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> The next best interview would be a portfolio. I tried using my (limited) open source hobby project portfolio as a substitute for coding interviews. Companies

> The next best interview would be a portfolio. I tried using my (limited) open source hobby project portfolio as a substitute for coding interviews. Companies either didn't take me up on it, or still also required me to do their regular take-home. Twice now, I have had two companies ask for the same take-home, although in the first case they asked me to re-do the work in their preferred language.

jaaron 6y ago
I think it's a great idea and you should keep trying. Lots of places (somewhat understandably) won't deviate from their policy because consistency of the interview process is a good goal. But at places that are a bit more flexible, it may work.
chucky_z 6y ago
FWIW, as a hiring manager, if someone has a portfolio I definitely judge them on it, and if it's good it allows me to bypass huge swaths of technical/coding interview stuff and dig much deeper into where/what I want. I always take it as a positive, even if it's old stuff.
- RangerScience 6y ago
  What do you find makes a portfolio better or worse for these purposes? Not so much "more likely to get them the job", more... I felt like my projects weren't actually suitable to take the place of coding interviews, largely because I couldn't actually drop in and work on them in the way that coding interviews show me actually doing work.
  - chucky_z 6y ago
    Literally anything. If I see someone with a lot of relevant forked repos, even if they're old, I take that as interest and something I can bring up. If I see a repo of rcfiles I know they care about working efficiently. If I see abandoned stuff with more than 1 commit that's OK, that's something that was cared about at one point. These are just two super generic examples. Almost everything is a positive. The only thing I don't like to see is repos with 1 commit, and nothing other than a README with the repo title in it. Not really negative, more of a 'cmon gimme more.'
decafninja 6y ago
If you are creating a portfolio for the primary purpose of showcasing it to get a job, I don't think it's worth the effort. Maybe there is an exception if you are a high profile contributor to high profile projects. Otherwise the number of companies that care about a candidate's portfolio is small. Just studying leetcode problems is still the most scalable way to a job, unfortunately. A shame, because there are so many things I want to build, work on, or contribute to, but all of that is put on hold until I can land the job first via leetcode.

jaaron 6y ago

I think it's a great idea and you should keep trying. Lots of places (somewhat understandably) won't deviate from their policy because consistency of the interview process is a good goal. But at places that are a bit more flexible, it may work.

chucky_z 6y ago

FWIW, as a hiring manager, if someone has a portfolio I definitely judge them on it, and if it's good it allows me to bypass huge swaths of technical/coding interview stuff and dig much deeper into where/what I want. I always take it as a positive, even if it's old stuff.

RangerScience 6y ago
What do you find makes a portfolio better or worse for these purposes? Not so much "more likely to get them the job", more... I felt like my projects weren't actually suitable to take the place of coding interviews, largely because I couldn't actually drop in and work on them in the way that coding interviews show me actually doing work.
- chucky_z 6y ago
  Literally anything. If I see someone with a lot of relevant forked repos, even if they're old, I take that as interest and something I can bring up. If I see a repo of rcfiles I know they care about working efficiently. If I see abandoned stuff with more than 1 commit that's OK, that's something that was cared about at one point. These are just two super generic examples. Almost everything is a positive. The only thing I don't like to see is repos with 1 commit, and nothing other than a README with the repo title in it. Not really negative, more of a 'cmon gimme more.'

decafninja 6y ago

If you are creating a portfolio for the primary purpose of showcasing it to get a job, I don't think it's worth the effort. Maybe there is an exception if you are a high profile contributor to high profile projects. Otherwise the number of companies that care about a candidate's portfolio is small. Just studying leetcode problems is still the most scalable way to a job, unfortunately. A shame, because there are so many things I want to build, work on, or contribute to, but all of that is put on hold until I can land the job first via leetcode.