Building a Portfolio with Personality

When I first set out to build my personal portfolio a few years ago, I fell into the trap that almost every developer falls into: I stared at Awwwards for three hours, got incredibly intimidated, and then tried to copy the most sterile, corporate-looking “minimalist” template I could find.

I ended up with a site that had a massive hero image of a MacBook, some floating particles in the background, and a bio that read something like: “I am a highly motivated, synergistic frontend engineer passionate about leveraging modern web technologies to drive KPI-oriented solutions.”

It was awful. It didn’t sound like me. It didn’t look like me. If you read that site, you would have zero idea what it was actually like to work with me on a Tuesday afternoon when the production server is on fire.

Your portfolio is your corner of the internet. It is the one place where you don’t have a product manager telling you to make the logo bigger, or a client asking you to use a terrible color palette. It should be a reflection of exactly who you are.

Here are a few lessons I learned when I finally decided to scrap the corporate jargon and build something authentic.

Speak in your actual voice

Nobody speaks in resume-buzzwords in real life. When you write the copy for your site, read it out loud. If you wouldn’t say it to a friend over coffee, delete it.

Instead of saying “I synergize well with cross-functional teams,” just say, “I love working closely with designers and backend devs to get things shipped.” Be conversational. Show that you are a human being who is easy to talk to, because ultimately, people hire people they want to work with.

Don’t be afraid to lean into a theme

I love movies. I love the way the credits roll at the end of a film, recognizing every single person and tool that made the project possible. So, when I redesigned my site, I leaned into that heavily. My portfolio is structured like a cast and crew list.

Is it a little goofy? Maybe. But you wouldn’t believe how many interviews I’ve started where the first thing the hiring manager says is, “I loved the movie credits theme on your site.” It breaks the ice immediately.

If you love retro video games, make your site look like a GameBoy interface. If you’re a typography nerd, use a brutalist, text-heavy design. Look outside of other tech portfolios for inspiration. Look at menus, old posters, magazines, or architecture. Find an aesthetic you actually enjoy and own it.

Show the messy process, not just the shiny result

It’s really tempting to just post a beautiful screenshot of a finished project and link to the live site. But the truth is, the final product doesn’t tell anyone how good of a developer you are.

Anyone can follow a tutorial and ship a decent-looking app. What hiring managers and clients actually want to know is how you think.

Write a little bit about the struggle. Talk about the weird caching bug that kept you up until 2 AM. Talk about how the original design was too slow to render on mobile, so you had to negotiate a compromise with the designer. Talk about the mistakes you made and what you learned from them.

Vulnerability in your case studies shows maturity. It shows that you’ve been in the trenches and you know how to handle it when things inevitably go wrong.

Let your personality shine through the code. You don’t have to be a suit-and-tie developer if you’re a t-shirt-and-jeans kind of person. Build the site that only you could build.