GitHub Profiles are basically the future, every day GitHub is getting increasingly hungry to become your default resume 👀. I mean GitHub is adding more and more features every day to your GitHub Profile to make it become your github profile.
GitHub Profiles have:
A profile picture (Your Professional Headshot maybe?) A bio, your current organisation
Your email, Twitter, website, your projects (pinned repositories)
Badges that tell HRs in a few images about your Open Source life
A whole contribution graph (the green squares!!!), activity graph and access to all your collaboration, communication and code/changes in the contributions you made
The timezone, location you live in 👀
How can anyone forget that there is a custom readme you can write for the profile!?
I've seen a shift from tech recruiters looking on a sheet of paper (your resume) to looking at your github profile, and why wouldn't they?
All of this, just one link, your github profile
Fun facto: Cool GitHub Profile = Companies come to you
Not joking, if you have an excellent github profile, companies find you - many companies are now starting to hire people after their contributions to their projects, every day I hear people get hired to companies after contributing to the company's project.
One example is me 🙋🏻 Everything I ever achieved, ever gained, ever learnt, all are credited to Open Source!
But nothing is just as simple, GitHub cannot replace your resume yet. Many recruiters would prefer a resume to have all your experiences and skills, just like they wouldn't want a designer to share their dribble, they do not want you to share your github :(
Why? Because the idea of Open Source doesn't work everywhere, there are a lot of companies that would want a sheet of paper instead of a link.
Recruiters want a summarized bullet list of all your shit, instead of a link where they have to dive to find your shit (Some people may argue that recruiters may review if the shit is elite).
Recruiters do not have time, there are 100 more people just like you, who applied to the place and if the recruiter gonna deep dive into all of them, it would be a "Wow" if you got a response within 1 month, majorly because teams usually only hire in small scales for replacing previous employs, because expansion in tech is just too fast and big.
So GitHub cannot entirely replace your resume! (yet hopefully)
But it does provide you with some job opportunities, some proof of work, some community that will uplift you, and someplace where people can view your code.
But what's more important is the learning.
With Open Source you gain:
Experience: By contributing to open source you get the real-world experience you need. It can accelerate your skills! This can be a treat for you, but even if you have a good amount of experience, more never hurts.
Soft-skills: With open source, you can grow your soft skills like collaboration, public speaking, teamwork and a lot more.
Knowledge: For instance, if you learnt a new programming language, you can contribute to a project using that language. You can even learn technologies while contributing to projects.
Impact: By contributing to popular projects you can make a huge impact on the community. But don't run for contributing to popular and big projects, it might demotivate you on the first run.
And that is a lot achieved already, a lot that can get you your first job, something that will help you grow in your career.
So Contributing to Open Source has many benefits including Job Opportunities, therefore you should still contribute to it!
