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Comment by quickthrower2 | Hacker News Reader

In my experience no one cares about the portfolio. They want your CV, some references and to pass some coding tests. Now to be fair I am not going for the highest paid jobs or jobs required deep computer science knowledge, but for the ordinary job I have found that recruiters and employers alike look at CV. They might look at github if you are lucky.

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Here's how I review resumes. I'll scan the document for evidence of some kind of selectivity in terms of education and/or past employers. I ignore action phrases, GitHub accounts etc. If I see one that interests me I'll setup a phone call. It's a common misconception that we look for reasons to hire someone when in fact the opposite is true: we are looking for reasons to say 'no'.

Same here: I pretty much look at where they worked before and what they did there. If I think that fills the requirements then we'll have a chat. Anything other than that half a page of information is just noise.

I couldn't agree more, and this list pretty much lost me right from the start.

If you're fresh out of university, GitHub is useful because it demonstrates relevant non-academic code you've written outside of your studies.

After you've got your first job, I don't care about your GitHub profile unless you've got some impressive stuff on there. As an employer, I care about your ability to work on non-trivial problems in a team, and unless you're contributing to OSS (which few CS grads do) you'll never have this on your "portfolio".

In my experience, your GitHub profile is only noteworthy if you have:

* Breadth of work. Loads of projects in a load of languages that demonstrates you're a tinkerer * Depth of work. At least one project with 5+ stars that solves a non-trivial problem.

Otherwise, that profile is usually some boilerplate code for a MOOC course or to try a language for the first time, and when hiring that's not an indication of anything.

If you aren’t using your network (you have a network right?). You’ve already failed.

No one in tech knows how to hire so its all network based. This isn’t a good thing but it’s where we are.

I don't do networking, and I don't make a lot of friends outside of work, so I really only know people I have worked with before, and those people are mostly working at the same company I left, or they are working at companies I don't want to work at.

So I've failed by the bar set in your comment, but for some reason I don't feel that way, because there are plenty of jobs out there on job boards. I got 1 job through my network (an ex boss) and it wasn't any worse or better than the others. I've got a really good job now.

I can see where networking shines, and it's where you went to a top university, made lots of friends - especially in the same course and kept tabs with them since and a lot of them have gone to work for Google (etc.) or cool startups and now you can find an easier way in, which is fair enough.

Note: I'm not in the USA

You do networking everyday of your professional career. It’s a real consideration if the job you are going to take will allow you to work with people you want to work with at the job after this one. Don’t discount that value.

Right now is not a good time to judge your career pathing plan. It’s literally the easiest time to get a job in computing in modern history, which includes the first web boom. It’s like judging your investment strategy right now. That said if your plan is working, great! I wouldn’t spend much time on indeed if it were me but good for you.

Note: all of my jobs ever have come from networks and I went to the wrong state school and have never worked for Google.

Not had trouble finding work this way for 16 years. I do think it is interesting that things can change - black swans and all that. I don't feel that afraid as I managed to get a job as a grad after the .com bust. Unless computing goes out of fashion? Or get really easy to program.

Your last job, how did you get it? Literally didn’t involve any precious coworkers?

No, it was advertised on LinkedIn. Coworkers only required for references.

So you only used a site dedicated to your online network for the first contact and your in person network for the final conversion.

Seems like networks had nothing to do with your job to me...

>So you only used ...

Nope I used more than one job search method.

It was Advertised. They paid for an advert. To be advertised to strangers.

It might as well have been a Facebook ad or a Google search ad, for all that networks had to do with it.

> Your in person network for the final conversion

Yes references. That's a bit different though.

I didn't use my network to get a job. I moved to a new country with no network. I have a well paying job and am quite happy. I have not failed.

I can see the benefit of having a network, and even leveraging it. But it is not everything.

How did you get your job?

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