Hey everyone, I’ve been working on some full stack projects lately to showcase on my portfolio so I can land a job or an internship somewhere. Meanwhile I’ve been applying to every junior/internship job that I think I could qualify for (around 80 proposals). But none of them have responded yet, so I’m not sure if I’m doing anything wrong or I’m my portfolio/CV isn’t good enough for employees to respond.
Portfolio Link
My CV
P.S: I’ve been applying through LinkedIn
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Wow…
Nice portfolio man. Very solid.
I am also currently looking to get a job or any kind of work really with web development and am very surprised to hear you haven’t heard anything yet with a portfolio and cv like that.
Seeing that your post is 15hr ago , I feel if you give it some time you’re definitely going to hear back from someone. Maybe even try indeed?
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Thank you for the kind words! I’ll keep trying and if I find any cool way of finding a job I’ll post it here
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I’m going to have a slightly different opinion. Keep in mind that I’m a very picky reviewer and keep in mind that this is all just one guy’s opinion.
I like the design of your portfolio, in general, but not as a portfolio. To me, the purpose of the portfolio is to inform the reader, not show off your CSS skills. I don’t like that it takes work to figure out who you are. As a hirer, the info I want, is: who is this, what kind of job do they want, what techs do they know, what have they built, where have they worked, and what have they studied … pretty much in that order. I would much rather have a single page that scrolls through the information - don’t make them work for it.
I have to do work to find that. And your “redacted text” effect - yeah, it’s a cool effect, but not only does it not enhance the reading experience, I think it detracts from it.
In your apps section, I don’t know what some of those buttons do - at least put a tooltip - or get more standard icons.
Your nav bar should be sticky.
Your About section is a bunch of platitudes. What job seeker wouldn’t describe themselves as a “highly driven individual” and “deeply passionate”. I think this is the kind of thing that makes hirers roll their eyes. Don’t tell them, show them.
For me, your “About” section should be about your coding journey, not just puffery. I would also want a little about what type of work you do and what type of position you are seeking, but I might put that on the main page, a few sentences below your introduction.
Leave the labels of you “technical skills” on all the time. Some of the people looking at this are not tech people and don’t recognize this logo. If the HR person knows that they need someone with Passport experience, are they going to indulge in your little puzzle? Or are they going to move on to the 148 portfolios they are have to check before lunch, almost all of whom made it very easy to find the information they need.
VS Code is not a skill, It is a tool. They also don’t care what brand of keyboard you use.
Create your own favicon - don’t just use the default react one.
I’ll take a look at the CV later.
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Thank you for the feedback. I didn’t even think about some of the points that you made. Really helpful advice, I appreciate that you took the time to write such a thorough response. I’ll gladly wait for you to take a look at my CV. Cheers!
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I 100% agree with everything Kevin said, and I think he hit the nail on the head. I honestly cant add much more than that, but I thought I would add this just to put it in perspective.
“ 80% of recruiters say they spend 3 minutes or less on a candidate’s portfolio.”
With that in mind. Try and show the most important stuff first. Like Kevin said, dont make them search for it. To be honest, I doubt most will go searching.
Looking at your CV…
I like it for the most part.
One thing I would say is to be careful about splashes of color. They look great but remember that some people may print this out. I mean, this isn’t too bad, but I might cut back on it a bit, if it were me.
I think there is too much spacing in your contact info and the alignment isn’t quite right.
Again, the Summary, it’s platitudes. I want to hear what position you’re looking for. “I am a MERN stack developer looking for an entry-level position. I live in Argentina but am willing to relocate or work remotely.” That’s what they want to know.
Get rid of the “Skills” - that doesn’t tell them anything that they won’t assume you’d say and they have no reason to believe it.
Why is Courses separate from Education? And the material in the Courses section should be shorter.
There is no reason for a new dev to have a two page CV, I don’t think. Tighten it up, especially the Projects . You don’t need to explain what a “weather app” is - they can figure out, besides the fact that half the new dev portfolios they see have a weather app. Give it a title, five links to the code and the app, maybe give a very brief description (one line max) and maybe a list of the important techs you used. You can have a deeper explanation in the git Readme file or on your portfolio. You don’t need to mention what API you used, just mention that there was an API, I think.
A lot of what I said about getting to the point on the portfolio applies here, but even more so because you have less space.
Watch out for subtle typing things. Like the word “challenge”. In the PDF if is coming out not as two ele (l) characters but as a single elle (ll). I don’t know if it matters, it just confused me for a second.
At the risk of more shameless self-promotion, I once did a doc with my observations on landing the first job.
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Why would someone hire a Junior Developer? Because there aren’t enough Senior Developers. And they’re expensive. And if you have the resources to support a Junior Developer, it’s a good investment.
If you are really asking why someone would hire one Junior Developer and reject another, very often it comes down to that third point: what resources do we have to support them, and are they a good investment? When I am interviewing prospective Junior Developer, the biggest thing I’m trying to figure out is how much time, energy, and direct supervision do I think they’re going to need. What I’m hoping to see is someone who has learned as much as one reasonably can from self-study/bootcamp or university and is ready to take on a complex, team-built project. I expect more senior members of the team to offer them feedback and advice, but not to be a teacher.
Here are my gut reactions to your resume, as someone who interviews candidates (I am not the one who decides who should be interviewed though):
- Visually, it’s cluttered and obnoxious.
- There’s a lot on there that I’m going to ignore anyway: your summary, technical skills, skills, and online courses.
- The layout is atypical, and verbose. I really want to skim your resume for the information that is relevant. Someone applying for a junior position should not exceed one page.
- You only have one item under work experience, and it is less than 3 weeks old.
- Everything on your resume is from the last year. While it’s possible for some people to make an incredible amount of progress in a year, I consider this to be a bit of a yellow flag. I have a strong bias towards people who have been doing this for a while and have had the time to really experience some ups and downs and long-term learning.
- Your projects look suspiciously like coursework and/or tutorial projects. While it’s good to know what technologies you’ve used enough to get a running prototype, I don’t put much stock in any project that were built with instructions.
- I’m not saying these are completely irrelevant, but the only thing they really tell me is what technologies were covered in your online courses/tutorials. I usually don’t even bother looking at the quality of the finished result because I don’t consider it your work.
- I actually find that your list of courses weakens your resume (for me). When I see a bunch of online courses or certificates, it looks like padding a resume. I immediately notice that you were able to complete all 5 courses in a single year, which usually means that none of them were particularly extensive.
One good thing I would like to say about your resume is that under each project, you included the technical skills you utilized (React, interfacing with an API, Sass, etc). This is why I say that the “technical skills” section is wasted space: I’m really only going to consider the ones that are associated with a work experience item or project.
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Wow! I can’t thank you enough for such a detailed list of improvements. I’ll start working on them right away. Again, thank you for taking the time to reply. Cheers!
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Thank you for taking the time to respond, if you don’t mind. Could you send me an example of what a good junior resume should look like? It would be really helpful. Again, thank you for responding. Cheers!
I did my best to work on the feedback and this is what I came up with. You already helped me so much, but could you consider taking a quick look? I would mean a lot, thank you!
It’s looking a lot more professional. Good job! I think the main thing now is to keep building stuff. If you get the opportunity, keep freelancing, build an ambitious project for yourself that you’re excited about, or contribute to open source. Keep up the good work and keep building experience. Good luck!
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I agree with most earlier comments. Personally I’ve also been part of the recruitment process interviewing new employees. I think it’s good you mention your skills as tags, it makes it easily searchable, I know some employers go on say LinkedIn and just search for “frontend” or “backend” then they quickly scroll through your page without properly reading it.
My idea of you is that you’re talented and you enjoy programming. But finding that first job is always the toughest part. Once you have it, you’ll be fine. Although it’s possible the market in Argentina is a bit tougher than in my country.
Also, your “portfolio”, I think you should keep that website as a project and have a separate resume for your applications. It’s a good website, it shows certain skills and motivation, but it’s not very suitable for job applications. But it seems like you’ve already done that, well done!
In regards to your Resume doc, I still think it’s good to tag up the projects with the technology used, like react, redux, javascript … basically with technologies that are sought for.
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Apply at startup, as it will improve your chances getting interview call.
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Senior developers charge more and startups won’t have that much money to give at the beginning, intern or jr developer can work at much lesser compensation and most likely not to jump ship often
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Avoid imposter syndrome at all cost
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Keep applying till you get call, don’t loose hope
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Thank you for taking the time to reply and thank you for the kind words! Hope you stay well 
Thank you for the advice and the kind words! I’ll give remoteok a shot! Cheers!
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Thank you for the advice and the explanation! Cheers!
How come your CV link isn’t working anymore? Do you have it posted on your LinkedI*n account? Do you a link to the updated one?
All the advice here is great, if someone were to look at your portfolio.
In my case not a single person has ever looked at my portfolio. Reasons I was given were similar to
- I can’t be sure how much work you did vs copied
- I don’t have time to look at your portfolio, then analyze your code to make sure it was done using best practices
- We have to keep a standardized process for legal reasons. And looking at your portfolio when we don’t explicitly ask for it opens a can of worms
And since I can’t view your resume, but you say you’re applying on LinkedIn and not getting replies, I’ll go out on a limb and say it…
A human is not rejecting you. A computer is. You’re very likely not passing their ATS (applicant tracking system), and so no one even knows you’ve applied.
ATS are very keyword driven. And sometimes even filter on education, years of experience, etc. Really depends on what was selected as a filter, and maybe it wasn’t even in the job description.
Without looking at your resume and knowing what jobs you’ve applied to, I can’t really say what’s going wrong. Cuz it could literally just be a formatting issue that prevents the software from parsing your resume.
Nearly every linkedin application I sent where I knew I would match their ATS, a human reached out to let me know they were passing on me.
The ones where I just applied to see if I got lucky? Not even a look (LinkedIn let’s you know when someone viewed your application).
You could try finding who the hiring manager for a particular role is, and reach out to them on LinkedIn. Just don’t come across desperate, but open and wanting to connect. I’ve heard that works, although I’ve personally never tried it.
And unfortunately, try to find a way around the ATS and get in front of a human. Referrals are great for this. So you’ve got to build up your network.
My last suggestion is using onramp or formation to get referrals or apprenticeships.