Job-Ready Software Engineering / 08

Portfolio, interviews, and your next opportunity

40 minutes · Developers and QA professionals

Turn practice into evidence

Make your work easy to believe

A portfolio project answers five questions

  • What problem?
  • Who was it for?
  • What decisions?
  • How tested?
  • What next?

README structure

  • Problem and goal
  • Feature overview
  • Architecture
  • Setup
  • Tests
  • Limitations
  • Screenshots
  • Next improvements

Turn work into a STAR story

  • Situation
  • Task
  • Action
  • Result

Three stories to prepare

  • A bug or failure
  • A collaboration or review
  • A technical trade-off

Demo: turn one artifact into an answer

Tell me about a difficult bug.

Pause: build your 30-day plan

  • Two targeted applications each week
  • Two networking messages
  • One portfolio improvement
  • One interview practice session

Your final package

  • Published project
  • Strong README
  • Three STAR stories
  • Updated résumé and LinkedIn
  • Target-role list
  • 30-day plan

Next step

Make the artifact.

Publish your work, then continue to the next lesson.