| Perhaps you're right. But if you prepare well, better organizations will hire you for better jobs. And to your comment, most portfolio sites are years out-of-date. I don't know anyone particularly cares. Most also aren't called 'portfolio sites' but 'personal web pages.' If someone wrote a good backbone.js web site a half-decade ago, that gives me a pretty good indication of, well, a lot of things I care in hiring. I'm not making a check-list of technologies people know. Most experienced engineers can pick up new technologies in a month or two. I'm more looking for the sorts of things which are timeless: * For a UI/UX designer, is there a sense of style? Did they think through what I want from their web site and how I get there? If that's a not the latest styles, that's okay. I respect the people who designed NextSTEP or Amiga too. * For a front-end engineer, is the HTML correct? Accessible? Semantic? Is it split up properly between JS/CSS/HTML? All of this will be second-nature to someone I'd hire, but I see a lot of people are missing basics somewhere or other. ... and so on. Basic skills gaps, (1) I haven't seen new hires close (2) are often indicative of deeper problems. That's why those stereotypical algorithmic interviews came around for back-end. People now optimize so much to the metric that it's become a lousy metric (and why I don't trust interviews much anymore), but the basic concept is right. Smart people who understand fundamentals, learning quickly, and execute well / get stuff done, preferably with good soft skills. I'll also mention: I'm not sure anyone's getting hired overnight right now. We've gone from a seller's market to a buyer's market. A lot of layoffs, and not a lot of hiring going on right now. In previous downturns, which were much milder than this one, I saw very good people on job markets for months, and average people sometimes for years. |