Latest / The Tech Career Podcast with Fexingo: Engineering Jobs, Interviews, and FAANG Career Strategy / How to Build a Tech Portfolio That Gets Recruiters to Call You
Transcript
- Lucas: So you've spent months grinding LeetCode. You've got your resume down to one page with bullet points that actually say something. You apply to a dozen roles and… silence. Luna: Right. The black hole. It's frustrating because you know you can do the job, but the piece of paper isn't getting you through the door. Lucas: Exactly. And I think the fix isn't a better resume. It's a tech portfolio. A public, curated collection of your work that shows how you think, not just what you've done. I talked to a recruiter at Google recently who told me that over 70 percent of hiring managers at FAANG will look for your online presence before they even schedule a phone screen. Luna: Seventy percent — that's huge. So if your portfolio is empty or nonexistent, you're essentially invisible to most of the people who could hire you. Lucas: Exactly. And the good news is you don't need a Stanford degree or a decade of experience. A well-documented side project can signal more about your engineering ability than a lot of formal credentials, because it's concrete. A recruiter can actually see your code, read your design decisions, and get a sense of how you communicate. Luna: I think that's the part people miss. It's not just about throwing code on GitHub. It's about telling a story. What problem did you solve? Why did you choose that approach? What tradeoffs did you make? Lucas: Yes. And that's where the README comes in. The README is the most underrated piece of your portfolio. It's the first thing anyone reads — a recruiter, a hiring manager, another engineer on your future team. If your README is empty or just says 'my project,' you've already lost them. Luna: So what does a good README look like? Give me a concrete example. Lucas: Alright. Let's say you built a simple CLI tool that converts markdown files to PDF. A bad README has the name and maybe a link to download it. A good README starts with a one-liner: 'markdown to pdf converter with custom CSS support.' Then a paragraph on why you built it — maybe you were tired of fighting with other tools. Then installation instructions, usage examples with code blocks, and a section on limitations or future work. Luna: The limitations part is smart. It shows self-awareness and maturity as an engineer. Lucas: Exactly. And it invites collaboration. If someone sees you've listed known issues, they might submit a pull request. That's a signal too — you're part of a community, not just a solo coder. Luna: Let's talk about the portfolio itself. Should it be a personal website, a GitHub profile, or both? Lucas: Both is ideal, but if you only have time for one, make it GitHub. The reason is that GitHub is where engineers live. Recruiters know how to navigate it. A personal website is nice for branding — you can add a bio, a photo, links to your writing — but the code repos are the meat. If you do build a site, keep it simple. One page, no heavy JavaScript frameworks. Just your projects, a short bio, and contact info. Luna: I'd add that your GitHub profile itself is a portfolio. The pinned repos, the commit history, the stars you've given to other projects — it all tells a story. I've seen profiles that look barren because someone has 50 private repos and nothing public. Make your best work public, even if it's not perfect. Lucas: That's a great point. And if you're worried about code quality, remember that recruiters aren't grading you on style. They're looking for clarity, structure, and evidence that you can ship. I've seen projects with a few hundred lines of Python that landed people interviews because the README was excellent and the code was well-organised. Luna: So what's the single most common mistake engineers make with their portfolio? Lucas: They try to show too much. They have fifteen projects, each with a three-line README and incomplete code. It's better to have three polished projects than a dozen half-finished ones. Pick your best work, make it shine, and delete the rest. A portfolio is a filter, not a dump truck. Luna: I love that. 'A portfolio is a filter, not a dump truck.' That's going on a t-shirt. Lucas: You know, this conversation about making your work visible is exactly why we keep this podcast ad-free. We want the advice to be purely useful, not broken up by commercials. If you find this kind of practical, no-fluff content valuable and you want to support that choice, you can buy us a coffee. The link is buy me a coffee dot com slash fexingo. No pressure at all — just an option for people who want to keep this resource available. Luna: Yeah, it's a small way to say 'keep going,' and we really appreciate it. Now, back to portfolios — Lucas, you mentioned earlier that portfolios can help with career gaps or pivots. Can you expand on that? Lucas: Sure. Let's say you've been out of the workforce for a year — maybe you took time off to travel or care for a family member. On a resume, that gap can raise questions. But if you have a portfolio with projects you built during that time, it completely reframes the narrative. Instead of 'gap,' it's 'used the time to build X and Y.' Same for pivoting — if you're a backend engineer trying to move into machine learning, your portfolio can show side projects in ML even if your day job hasn't given you that experience. Luna: That's powerful. It turns a weakness into a strength because you're proactively demonstrating skill acquisition. Lucas: Exactly. And I want to give a concrete example. There's a developer I know — let's call her Priya — who spent two years as a product manager before deciding to go back to engineering. She didn't have any recent coding experience on her resume. So she built three projects over six months: a weather app using a public API, a simple task manager with user authentication, and a data pipeline that pulls from Twitter's API and does sentiment analysis. She documented each one thoroughly on GitHub, wrote a short blog post about her journey, and put it all on a personal site. Within two months of updating her LinkedIn, she had three interview offers, one from a FAANG company. Luna: That's exactly the kind of story people need to hear. It's not about being a genius; it's about being systematic and showing your work. Lucas: Right. And the blog post is a nice touch. It doesn't have to be long — 500 words on why you built each project and what you learned. That adds a layer of communication skill that many engineers overlook. Recruiters love seeing that you can write clearly about technical topics. Luna: So let's say someone listening wants to start building their portfolio today. What's the first step? Lucas: Pick one project that solves a problem you actually have. Don't build a generic todo app. Build something you'd use. Maybe it's a script that automates a boring part of your job, or a small web app for a hobby. The motivation will keep you going, and the authenticity will show in the documentation. Then, make it public and write the README as if you're explaining it to a colleague who's never seen the code before. Luna: I'd add: don't worry about originality. Every project has been done before. What matters is your execution and your explanation. Lucas: Exactly. And once you have one solid project, pin it to your GitHub profile, add it to your LinkedIn projects section, and include a link in your resume. Then repeat the process. Over time, you'll have a portfolio that does more talking than any bullet point ever could. Luna: It's interesting — we spend so much time on interview prep, but the portfolio is what gets you the interview in the first place. It's the gatekeeper. Lucas: It really is. And the beautiful thing is, unlike a resume, a portfolio is living. You can update it, add new work, remove old stuff. It grows with you. So I'd encourage anyone listening to start small. One project, one README, one commit today. Luna: And if you've already got a portfolio, what's the one thing you should check right now? Lucas: Your READMEs. Open each repo and ask yourself: if I were a recruiter who knows nothing about this project, could I understand what it does, how to run it, and why it matters within 30 seconds? If the answer is no, rewrite it. That's the highest-leverage change you can make. Luna: Great advice. And we'll put links to some good README examples in the show notes. Lucas, any final thought? Lucas: Just that the portfolio is your chance to control the narrative. Don't let your resume be the only thing people see. Luna: Well said. That's all for this episode of The Tech Career Podcast. We'll be back next week with more practical advice for your engineering career.