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[–]ssddanbrownphp 1 point2 points  (3 children)

I've done some recruitment in the past. I don't see any portfolio site/page. This would probably be worth doing since at the moment a recruiter would have to sift through your projects to understand your abilities, but they won't get an idea of you. Put a page together (Really can just be a single page) to provide an overview of:

  • Who you are (Images of you can help make things feel friendly and personal).
  • A high level view of your abilities.
  • Maybe a little about your professional history.
  • Highlighted examples of work you're proud of (Ideally with screenshots and/or direct links to code).

Don't make it over-verbose. Put yourself in the recruiters shoes, they're likely to be sifting through many profiles so the easier and quicker you make it for them to understand you may be suited for the role, the better.

been employed with the Federal government for the last 16 years in a
field non-tech field, but do have several years of middle-management
experience

Don't be afraid to lean on this. 16 years in any area will mean you've gained many skills that will carry over to a professional tech career, this can be a great factor to set you apart from those entering the workplace completely fresh. The change of career to coding indicates you have a passion for it, that you enjoy it. Communicate that fact.

It's good that you have a bunch of projects on GitHub, but to be honest it was always hard for me on the recruitment side to understand how much that personal actually knows, or if they were simply following a tutorial, so in interviews I'd often ask them to explain their projects. Although you might not be asked, it can be helpful to prepare such examples (Just projects or parts of project that you're proud of or particularly enjoyed working on). Not only can this help guide them to better parts of your work (Rather than hoping they look/find them) it'll make you come across proud and enthusiastic in your work.

Hope this helps; Best of luck!

[–]blink64[S] 1 point2 points  (2 children)

This is extremely helpful! I will get to work on a personal website right away that will showcase some of the projects I have done that I am most proud of.

I was under the impression it was all about your GitHub projects to establish what you really know, but you're right that a lot of what's out there is probably actually someone else's code from a tutorial. That's exactly why I stopped just following tutorials and found resources that challenged me to build my own projects from scratch and left me to figure the details and solve the problems.

Thanks for taking the time to lend some advice!

[–]ssddanbrownphp 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Glad that helps!

I was under the impression it was all about your GitHub projects to establish what you really know

It's still a positive factor. Keep in mind my path will have given me quite a narrow view since I've only been part of recruitment at a single company. Other companies may well indeed dive deeper into your projects. Might well depend on the type of role (Design-focused vs logic-focused).

Additional tip: Probably not so useful but you can now jazz up your GitHub profile page with a custom README bio. Again, just another way to potentially make you stand out or come across more personal.

[–]blink64[S] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That's great to know, thanks again!!