How I'm Showcasing My Skills

The Norm

Are you looking for a new job? The job search is a natural opportunity to highlight your expertise on a resume. For some, this is the only time marketing yourself becomes intentional. Maybe you do it more often and highlight your abilities for a promotion during an annual review. However, one study suggests that up to 40% of people never do.

It's safe to say that people rarely showcase their skills, lowering your opportunities.

I recently switched careers and joined the tech industry. The recent and ongoing hardships in this sector have made me consider how to increase my employability. One idea is to showcase my skills more often.

To showcase my skills, here are some phrases I keep in mind:

• Build in public
• Learn in public
• Show your work

My Plan

Build in public (projects and a portfolio)

The idea behind "build in public" is to create things so others can see them. In other words, I'm starting a portfolio of my work.

As a developer, I followed the advice to make public repos for my hobby projects on GitHub. My projects aren't original or complex, but they've forced me to stretch out of my comfort zone. In my GitHub, I have four repos:

• A React landing page hooked up to an Express server
• An Express server that adds emails to a mailing list and sends emails using Mailgun
• A vanilla HTML, CSS, & JavaScript website for the frontend of my cloud resume challenge
• A backend for the cloud resume challenge, which only holds code for an Azure Function that updates an Azure CosmosDB table

They're reasonably simple projects, so I don't get stuck brainstorming something "worth doing." I wanted to avoid decision paralysis about what to invest my energy into. The point is to build something and make it visible.

I've deployed these projects instead of simply posting the code and writing instructions on how to get the project up and running. I wanted to make checking out my work easy, like clicking on a URL easy. Especially for simple projects, don't expect someone else to want to download your code and get it operational to see it.

I'm starting to write more blogs. I've had this domain set up but private for a long time. Posting on social media sites like LinkedIn technically involves writing content, but I wanted a home for my musings.

Maintaining a blog means that I can share a link when others ask what kind of writing I do. This is aligned with my personal goal of starting a freelance writing business. Places looking for writers always ask for your written pieces; this blog can be a writing portfolio.

Learn in public (certifications and roadmaps)

The idea behind "learn in public" is to learn things in a way others can see. This manifests itself in certifications that I can share. I am also making my learning roadmap public.

Certifications show that I've gone through a body of content that an organization considered fundamental for a subject. Not only have I gone through the content, but I've also taken a certification exam.

For some certifications, I've read the documentation, followed a learning path, reviewed the material, and repeated practice exams to increase my chances of success on the exam.

Not all of my learning is backed up by a certification. Still, I can display my learning by using my knowledge and skills in a project (like the one you would display in a portfolio).

I signed up for an account on the site roadmap.sh to share my learning roadmaps. I like to follow and update the learning roadmaps that the website holds. I could do a better job of sharing my progress, but it's one of the ways I'm learning in public.

The roadmaps double as a source of content to write about. If something you've learnt doesn't immediately apply to a project, you can write a blog post about it. There's an added benefit of researching a topic better to write about it confidently. Writing ties directly into the following section: show your work.

Show your work (content creation: blogging and videos)

"Show your work" has been a phrase I've kept in mind since reading Austin Kleon's book Show Your Work! It talks about the importance of being discoverable, and that idea has stuck in my mind ever since.

I'm showing my work by creating blogs and social media posts. As mentioned above, I've written about what I'm learning, building, or planning to tackle next. Writing is the one activity that ties all the phrases together.

The learning part allows me to explore new topics for writing. The building part involves maintaining a portfolio and writing decent project descriptions. The planning part shows up by sharing my roadmap of concepts to learn.

Writing is the springboard to other types of content, like YouTube videos. However, producing multiple types of content has been challenging, so I'm focusing on writing. Getting stuck with many unshared pieces that need more polish is easy. I want to refine my writing process before complicating it with video creation.

I tell myself that acquiring expertise and knowledge becomes more valuable when others know I have them. I must be discoverable by sharing what I've written to do this. The driving force behind this activity is to make it easier for an opportunity to find me. To do this, I've committed to sharing as much of my work as possible.

Be discoverable

Showcasing your skills might feel uncomfortable. However, the alternative is being invisible to those with opportunities you're suited for. Shine a bright light on what you've got to offer.