Show your Backend Engineering Skills To Recruiters - Building a Full Backend Portfolio

so guys i get this question a lot i am a backend engineer i've been working for three four five six seven years but i have no idea how to show the recruiter that i possess these back-end engineering skills or those front-end engineering cell or those database engineering skills uh can you show me how can i build a portfolio a back-end specific portfolio to show your skills and uh a lot of usual answers for this and and the advice is very common is build a live project and share the link on netlify on your resume and and be gone with but in my opinion that is a very uh incomplete way of showing your skills because just that because you build something that works does not mean that you actually illustrate and can communicate that you understand what you built that is why these methods that i'm gonna explain and then i'm gonna articulate one after the other can help you build this back-end portfolio and can give you more confidence even on yourself right not just the recruiter or whomever you want to show those skills to so i have here nine possible tools that you can pick in order to build your portfolio or specifically i'm going to talk about the backend because that's what how i know and by all means you can't possibly do all of them because you you're going to be a god otherwise if you do all of them but some three or four or a couple of them in your swiss army knife can help you essentially demonstrate these skills all right guys let's jump into tool number one which is building a live project and actually sharing it with whom you with whom you want to demonstrate your skills right and this is very common you will sit down and pick a back end project so that okay i want to build an api that allowed me to build a chatting system that is end-to-end encryption right in order to do that you can sit down and actually just build that project and then push it into a repository as a source code and make it available on one of those services such as github pages or cloud cloudflare pages or netify and then share that link and that's a very good way to demonstrate your skills because this way hey i actually built this go and check it and the interviewer or whoever you share this project with can go and tinker with a project and try to find you some bugs but that does not unfortunately does not give the full picture especially with me i i interviewed many many people and sharing that project just that length is not sufficient in my opinion because i'd like to kind of uncover the rest of the layers of your skills and just the final product yeah you can see the source code and see it can tell you a lot not don't don't get me wrong but still not enough because how do i know that you actually didn't just use the library that did most of the work and you don't really know how it actually works and yeah some some people don't care about how things work i personally do and many many other engineers actually do care about how actually things work all right so that's number one live project very very popular way still very critical i think i recommend everyone to actually do number two that system design document so as you build that live project you have to demonstrate how you actually build that project and in order to do that sit down and write in a word document or google doc document exactly what is the workflows that you have and a technical spec that describes your application exactly what it does right and the architecture the nitty-gritty details the limitation of your architecture what kind of design choices you made and why you made these design choices reading i don't mind reading three four five pages design document if i'm interested if someone actually sent me says hey this is my resume which is one page but i built these three projects or these two projects and here's that one link to the design document and there is a live project if you want to see it i will be very very impressed personally and i i'm pretty sure a lot of people agree with that that someone took the time to write down what they think and what how they think this design document will look like and i know guys you asked me for a template but in my opinion don't stress this out there is no godly template literally just type in what the architecture is what the design document is just word literally just bunch of words that describe in details the technical decisions you made the design components and all that stuff so design documents very very very critical because you can go back to this design document even for yourself if you want to build an application you have to have a design document that describes your application from home a to z all right tool number three architectural or system diagrams so number two was essentially just a document that describes your application your backend application or your fonted application in details right i'm talking aaa document level right where you describe things in detail and you have sections where you go into deep level diving right so the third tool is building the diagram architectural diagram so that is accompanied by the design document right usually you have to build them by one by one a lot of people do just the diagrams i don't have anything against that but i personally prefer a document that goes through the details in in written form that's my preference but diagrams help the visualization and quickly identify the architecture right so and you can use any diagramming model here a lot of people use the c4 model a lot of people use uml if you're into kinky things and a lot of people use simple blocks or circles and [Music] rectangles and that's it and you describe how the components and the different systems interact with you with each other right and then if you want to go into diff each system or each service and you can break down that into more and more diagrams so diagrams really really powerful tool in your portfolio number four doesn't really apply to backend engineers but frontend engineers ux and ui diagrams or or interfaces right a lot of tools that you can build to do that gliffy balsamic tools that help you design your front end so that how would the user interact with this and a lot of people underestimate how the power of the user experience user experience is what the user actually interacts with so no matter how shiny your back end is and how fast and performant and low latency if your front-end user experience i'm not talking about the code here user experience you can use stinking table tags for god's sake but and and you can have a great amazing user experience right you can have all the fancy component react models but if your user experience if i can't find what to click on app sucks right so that's the idea building ux ui diagrams and having this part of your portfolio is really internal and again could be applicable could be not applicable all of these tools are sometimes applicable sometimes i'm not applicable tool number five and it is very applicable to phd students specifically and then master students where you write essentially you sit down and write white papers or just long forum paper about a problem that you're trying to solve you couldn't have no code at all or you can have sample code in the paper but sharing a paper that you wrote in your resume as a link that is so powerful that tells you obviously writing a paper is not something easy at all but if you did sharing it in your portfolio can really really help your case right to demonstrate these things and when you come to the actual interview you can demonstrate that you actually wrote the paper you can have a discussion with the interviewee you can have interesting tests because whomever you're actually just having a debate maybe with right so papers very very powerful tool again not applicable for everyone because it requires a lot of blood and sweat and research and it's very very frustrating especially that if this is something has has not been uh explored before you have to do a lot a lot of research to build paper so papers very very powerful tool number six uh books and that what personally got me into the united states and the company that i work on i wrote six books in in the gis technology that what i'm basically uh specialized in geospatial technology that's my specialty if you guys don't know i don't talk about it in my youtube just to avoid conflict but uh that's why that's what i do and nine to five job is geospatial pure geospatial stuff right so i wrote six books about the geospatial and esri technology and then that's um actually my books right there you can actually see the first book i wrote back in 2012. so yeah guys books uh proves that you are a subject matter expert definitely right and if you reach the state where you can essentially write a meaningful book on a specific niche on your topic or new subject then you essentially can demonstrate that you're a subject matter expert you're you have knowledge in this area and this will kind of boost your portfolio even more number seven again a very very popular way a lot of people that i'm following are actually doing that a lot of people i actually was the first discovered to write a book using this approach and that's blog post create your own blog whether on medium.com or just your own site and then write about the thing you know just sit down and pick a problem that you faced and just write about what was the problem what did you do to solve it and what was the outcome did it work or not just sitting down writing these things people as they search the web they can find you they can find your blog and they see that okay you written 10 20 30 40 blog articles on this topic and that help you prove that essentially you you you have a some sort of a expertise in that area you don't have to be the best but that kind of gives you the edge in that area and that's how i got discovered back in 2009 when i wrote my first blog in 2010 i got discovered by this publishing company because i started writing about gis technology in my blog st dot com and that's how i they they were searching about certain technology and they found that i'm among the few that i wrote about this say hey you're interested to write about this so sure let's do that and that's how things can uh multiply and and kind of link to each other so blog books uh technology showing that you actually worked in a certain company all this actually matter so if you are great in writing and you have amazing writing skills essentially take that and and put it in news write blogs write a lot of blogs uh tip or tool number eight making videos about the topic that you're and basically i don't have to say anything because what you're consuming what you're watching is this tool right videos i've been making videos since 2014. so i started with blog in 2009 then i moved to writing books in 2012 and then i started making videos in 2014 so so you can see the the progression of of my personal skill and it really feels good when you look back i say oh i actually did the work until i reached 2015 after 2014 writing my first book 2015 when i submitted my resume immediately it's like wow okay there are blog articles there's this there's that there's all of that stuff and then they actually essentially based on that i got an interview and then once i showed my skills obviously you have to prove that you did all that work that shouldn't be hard if you actually did all that stuff some people will have problem uh communicating speech-wise and that's where video form and podcast when we come to that can really really help your first video is going to suck your second video is going to suck your 10th video is going to suck but as you can make and make and make and make and make and make more you can start making you're going to be more comfortable in 4th of camera you're going to start being better and delivering and concise the message and this video is too long so this is a bad example but as you make more videos you're going to get better and you can just share the link i said hey i made these videos about these topics i make these tutorials i made these things and yeah that's they make video making also about that sort of can show that you're subject matter experts and that can add to your portfolio so look how many tools you can use in order to build your portfolio you don't have to use all of them final one is podcasting a lot of people just focus on podcasting and then you can link this to videos because people who make videos just strip the audio out and then put it as a podcast that's what i do i mean right i just i talk to the camera i mean i my videos are are easily podcastable because i don't make a lot of tutorial on code and if when i do i don't put those as podcasts because they they don't make any sense but videos like this are perfect for podcasts right you sit down and then anyone can listen that you don't have to see my ugly face right it doesn't make any sense you don't have to so podcasting can if you have a 50 60 70 episode podcast talking about certain technology that you're passionate about then that just bads up to your portfolio and then you don't have to join a company that this set of tools that i just talked about which let's summarize them again live projects system design documents architectural diagrams ux ui diagrams papers books blog articles videos podcasts and i'm pretty sure i missed stuff like this is just what i personally think can all add to your portfolio and you can make essentially a business out of these if you can do all of them i don't think anyone can sit down have the time to do all of this thing i mean i have nine to five i i there's no way for me to do all this i can barely do the video the podcast i don't write blogs anymore i don't have time and uh live projects i don't i don't i don't have time to sit down and write a fully functional live project to share with you guys anymore i don't have that the projects that i do is on work and they are confidential that i cannot share obviously the design documents are confidential i cannot share the diagrams i build are confidential all of that stuff is just sitting there so i didn't build a personal project that uh can share with you so so some of you are better than me in that case because they you guys built a project that you can share actually i take that back i i built a project in 2009 that's now offline that kind of linked a google map you go to google map back when satellite imagery wasn't that good you go to google map and you know i show you the view in yahoo maps i show you the view in bing maps and i show you the view and esri's map so uh which is our technology so i when you zoom to a place i i send the extent on all of them and this is happening in all the same page so i did this project and and won some awards as well so that that's one project that i can remember i built so many twitter api fancy gisc stuff as well that were public i think they are on my linkedin uh the links are broken obviously but i was back back when i think just two or three is enough to build your portfolio but you don't have to have all of them so for me i didn't have the live projects to showcase my expertise and how oh this is something i built but i have design documents i have diagrams that are personally built i i i rob six books i have podcast i have a videos a set of videos i have now over 500 videos on this channel i didn't write any paper so i'm not going to claim that i did i think writing paper is one of the hardest uh things that you can do but so phd students guys kudos to you and i obviously wrote a lot a lot of blogs as well guys what do you personally think what is your favorite method of building your portfolio and and showing your skills right let me know in the comment section below if i missed any other tool please share it in the comment section below i'm gonna see you in the next one and uh hope this video helped and uh all the best in your search and in your career and uh stay patient and uh stay hungry keep at it keep grinding keep the work and find again reference my back in engineering video that i talked about and reference how i built the design documents that process the whole process to actually build one of those design documents i talked about it essentially right in one of the videos right here and just just pick one of the things that you're passionate about and then just go dive deep into it there is no one that is experts in everything as as literally impossible right so you're gonna pick something that you think that uh worth it you think that uh investment your time investments kind of will pay off in the future and uh i wish you all the best my friends and uh thank you so much my name is hussein and i discuss back in engineering on this channel and if you like the video hit a like if you didn't like it hit that dislike button and type a nasty comment and then share it with your friends i'm gonna see you in the next one you guys stay awesome goodbye

Channel: Hussein Nasser

Views: 55,646

Rating: 4.9592805 out of 5

Keywords: hussein nasser, backend engineering, backend interviews, backend engineer, backend developer, backend engineer portfolio, backend engineer resume, backend jobs, backend recruiting, backend engineer recruit jobs, backend software engineeer, engineer software jobs, backend engineering salary, hired backend engineer

Id: nIracKeqsFk

Length: 19min 47sec (1187 seconds)

Published: Sat Jan 09 2021