Building an Online Profile
Tags: beginners, tutorial, career, github
Published: 2023-06-25 18:47:37

Having an online presence is among the top 10 priorities of thriving in the ever booming Tech world. The last 15 years alone have shown over a 2 billion people rise in social media usage. Being a 1997 baby myself, I've experienced great advances with many more to follow.

Not only is it crucial to know the lines of code that we write to create entire systems; We also have to construct a virtual platform of ourselves to create our futures. Schools, big companies and even small businesses are using many different hiring websites to look for ideal candidates. 
People of all ages are learning to use technology. Joining the Software Engineering profession in schools or from the comfort of their home. Even more incredible, there are people with little to no knowledge joining. Creating a community!

There are many tools out there that can help you to practice and modify code. One of the biggest tools is GitHub and Visual Studio Code (VS Code). GitHub has many repositories to fork and clone, and allows groups to work together. GitHub is a public resource for everyone. Teachers and employers are able to access your profile to see what work that has been started and projects finished. Making it immensely useful and important to have updated. Vs Code is a platform that can be used to create, edit, or practice coding. VS Code provides an organized space to write and integrate changes necessary for functions. These two systems are able to ingrate together. Pushing your work from VS Code allows progress commits and also checkpoints for groups with:
```
git add .
git commit -m "creates myfile.md"
git push
```
That leaves it open for group members to `git pull` from their systems, allowing smooth exchange.

There are hundreds of extensions available for install that can improve technique, color organize, and also add a little fun into coding. An example would be VS Pets. A small virtual animal at the bottom left of the screen for reminders of how important it is to take breaks and refresh.  

Some websites that are good to have in the tool belt are LinkedIn and Indeed. Here you can upload resumes that hold all previous experiences and jobs. Indeed provides small quizzes to take about certain knowledge fields to show a level of comprehension. Where as LinkedIn has classes available to gain more knowledge, and it shows an understanding that we never truly stop learning. These sites can help you build up a profile with examples and templates to input personal information. 
We use them to help us create these profiles, but ultimately what we came here for is a job! LinkedIn and Indeed are first and foremost job search engines! 

Join some social media groups of your own! There are many more sites and apps available that have coding forums of their own. Such as Reddit, Quora, Medium, and Discord. Joining a virtual community can help in more ways than just helping build a portfolio. An open forum for questions, help or just sharing can improve personal and social skills. It may not seem like a software engineer has to be social, but that is a myth! Team work and communicating syntax or asking questions is a major part of the foundation.  

Employers are going to be looking at two things specifically. They want to know what technical ability, and what kind of team fit that person is going to make. These are so important to keep in mind when creating a portfolio. They'll want to get a good idea of the person that would be filling their position. 

This project will be changing all the time. Keep updated and stay informed. Always remember to Ctrl + S ;)