So, I finished the Front End Certificate a week or so ago, and now I’m just trying to put a bit of time into learning Sass, Git, more JavaScript, and programming best practises.
I’ve applied to a few front end development jobs but haven’t really heard much back (which is really disheartening), so I’m wondering if I might be wasting my time at this stage. I’ve got my portfolio at andymorgan.net. I’d love any feedback you had on it, or any advice in general too.
Thanks!
Speaking as a New Zealander who has helped interview and hire at least a dozen developers…
I’d hire you as a full-time junior web developer, but not as a contractor. It looks like you’ve got a good foundation of skills, show much promise, and with help from your team lead and team mates you could become a very capable developer in due course. It’d be worth investing that effort in you if you’re going to stick around for a few years.
But contractor jobs are at a totally different level, sorry.
Wow! Looks cool! I liked the background.
Here are few observations:
Tried transparent navbar with white bold text? Then when you scroll down, make it opaque
The navbar links takes me to different html pages. Maybe you can combine those into your landing page?
Add some hover effects where you mentioned your skills.
Overall a good attempt. Better than mine, I would say. You can list your projects in a more compact way so that visitors are tempted to see what “it” actually do. 
Cheers,
Nitin
Thanks for the reply, George. That’s really encouraging.
Yeah I’ve been applying for junior web development positions. I’d imagine contractors would be expected to hit the ground running so I’ve been avoiding those.
Thanks again!
Hey Nitin, thanks for the reply.
I’m a big fan of SpaceX so I thought I’d put in something “spacey” haha.
I thought of doing a transparent navbar with white text (I like the effect, it’s really professional looking), but then when it went past the first bit of text it didn’t look that good. Might look at something like it in future though. This guy here: jonny.me has a great, similar looking navbar.
Yeah I wanted to split it up over a few pages so I could show a few examples of my best work on the homepage and then more examples of my not-so-good stuff on the full portfolio page.
Might look into adding the hover effects in future when I get a bit of time, that’d probably look really awesome, just hope people don’t think it takes them to another page haha.
Thanks again, Nitin.
Jonny’s site is awesome and professional. I liked it.
What does it mean? Overlapping content when u scroll? Jonny used a fixed navbar and added some margin-top to his contents I guess. 
All the best! Hope you get hired soon! 
Yeah overlapping content.
I think it would be pretty easy to reverse engineer Jonny’s navbar. Just make a navbar with opacity 0.0 and position absolute, then when the user scrolls to a specific point make the opacity 1.0.
Your website looks great by the way, nice color scheme.
Ahh… Ok!
Actually I just used a free bootstrap template. I didn’t get time and the idea to do a portfolio myself :’(
Portfolio looks good. Your apps have a pretty clean design as well.
One thing: I played with your Simon Game and whenever the same color was used twice in a row, I would only hear the sound once. There was also a little delay between the light and the sound.
As for your question, I think you can start applying to junior developer jobs. Of course, keep practicing and learning. Some knowledge of either React or Angular 2 would be another great asset to have.
I’d actually suggest skipping the Data Viz certification for the time being and diving into some of the back-end API projects next. In New Zealand we tend to have small development teams, so if you’re doing web development you’ll probably be expected to look after the full stack, all the way through to the back-end and the database…
@AndrewRMorgan A suggest, I would go back through some of your JavaScript projects. I tested the Calculator and Tic-Tac-Toe projects.A good practice is to ensure you capture as many program errors as much as possible.
Example:
The Calculator project, if you push the Equals button the result is undefined. Also, there is no way to clear the right box for displaying Users’ calculations.
The Tic-Tac-Toe project, once you complete a game and the result is displayed. When you start a new game, the result box is still present.
Thanks, Marie. I completely missed those two things, nice spotting.
I think I’ll definitely learn at least the basics of React in the near future, then hopefully that’d give me a chance to pick up more on the job later.
That’s great advice, thanks George.
I’ve heard the back-end stuff is pretty difficult but I’m looking forward to getting into it.
Thanks for the heads-up, James. I thought I’d got them all, but apparently not. Time for some testin’.
Hi,
I would definitively take out the Twitch tv project. It is not working. Most probably is not your fault because we all have had trouble with the twitch api.
My advice is that you keep in your portfolio only the things that work now and you are sure will work at a latter stage because showing things that don´t work gives a very poor impression of your work. It is like having a resume with mistakes or going to a job interview without respecting the interview´s company dress code.
Good job! Keep working at it and good luck!
Thanks fuecisla, their API must of changed because my code hasn’t changed since I completed the project. I’ll swap those around and look into the issue.
You are welcome.
I think that it may be worth having even 2 github profiles. One for all the stuff you make and work with and one to be shown to potential employers. At least till the moment that you feel very confident with your skills. Obviously a repository of ongoing projects it is always a showcase of mistakes and amendments… but if mistakes and techniques are too naive to show them may hurt more than hiding them.
Of course I am not implying that you should hide your code. I am thinking about myself 
Hi, george. Could you tell us what are the skills that would be expected for a contractor? Some portfolio links or examples…thank you very much!
Hey Andrew, It looks great! Good job!
There is 1 thing I noticed though, your contact form allows the user to submit without data and posts a success message. This is a bug. On professional projects you can’t have this and mark the user story as complete. Easy fix for it though - just add the ‘required’ attribute to the input elements on the form. More info here - http://www.w3schools.com/tags/att_input_required.asp
May the odds be forever in your favor!
You need to show evidence that you can write production ready code, for example by completing one or two of the FCC nonprofit projects.
I’ve written a bit about the difference between “feature complete” and “production ready” here: