What recruiters and engineering managers check
A technical recruiter usually has your CV in one tab and your portfolio in another. They want to confirm, quickly, that the skills on the CV are real. An engineering manager goes one step further and opens your code.
- Shipped things: a live link beats a screenshot, and a screenshot beats a description
- Code they can read: a public repository with a clear README
- What you did: on a team project, your part, in one or two sentences
- How you think: a short write-up of one hard problem and how you solved it
- Current stack: the languages and tools you use now, not every one you have touched
Which projects to show
Three to five projects is the right amount. Choose ones that match the job you want: a front-end role wants polished interfaces and performance work, a back-end role wants systems, data and reliability, a game or graphics role wants things that move.
Tutorial clones (a to-do app, a weather app, a Netflix copy) are fine for learning, but they look the same in every portfolio. If you have one, add something of your own to it, or replace it with a small tool you actually use. Open source contributions count, even small ones; link the merged pull request.
A project card that answers the right questions
For each project, keep the same short structure, so a reader can compare them at a glance:
- Name and one line on what it does and who uses it
- Stack, in a single line
- Your role and the size of the team
- One technical decision worth talking about in an interview
- Links: live demo, repository, and a write-up if you have one
Why not just build it yourself in Three.js?
If you are applying for WebGL or creative development roles, a hand-built 3D portfolio is itself the strongest project you can show, and you should build it. For everyone else, it is weeks of modelling, lighting, loading screens, mobile performance and accessibility work that says little about the job you are applying for.
There is also a practical risk: a heavy 3D page that takes ten seconds to load on a recruiter’s phone is a worse first impression than a plain page. Perlink keeps a fast, readable page as the base, adapts the room’s quality to the device, and lets you choose whether visitors see the page or the room first.
Making the room yours as a developer
The room is where you show some personality without writing a line of rendering code. A few ideas that work well for developers:
- Link the laptop on the desk to your GitHub, so the most obvious object opens your code
- Put your stack on a neon sign, or a line you like, such as “ship small, ship often”
- Hang screenshots of your projects in the frames; each frame can link to the live app
- Use the TV for a demo screenshot of your best project
- Choose the city at night or mars and a dark wall colour, if your page uses a dark theme
- Add the blog board if you write, and keep your technical posts on the site’s blog
Mistakes that cost developers interviews
Most of these take an evening to fix.
- Dead demo links, or apps sleeping on a free host that take a minute to wake up
- Repositories with no README, or a README that is still the framework’s default
- A skills list with thirty logos and no sign of which ones you know well
- No email or LinkedIn on the page, so interested people have nowhere to go
- A portfolio that breaks on a phone, which is exactly where many recruiters open it