Does portfolio matter?

In a short and to the point answer, Yes! Portfolios matter a lot for creative individuals. They serve as a gallery for all your work that new clients can view and judge your skills from. Having a portfolio is necessary for professional and creative individuals as it catalogs all your skills and abilities and the amount of time you have spent working for specific clients. Even if your portfolio is full of only demo projects and no real client, still new clients consider hiring an individual with a portfolio rather than the one without.

Portfolios are essential in this day and age because the competition is tough to get the best projects. Best projects in the market usually go to the people with the best portfolios that showcase their personal skills. In a professional environment, people with good portfolios are usually considered better than others and are preferred over others as well. Portfolios are considered as the main goto point for any business or company during the hiring period. Imagine yourself as an interviewer for the position of a front end developer, you have many resumes in front of you. How would you arrange them in order from best to worst?

The simplest answer is that you will arrange them based on their experience and portfolios.

Why front end developers should focus on portfolio

Front end development mainly focuses on the design and user experience of the application. Most of the visual aspects of any application are handled by front end developers. Hence for front end developers, it is crucial to have a nice portfolio that shows their skillset and any projects that they might have worked on. When choosing the right people for the visual part of any application or project, the hiring party looks for the creative individuals which might have worked on similar projects before and then make their decision based on the portfolios at hand.

If you are a front end developer working on a resource model (being paid by the hour by some client) then you truly understand the importance of having a good portfolio. Not only a good portfolio attracts clients but also it gives you the ability to choose the projects you want to work on since front end developers with decent portfolios to keep getting new project proposals every now and then. Every front end developer should have an online portfolio even if they are not looking for clients, this helps their career progress substantially in various directions.

Learning how to make portfolios is easy for front end developers, as it is more like a part of their job to focus on the visual side of a web application. This means that they can easily host a simple website to showcase their experience and skills. However, for those who don't know how to create a portfolio can do so by following online tutorials or registering in complete front end web developer Bootcamp.

10 Front end web developer portfolio

Here are some inspiring front end web developer portfolios.

• http://www.rleonardi.com
• http://findmatthew.com/
• http://driesvanbroeck.be/
• http://www.maltegruhl.com/
• https://benbate.com/
• http://www.elsamuse.com/en/
• http://www.legworkstudio.com/
• https://www.loungelizard.com/
• https://www.wokine.com/
• http://www.danielspatzek.com/Home

These professionals have made their portfolios very intuitive, and interactive. Each one of these portfolios must have required them some serious time for creation. The question here is why did they create them?

If you visit any one of these sites you can see that they are all very experienced front end developers with good-paying jobs or projects, so why to go the extra mile and put in the time to create such wonderful portfolios. The reason is simple, public exposure and showcase of their talent. Since anyone reading this article will visit these portfolios and get to know about their creator, that is what the creator/developer intended and really got it on point. Having such expert level skills is what one should show off and there is no shame in that. On the contrary, people appreciate their work and try to learn from them. This also helps boost the morale of the developer whose portfolio it is. As they get positive and encouraging feedback from people all around the world, this lets them know that their work is of value and more importantly their skills are of value as well.

You will only know the true value of your skills when you ask some amount for them. Most of the front end developers up there have their own courses on front end development. Some of them actually have hundreds of thousands of students worldwide. Now, this may not entirely be because of their online portfolios but their portfolios might have certainly helped in this regard.

What businesses look for when hiring front end developer

Portfolios are the basic first level of understanding that businesses look for while hiring a front end developer. Obviously as mentioned earlier this gives the business or client a bird’s eye view of all the skills and experiences that this front end developer has. Other than these businesses look forward for creative front end developers who have a spirit of learning new things and expanding their personality with new skills. Since in the real world, there are always new types of projects coming up, and businesses need to handle the requirements of each particular client. Hence having a front end developer who can adapt to new technologies and new workflow is a great benefit for any company or business.

Conclusion

You can never go wrong with having a good and decent portfolio. For front end developers who are just beginning their careers, having a good portfolio is game-changing as it not only opens up the possibilities of new projects or jobs but also makes you sure enough about the skills that you have and the skills that you lack. At any time you can view the portfolios of experienced front-end developers and compare it to yours, this helps new developers keep their feet on the ground. As there is always something new to be learned in the field of web development. And there are always some new libraries to be explored by a front end developer.