1. Tell about your work

As I said, the main purpose of your portfolio is to show your work. You are free to go with a full-fledged case-study of your involvement with a certain company or a product you worked on, or you can keep it short and simple with just a few lines describing your role and the stack you used to contribute to said product. One very important thing to note here is to align your skills with the work you are showcasing on your portfolio. For example, if you have listed Node.js as a skill, make sure you put at least one project where you worked with Node.js (and obviously mention it there). Also, make sure to put a link to said website or the code on Github because clients or employers will want to look into the final product.

2. Don’t use a framework or CMS

This may not be applicable for some depending on factors like your skillset or whether or not you want to integrate a blog, but in most cases, try not use Bootstrap and/or jQuery, or a Content Management System like WordPress. Remember, your portfolio itself is a live demonstration of a lot of skills that you say you possess, so the fact that you don’t need a CSS framework to maintain your grid, or jQuery to manipulate your DOM can go a long way. Write your own breakpoints, use vanilla JS instead of jQuery (check here), and even if you decide to go with WordPress for a blog or just easier editing of content, make sure to code it from scratch and not just grab a theme from somewhere.

3. Go easy on the design

This is where I see most people mess up. Yeah, I get it, you are probably a developer and not much of a designer, but there are a lot of inspirations for good web design, for example, on Dribbble and Awwwards. Even if you’re not a designer, you should spend a good amount of time on figuring out something that is not an eyesore. Also, please make sure to not fill the entire website with your pictures or pictures of your cat. Nobody is interested. As for fonts, keep them simple and do not use a combination of more than two fonts. Look into Font Pair for ideas and inspirations.

4. Write

This may take some time to get used to, but write. Write on your own website or pick a platform, like Medium. Blogging helps you learn and fine tune your technical skills because when you want to write something for the world to see, you will most likely make sure that whatever you are writing is actually correct and that you are not going to make a fool out of yourself. Write about how you solved a certain problem you were facing, or explaining how you built a certain project. Go as far as writing a tutorial out of it, even. Doing this, you will learn how to explain and justify your thought process and your flow of work, and demonstrate your skills to your prospective clients or employers. I’d also like to point out how a lot of developers lack people skills, so blogging will also help you practice your communication skills and expand your network, which is just as important as building your hard skills.

5. Get rid of the skill bars

These skill bars don’t say anything

These skill bars are a nonsense trend that I have been seeing for a few years now. It does not tell a prospective client or employer, or anyone else for that matter, anything about your skills other than that you have some arbitrarily chosen competency in a domain. Get rid of them, seriously. You will definitely need to list your skills in your portfolio, but there are plenty of other ways to do that.

6. Trim out unnecessary social links

Your prospective employee or client is not interested about your Instagram. Or Last.fm. Or Snapchat. Or Facebook, Tumblr, Vine, YouTube, Spotify, Pinterest. Trust me, these links only go to show your narcissism. List only the relevant social network profiles — LinkedIn, Github, Dribbble, or any media where most of the content are not about your personal life.

7. Think outside the box

Most portfolios you will see have this common cookie-cutter flow of content: About, Skills, Previous Work, Testimonials, Contact. Do something else. Move things around. Think outside the box. Anything that you do differently than most portfolios out there will catch the employer’s attention and make you stand out from the rest.