it to someone, if you can put energy and passion into it, then your portfolio and your cover letter and your interviews and how you talk about your projects, that energy and passion is all gonna come through and feel very aligned. And the way, to do that is to continue to.

Make progress on it and think about what is your personality and value add and how, how am I putting that into my portfolio? And to just do that a little bit at a time without a ton of pressure. If you do that, then that energy and passion that you have will come across in your portfolio.

It’ll come across in your cover letters. It’ll come across in your interviews. Thank you so much. Good luck on your portfolio building. I’ll see you next time. Hey if you enjoy listening to this podcast you have to sign up for the are techY email list Imagine being in the tech job of your dreams Join me to get the strategies training and never-ending support To get hired sign up at youaretechy.com That’s Y O U A R E T E C H Y.com I’ll see you next time