General
𝥷 I included at least three projects on my GitHub account.
𝥷 My GitHub account demonstrates my knowledge of how to make incremental commits.
𝥷 My commit graph shows many green squares, at minimum for the last two weeks. (This indicates that commits have been pushed regularly).
Hiring Perspective: The first thing that a recruiter or hiring manager will look at is your commit graph and the frequency of contribution. Next, they will usually dig deeper into projects to get a sense of the kind of engineer you are. Regular activity and major contributions indicate a passion for coding, and companies want to hire people that love to code because it correlates highly with success in the workplace.
Check out interesting projects using https://github.com/explore
Personal Profile
𝥷 My GitHub username is professional.
𝥷 My profile picture is a professional image.
𝥷 My profile includes at least one up-to-date link for 'URL' and/or 'Company' fields and/or
‘Contact Email’.
𝥷 My profile includes my current location.
Hiring Perspective: Recruiters will use links to your personal online profiles or social media to learn about your personal interests, so be sure to showcase any relevant passions.
Recruiters and companies will also pay attention to your personal details to judge whether you’re presenting yourself professionally to the world.
Tip: If you have an online persona or currently feature your "brand" on GitHub (Example: your Gravatar image is your own company's logo instead of your face), you may need to evaluate if this presentation is professional.
Projects
𝥷 My last commit made matches the Udacity Git Commit Message Style Guide. If it does not, I
am following another style guide.
𝥷 My projects are forked appropriately.
𝥷 My projects have meaningful names and descriptions.
𝥷 My most recent three projects have a completed README practices.
Hiring Perspective: Recruiters and companies will check whether a candidate’s commit messages are properly formatted. Companies want to know how well you’re able to record for yourself and others information essential for properly maintaining code over time.
Tip: Not all forked repos/changes require modifications to the README, especially when contributing upstream to another's project (would need to be a substantial change). All changes should be documented with commit messages to explain the changes. Technical recruiters may or may not be programmers, so they may not be able to understand code or run code. Even if they do, they may not want to invest time in seeing what your project looks like. READMEs are a way to immediately tell the recruiter how you can produce a great product or project. A poor README is a poor reflection on the effort you'd put into a work project.
Going the extra mile
𝥷 I have contributed to an open source project.
𝥷 I have starred at least one repository I’d like to keep track of.
Hiring Perspective: When you contribute to open source projects, it’s a valuable opportunity to interact with other engineers. Recruiters and companies review your public activity to look for evidence of strong collaboration and teamwork.
Tip: If you’re only just beginning, try finding some documentation (even the ReadMe), cloning the project, and clarifying or updating it based on the problems you personally encounter. Next, you can submit a poll request. Once you’ve built up some confidence, you’ll be able to move on to fixing bugs and contributing to features.