Hey everyone👋 hope you all are doing good. Today, we will talk about the importance of showing your work and how to do it effectively. It doesn't matter how skilled you are if people don't know you or there is no proof of your skills. Ask yourself this question, "Why you are learning this skill?" and if the answer is, that someday you want to monetize it and maybe even make it a full-time job, then my friend you need to have proof of your work. Let's deep dive into this discussion on Why you need to show your work and how you can do it.
Importance of proof of work
If you want to get paid for your skills, you have to convince your employer that you are good enough and they are putting their money on the right person.
When you show your work you open yourself to the hidden opportunities that even you are not aware of. When you show your work to the world you are not waiting for opportunities to come to you. Instead, you are putting yourself out there and letting others know about your skills.
There are many other benefits of showing your work to the world:
- Network: When you share your work with the world, people and communities working in the same space interact with you, and you build a healthy and strong network of like-minded people. This network can help you get a freelance gig or an internship or a job offer. This network will help you when you'll feel stuck. Developer communities are awesome and when you put your work out there you become part of these communities.
- Authority: When you share your work consistently people see your growth. They see all your ups and downs and the good work that you do. You build up trust with the community regarding your skills. You establish an authority that you know that skill, you are good at it and people can believe you.
- Leverage: When you establish authority over your skills, you can leverage that. People have seen your work, and they trust you. You can leverage this to create different streams of income. You can create content like blogs, paid courses, YouTube channel, email newsletter, etc.
I'm pretty sure that by now you should be 💯 percent convinced about sharing your work.
How to show your work?
Now you know the importance of showing your work and the perks you get with it. Let's now see how you can show your work in an effective way.
You can share your work on social media sites like Twitter and LinkedIn. I will highly recommend Twitter as it has strong developer communities on it and it's really easy to interact with people. And if you are a developer then having an active GitHub profile is a must. Put your work on GitHub and be active on it. If you want to get started with GitHub, I have written an introductory article on it. Read it here.
However, these sites are only good for sharing your work and are not good for professional proof of your work that, people can see and get to know you and your work better in one place. You need something specifically for this purpose and that's a portfolio website.
A portfolio consists of links to all your important works, your social media handles, a little about you, and any other work experience that you may have. However, creating such a website and keeping it updated is a cumbersome task, especially for a beginner developer. Don't worry I'm not going to leave you hanging here, I have come up with all the solutions.
Presenting fueler.io
Want a portfolio for yourself but don't want to go through the hassle of creating and keep updating one. fueler is here to help, it's a web application that allows you to create your profile on it, adding links to your projects and social media profiles, you can add about your work experience and your educational background.
It's very easy to update information on the fueler. It'll have all your projects, work experience, and all about you under one link.
This is what my profile looks like👆. Check out my page on fueler and create one for you and share it.
Conclusion
Go, build in public and share about the awesome work you are doing. Show your skills to the world, and don't let inferiority complex or imposter syndrome stop you. Nobody is going to judge you, the community is very supportive and encouraging.
Thanks for reading and do share your fueler.io page link or your portfolio link with me in the comments section. If you like reading my article consider following me on Hashnode Mudit Mishra and Twitter.