If you are in the field of development or programming, an overwhelming majority of employers will check your GitHub profile when considering you as a candidate. Here is a great way to make your GitHub profile page stand out.
Your GitHub Profile
Github is a place where users can place private or public repositories of code, wikis, readme’s and files. If you are in the technology field, a github account is a must-have.
Many employers will take at least a quick look at your profile in GitHub. The standard GitHub profile page will look like the following:
Enhancing your GitHub Profile
You have a VERY small space in which to say anything about yourself. With an investment of about an hour, you can turn your GitHub profile into a decent advertisement for yourself:
Instead of the same dull boring stats about how many commits and pushes you’ve made to your repos, you can display what is essentially a mini resume including skills, links to documents and even graphics. In other words, anything that is supported by Markdown.
How to create your enhanced profile
The first step is to create a repo in your account with EXACTLY the same name as your profile/account. In my case, I wanted to create an account of cmendla since my profile is https://github.com/cmendla .
When you create the repo:
- Be sure that the repo name matches your profile
- Be sure that the repo is PUBLIC
- Check the “Add a README” box. You could do it later but it is much simpler to do it when creating the repo.
The page will look similar to the following. Note the big green box telling you that you ‘found a secret’
Next steps.
- Start creating the README.md file. You could do the readme by hand or you can use an online markup editor such as https://stackedit.io/app#https://stackedit.io/app# I used the WYSIWYG to get the rough outline. I periodically overwrote the repo and committed.
- Once you get most of the profile created, you can simply edit it with the built in GitHub Editor.
- Since I am actively seeking full time employment or gigs, I added that to the top.
- Upload any files that you want to include. For example, you can upload a Word and PDF copy of your current resume. I added a note to users to look for the download button to load the files.
- Add in your skills and highlights.
- Link to other relevant social media and anything you have that can be considered portfolio content.
- I have contact information in the left sidebar of my GitHub profile. I suppose you could add it to your Readme as well.
- It is probably best to keep the profile to the equivalent of a page. Use links to expand any details.
Summary
Of course, there is no guarantee that this will enhance your job search. However, it is worthwhile considering:
- Many employers will at least take a quick look at your GitHub profile.
- The investment in time and effort is minimal
- It will help you stand out from the crowd.
- It is a place where you can make your resumes easily available for your purposes and for recruiters.
One downside is that it is another profile that needs to be updated when you are updating your resumes and profiles.
Note that your standard GitHub Stats will be at the bottom of your profile page.
I’d like to thank https://dev.to/devster/how-to-make-your-github-profile-more-captivating-34p9 for the idea on enhancing my profile.