Personal Websites ?

[nelsonic]

from : https://github.com/Jwhiles/cv-site/issues/28#issuecomment-273056468 In case it gets "lost" ...

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@Jwhiles what @bradreeder said. 😉 👍

expanding on it a bit ...

White links on a pink background ... 🤔

Background Reading

• https://www.viget.com/articles/color-contrast
• http://graphicdesign.stackexchange.com/questions/15142/which-is-easier-on-the-eyes-dark-on-light-or-light-on-dark
• http://uxmovement.com/content/when-to-use-white-text-on-a-dark-background/
• https://www.nngroup.com/articles/text-over-images

Great Example Personal CV Website

if you're looking for a personal site of a F&C 4 Grad that gets results, look no further than @markwilliamfirth http://markwilliamfirth.com 😍 #textbook

Mark might not be working as a "developer", but he certainly is leveraging technology to solve real human challenges and has a high positive impact on the world. ❤️ ✅ If anything he hasn't allowed himself to be "pigeon-holed" as a "Dev".

Learning from the Best

If you're searching for a GitHub-based CV that tells your prospective employer everything they need to know in less than a minute - which, let's face it, is an exceeding generous amount of time for someone who's time is worth £3/minute which is the case for "Engineering Managers" at top tech firms - have a look at:

• @Neats29 (F&C 4): https://github.com/Neats29/CV and/or
• @heron2014 (F&C 5): https://github.com/heron2014/CV

tl;dr

Here's the "user story" you are solving for:

As a tech lead who's time is scarce (20+ team members & multiple projects demanding my attention and 100 CVs to read...), I want to be impressed by a candidate in the first 5 seconds so that I know the person is not wasting my time.

No Personal Website...?

I'm lucky in that I don't have a personal website, it's not an "accident" or "laziness" ... (they are a lot of work to maintain and more often than not just show narcissism. not sayin' that's the case for your site, just in general...)

I discovered pretty early on that personal websites only matter if they are amazing.

I often think: would I be more successful with a slick personal site. usually conclude: probably, yes. But then I think about all my peers who have sites and how most of them aren't making anything particularly interesting... and end up going back to focussing on my work...

Content is the best calling card.

However...

Expert Mode

Given that you already have a personal website and domain

If you ever decide to "shoot for the stars" and by leveling up to "expert mode": look at what @jongold is doing on http://jon.gold 😮 he still has a http://www.jon.gold/txt for SEO/"findability" (sometimes I think he has too much time! but then I remember he's just doing what he loves so isn't "watching the clock" when he's in his element ...) BTW: someone who consistently prioritises getting out of the building though not at the "expense" of his deep technical knowledge/skill ... 😉 Highly recommend reading:

• http://www.jon.gold/2015/07/functional-css/
• http://www.jon.gold/2016/04/a-single-craft/
• http://www.jon.gold/2016/06/declarative-design-tools/

A personal website with regularly updated content is 😍 there's a reason why @jongold is at the top of his game, so grateful we got to "hangout" with (and be inspired by) him before he was "famous" and know he's just a (really) nice guy who happens to be insanely talented and works really hard when nobody is watching... Jon is Living the "Tech Nomad" Dream ❤️ By contrast, @cwaring doesn't have a "personal CV website" but he no less talented/successful than Jon... 🤔

(and even then I've seen other member of a hiring panel reject people who had "sick" personal websites because they hadn't been updated in ages or simply didn't show the skills they were claiming on their CV... but I digress...)

Conclusino

Most of the time the "Recruiter" or "Hiring Manager" is only searching for keywords. So having a good LinkedIn profile (with the keywords you want to be "found" for) which then links to a GitHub profile which shows deliberate practice is more than enough for them to pick up the phone and call you.

Your site is looking good so far. But as a middle-class-white-male, you might want to do/make something to stand out.

It's less about the words on the page (or the colors for that matter) and more about demonstrating craft.

[Jwhiles]

@nelsonic this is really helpful! Though you've destroyed my dream that simply using a monospace font would make every hiring manager love me.

I appreciate that a personal site isn't the most important thing in the world, though we were advised by the speaker from Filament that having one (or at least a html CV) would in his eyes put us straight to the top of the pile.

My site uses markdown, so I'm planning to host an identical CV on github and then either link people to http://www.johnwhiles.com/#cv whilst hosting the exact same content on github.

I'm struggling to think of ways of making myself stand out. I have significant voluntary experience, but it doesn't seem like something that would be particularly relevant to a tech hiring manager - other than this I'm not sure what I could add?

I'm still in the process of revising my CV. If I send it over to you once I consider it done, would you be willing to give me some quick comments on the content?

[jsms90]

Amazingly useful set of comments for us all @nelsonic

Really great advice:

It's less about the words on the page (or the colors for that matter) and more about demonstrating craft.

But @Jwhiles, your use of colour and wording like:

After graduating I worked as a fashion model. This broadened my horizons and ruined my chances of ever having my own website be the first Google result for my name.

are a huge part of communicating your personality :grin: Never change :wink:

[nelsonic]

@Jwhiles always available for CV review/advice. 🤓 There are quite a few people in F&C ecosystem who have better general CV experience than me. We need general advice which people should follow as a baseline. Then it's a question of building something interesting/useful that showcases your skills which you can use as a "portfolio"...

[jemgold]

Miss you Nelson 💗

Some thoughts:

• everything that provides content should work without JavaScript. It's a pain but it's doable - jon.gold/Welcome etc etc are all server rendered, not just the blog.

• make sure it's easy to deploy & work on. I always skimp for personal sites because it seems like overkill at the time, but months later when you're trying to remember a complex series of commands on a server you haven't touched in a while you'll regret it. I guess this is a principle across projects, but I touch my personal sites much less than apps I work on.

[iteles]

@nelsonic We need to capture all this knowledge somewhere more public - it would be a shame to have this huge amount of info and Jon's comments get lost in an issue! :heart:

[nelsonic]

@iteles nah... no need to "capture" this anywhere other than here, if people are interested they can read it ...

I 100% acknowledge that it's "anecdotal" and "subjective". 💭 .each person should figure out (for themselves) if a personal website "works" for them.

I've worked with hiring/team/HR managers who prioritise personal sites on a few occasions during initial selection process; it can make a difference especially if the site is outstanding.

Equally I've seen people rejected outright because their personal site was stale, unattractive or had invalid html. e.g: https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.johnwhiles.com ... not trying to "pick on" John just an example ... by contrast: https://validator.w3.org/nu/?doc=http%3A%2F%2Fwww.dwyl.io

Point is: .some people pay (way) more attention to this than others. I would definately (always) look at a personal site and factor it in selection process, but would hope to avoid penalising someone because they didn't have time to keep a personal site up-to-date. I pay way more attention to knowledge sharing and GitHub activity. specifically work on both personal projects (are the projects "hello world" or interesting...?) and contribution to Open Source projects they use but don't own! e.g: https://github.com/rtfeldman/elm-workshop/issues/8 (this is the best proxy for judging if the person going to prioritise the community over themselves?)

[Jwhiles]

Thanks @nelsonic !

[Jwhiles]

That's a really ridiculously incredibly useful website that I'm horrified I've never seen before

[jsms90]

@nelsonic I agree with @iteles - this needs to be captured

@Jwhiles Unless I'm missing something, you don't need a whole website to do this. The accessibility and HTML outliner chrome extensions are good for this :+1:

[nelsonic]

https://zen-of-programming.com/kickass-portfolio/ Via/comments: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=17671490

[nelsonic]

Tempted by a .dev domain ... reasonably priced ($12 per annum) https://domains.google/tld/dev/ Google is giving "Domainers" and Companies a chance to snap them up for a premium ...

[jemgold]

What a wretched game of chicken to play with your credit card! I'm looking for a snappy domain for a new thing (that I might DM you about before it's public, Nelson) and this looks perfect. Now, to calculate the imagined popularity of the 6-letter noun I want. What day do I buy it on?

On Sat, Feb 16, 2019, 7:08 AM Nelson <notifications@github.com wrote:

Tempted by a .dev domain ... reasonably priced ($12 per annum) https://domains.google/tld/dev/ Google is giving "Domainers" https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Domain_name_speculation and Companies a chance to snap them up for a premium ... [image: image] https://user-images.githubusercontent.com/194400/52901517-8e464400-31fc-11e9-81ab-36875435aa12.png

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[nelsonic]

https://writing.markchristian.org/2019/04/29/personal-web-sites https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=19784907

[nelsonic]

https://www.dannysalzman.com/2020/04/08/analyzing-hn-readers-personal-blogs

[nelsonic]

Good example of GitHub Profile page: https://github.com/doctopus

Via: https://github.com/anuraghazra/github-readme-stats

NoteToSelf

e.g:

<!-- Top Languages & Streaks-->
[![Doctopus's GitHub Top Languages-Dark](https://github-readme-stats.vercel.app/api/top-langs?username=doctopus&show_icons=true&locale=en&layout=compact&hide_border=true&theme=dark#gh-dark-mode-only)](https://github.com/doctopus#gh-dark-mode-only)
[![Doctopus's GitHub Top Languages-Light](https://github-readme-stats.vercel.app/api/top-langs?username=doctopus&show_icons=true&locale=en&layout=compact&hide_border=true&theme=default#gh-light-mode-only)](https://github.com/doctopus#gh-light-mode-only)
[![Doctopus's Github Streaks -Dark](https://github-readme-streak-stats.herokuapp.com?user=doctopus&hide_border=true&date_format=M%20j%5B%2C%20Y%5D&card_width=490&theme=dark#gh-dark-mode-only)](https://github.com/doctopus#gh-dark-mode-only)
[![Doctopus's Github Streaks -Light](https://github-readme-streak-stats.herokuapp.com?user=doctopus&hide_border=true&date_format=M%20j%5B%2C%20Y%5D&card_width=490&theme=light#gh-light-mode-only)](https://github.com/doctopus#gh-light-mode-only)