📄️ Telling Your Story
Figuring out how to tell your story is probably the most important part of marketing yourself. Once you've figured out your story, you'll want to find ways of incorporating it whenever you're communicating with a potential employer - your resume, your cover letter, your LinkedIn and GitHub, and in any job interviews. Especially if you're a career-changer, you'll have to do the heavy lifting of finding a common thread through your experiences so that a hiring manager doesn't have to.
📄️ Resume & Cover Letter
If you are a career changer, my biggest advice is to focus on writing your descriptions of your previous roles for a tech audience:
📄️ Github & Linkedin
Github
📄️ Portfolio/Personal Website
A lot of early career devs ask "Do I need to have a portfolio/personal website?" There's no correct answer to this question, but if you want my two cents — if you're applying for back-end jobs, don't worry about having a portfolio unless you want to. If you're applying to front-end or full-stack jobs and think you'll enjoy the challenge, then it's a great way to showcase your skills. But if you're overwhelmed by the idea, it's also ok to spruce up your GitHub page and then focus your energy elsewhere.
📄️ Side Projects
Side projects are an important artifact to include when applying for a job, particularly as an entry-level software engineer. Without previous professional experience to point to, side projects are a key means by which you can demonstrate your ability to do the job.
📄️ Icing on the Cake
I found that one thing that boosted my confidence when job hunting was to spend a little time thinking about personal branding. I picked a color palette and fonts I liked, and used those for my portfolio, my resume, to create an email signature, and in my GitHub and LinkedIn headers. It's not at all necessary, but it's a small thing that can make you seem more polished and leave a good impression - I'd recommend it for the confidence boost alone!