Same experience here. Everyone says you should spend your nights and weekends building a portfolio on top of your day job, but no one looks at it when you apply. And then you get put aside because you didn’t know for sure in an instant what is the result of `‘1’ + 1` in JavaScript.

When possible I bypass shorteners so candidates won't know when I've looked, eg add + to the end of bit.ly links.

I mean why would someone want to visit your online portfolio if it looks like you didn't even put in enough effort to get a proper domain?