I guess I’ve been working so hard, I forgot what it’s like to be hardly working.
Building a stellar profile as a student is a daunting task. Let's break the myths and learn the hacks right here, right now.
There are many different types of students. Some of them are concerned about building their profile from an early stage while others think about it only when they approach graduation.
You are probably one of the former since you have taken the first step towards improving yourself as a student in tech by subscribing to this newsletter.
In this edition, I’ll be sharing with you some of the tips and tricks for you to start building your portfolio. Most of these worked for me and some brilliant people around me, while a few of them are lessons from the mistakes I’ve made in the past three years of my college life.
Before we begin, you must know something!
The first rule of MichiSpotlight Club is that you DO talk about MichiSpolitght Club.
Go ahead share this newsletter with your frens and peers. They would definitely thank you for sharing, I’ll make sure of it! ;)
Now then, let’s start by answering the most asked question:
How to build a stellar profile to achieve XYZ?
I try to make sure that whatever I talk about has some data-backed insights from my LinkedIn community. So here’s a little poll I conducted this week!
As you can see, about 53% of 2,373 people believe that they would need real-world projects to build a stellar profile. 32% of them think Internship Experience requires a higher focus.
While I am very happy to see this result, I also believe going step by step is how you start building your profile.
Stellar profile == Standing out from the crowd
In my first year, I explored a ton of domains outside computing like Digital Marketing, Content Creation, Graphic Designing, etc. I believe exploring and mastering these skills is what made me a better developer eventually.
Digital Marketing is something that really helped me develop an on-the-fly mechanism to come up with lame jokes or pop culture references to promote brands/products that I’m building. Although the example below is more of a non-technical form of creativity, you can always try it while creating your portfolio website or while promoting a project that you built.
You might be confused as to how would it help you become a better developer though? The simple answer is that when you are creative you think about more efficient ways to solve a problem.
It is obviously not necessary to master these non-technical skills but exploring them at some point in your student life helps you think from a unique perspective.
When you develop a high sense of creativity, you become an indispensable asset for any team you work with. There are so many great developers out there vying for the same jobs as you do. Creativity is essential when you want to stand out.
Creativity is contagious, pass it on! ~ Einstein
I deeply appreciate the 8% of people who think that a high level of creativity should be our main focus while building a stellar profile. It definitely is the first step towards it.
Creativity Sparks Innovation
For those of us who still think that we need to focus way more on building real-world projects or do internships, you are absolutely right. But, in order for you to build a meaningful project or an impactful product at your company, you need to be innovative.
Being innovative doesn’t necessarily mean that you have to build something different entirely — that’s actually being inventive.
Innovation deals with taking a problem faced by a group of people and solving it using the tools and technology at our disposal.
Here are some amazing comments I received on my LinkedIn poll, you should definitely give them a read.
Building Real-world projects really gives you an actual insight of how much clearly you understand your development skills and also it will help you to be more creative. ~ Rishab Sharma (a commentator on my LinkedIn poll)
For a freshie/sophomore making projects would be a 101. For the junior/final years - exploring internships that helps us gain industrial experience. While going to hackathons and networking throughout. ~ Arnav Rastogi
And, the comment I loved the most:
How about my real-world projects winning competitions :3 ~Md Hishaam Akhtar
In the last edition of MichiSpotlight, I shared with you some platforms where you can find Hackathons and Competitions, I’ll make it a point to share them in every newsletter so that you can keep visiting them regularly.
Do you want to discover more hackathons?
If you are an Indian Student and you *need* to do internships, make sure you go to a lot of hackathons. Especially the ones hosted by Indian companies. They usually use hackathons to recruit seasoned developers who know how to build inspiring stuff in a short amount of time, sounds fair I guess.
Check these websites out if you want to participate in more Hackathons:
The 2021 Major League Hacking Season Hackathons here >>
Check out Devfolio: Your one application to the best hackathons >>
Here are some things you should keep in mind while building projects:
Use the Google Design Thinking Methodology to come up with project ideas. I think you might prefer a nice 30-minute video to learn more about it. Watch this session I took for DSC PSB Academy, Singapore where I explained it in detail. Do use the hacks mentioned during the session for your next real-world project.
Always try to solve a real problem. Even if it is for something as small as your mini project in college. It could be a small problem that you face in your neighborhood.
Build out a nice wireframe or flowcharts to visualize your solutions. Some developers think that this is a waste of time but quite honestly it saves you hours. I recommend using tools like Figma, Miro, or AdobeXD.
Learn how to build product research surveys. Yes, that’s a very startup thing to do. But if you are to build a “real-world” project you need to understand whether people actually need your solution. Here’s an example of a product research survey I made before starting MichiSpotlight. I’ll write a nice blog post about how you can build one too very soon. :)
Don’t use snazzy popular tech stacks because they are snazzy and popular. While choosing the tools and technologies for a project, you need to keep in mind what use-case you have at hand. Don’t go crazy with GraphQL while building a simple application that doesn’t require too many fields, it would just increase the complexity. The same goes for all the newest and snazziest options we have.
Today, we discussed the technicalities of building a strong profile, we will discuss more on how to present your profile next week.
Opportunities round-up for the week
I’m sure you’ve read the previous edition of MichiSpotlight. I talked a lot about Internships in it, make sure you give it a read and apply for the below internship opportunity:
Workforwin Intelligent Systems
Learn more about this opportunity here >>
GitHub Externship Program
This is a new fellowship program announced by GitHub during the GitHub Satellite India Event. In order to be eligible though, you need to be a student of a college which is enrolled in the GitHub Campus Program. You can learn more about it and ask your faculty members to apply for the same.
Code for Cause made a nice video explaining this program >>
Google Developer Student Clubs Lead Applications 2021-22
Many people are confused about the DSC Lead Applications. I’ve been through this process last year so I’m going to share some tips:
If your college already has a DSC, then you should seek a nomination code from your current DSC Lead. As leads, we can only give out 3 codes to students of our college. This would help fast-track your application.
You can apply to be a DSC Lead even if you are currently in your third year, you need to have at least one year of college left to apply.
If your college didn’t have a DSC before, you don’t need a nomination code.
Also, as a part of the DSC Lead application, you need to submit a one-minute video. If you’re confused about it, here’s the one I made while I was applying.
You don’t necessarily need to be the most technically strong person to be Lead. All you need is some foundational knowledge, one good project, and some demonstrated leadership experience.
Also if you don’t get into the DSC program or don’t get a referral from your current lead, you can apply to these student ambassador programs too.
Grace Hopper Celebration 2021 Student Scholarship
Learn more about the vGHC 2021 Conference >>
Apply for the scholarship now >>
Pluralsight: Free April Access
PluralSight is offering 7000+ free resources this month for people to access and level up their skills.
This week’s free resources
Introduction to Deep Learning by MIT
A great place to start learning about Deep Learning once you have a simple understanding of Python.
Check out the YouTube playlist here >>
Launch School Books
They have various programming books from Regular Expressions to Cybersecurity. These books have a very beginner-friendly approach.
Want to get started with Cybersecurity? Check out this Udacity course.
Last Remarks
In this edition, I covered a small portion about building a stellar profile. But a big part of it is all about being efficient. In the following week, I’ll be publishing a special edition of MichiSpotlight which would cover some crazy productivity hacks, motivational speeches, templates, and tricks that you can use to be more productive in life.
Next week, I’ll be talking about Networking on LinkedIn and the Developer Ecosystem since I’m taking a short session on the same this week as a part of DSC-RAIT. If you want to tune in, don’t forget to follow me on LinkedIn to stay updated.
Until next time!
Good read!
Love it!