How many times did you go to a job interview and you were asked:

How many times did you go to a job interview and you were asked:

Why should I hire you? What makes you stand out?

Of course you can say that you did this and that in your work projects but you cannot really show anything because they are work project and you are not allowed to show anything outside.

So what can you do?

Well you need somenthing to make you stand out. Somenthing to show you go the extra mile and shows how you do your work. And that can be done with … a github portfolio .

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That’s another (interesting) way of approaching use of Github there.

The other suggestions you can find online that are more dev/automation oriented suggest to contribute to existing open source projects (hosted on Github, etc.) that are of interest and make sense to you, and that to which you can contribute to with your skills and experience (bug fixes, feature improvements, documentation help, testing fixes and features?).

On the automation side, following what UI/UX folks do with their portfolios, it could also be a good way to showcase how you design your test framework and test cases in terms of modularity, organization, page object model, etc.

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I have been asked this question is less than 25% of the interviews I’ve made. Is important to be able to confidently speak on achievements, learnings, how you stay up-to-date with trends and that you create personal projects on your free time. All those things answer the questions without explicitly saying “I’m a valuable employee.”

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By and large I agree with @mnl (I agree to disagree on “create personal projects on your free time”) and would say that a GitHub portfolio is not at thing for an interview. A portfolio may help you to get an interview.
But in the interview you need to stand your ground. Tell people what makes you valuable. Talk about examples of your work.

What recruiters want to watch your portfolio during the interview itself?

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Also just wanted to mention regarding the Github (or any other type of) portfolio referred to here, it probably comes more into play with your resume (and maybe cover letter) being reviewed than during the interview (for the review before or after interview), although at the interview, you can refer back to the portfolio for discussion.

Most likely the portfolio, if reviewed at all, will be reviewed outside of the actual interview. And discussed/asked in interview if interviewers are intrigued by it, or if you happen to bring it up.

I’ve been asked the question 3 or 4 times out of 30+ in the final round of interview (with 2-4 people in various roles) where they were using similar standard HR questions.
The question was asked by: a HR manager, a CTO, and respectively a PM.
They wanted to deduct potentially my advantage in their context compared to the others being interviewed.

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I agree! In my case I have been able to show example of how I document user stories and test cases and my general test methodology by using github public github projects, as I cannot do the same for my current work projects as these are internal tools that are not available to the public.

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This question of “why should we choose you”, ties back to personal brand. And that’s why although I don’t like having to learn how to do yet one more github project, it’s probably time to do it anyway. Even if it is just as an exercise in understanding what you bring to the table. Far too many portfolios are a “persona”, while for me, the thing that hooks people is my back-story. And telling that in code is perhaps very hard, but worth trying today.

I do however walk into every interview process with an elevator pitch now. Something that is aligning my passion with the things that stood out for me in either the job description or the company mission.

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With us it’s very similar but they always go like

“What makes you better then the other people that we are interviewing”

(because I’m a consultant, but I usually introduce myself pretty broad and so I rarely get that question)

Which I find difficult because I hate comparing myself or bragging about stuff but at some point it leaves you no option because if you really want the job, you have to do it :confused:

I always mention this to the interviewer that I don’t feel comfy about just “bragging”

This is indeed what matter, I’m on both sides of the interview and I never really looked a Github profile. The mindset is for me more important then skillset, if somebody does a thing wrong you can teach them how to do it right but they need to be open to do it.

If I really wanted to see how somebody writes test cases, I’ll just make up a scenario on the spot and let them write something.

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