Extract. Transform. Read.
Why No One Can Find Your GitHub
Optimize your GitHub portfolio to increase discoverability and discover the new tool to push your repo to the masses.
The following short read is an excerpt from my weekly newsletter, Extract. Transform. Read. sent to nearly 3,000 aspiring data professionals. If you enjoy this snippet, you can sign up and receive your free project ideation guide.
For years, a start-up cliche was being the “Uber” of (product, service, etc.). Now, it seems like any content platform wants to be the “Tik Tok” of a given subject area.
Case in point for the latter: A fun app I came across called, fittingly, “Gittok.”*
Like Tik Tok, Gittok feeds users an endless stream of distraction but instead of dance challenges it serves up a random GitHub repository, like geo-data-viewer, an HTML-based VS Code plug-in to conduct codeless analysis on geographic and spatial data.
Linger too long and Gittok can actually be as distracting as TikTok, which undoubtedly inspired the tagline “Get addicted to code.”
Which got me thinking, what actually makes a repo compelling enough to click on?
In other words, what makes a GitHub repo, possibly your portfolio, interesting and discoverable (both in a TikTok-esque stream or otherwise) at a glance?
Because GitHub profiles are often submitted explicitly as part of a review process like an application or interview, they aren’t designed with a goal of needing to “grab” a user’s attention.
And this might be a mistake — or at least a missed opportunity.
Gittok reduces your repo to three elements; beside each I’ll provide a suggestion to make them more compelling in your work.
- Name: I got away with “Professional Portfolio” during the post-COVID hiring boom; to create something more clickable, I’d suggest the title of your most compelling build like “AI Book Author” or “Credit Card Spend Pipeline”
- README: Gittok truncates your README to about a paragraph. Use the concise space to your advantage! Consider emojis in place of unnecessary explanations or ditch words altogether and paste an architectural diagram
- Profile Photo: I’m guilty of reverting to the default GitHub robot profiles for work; but my personal profile pic is a bit more fun — an animated version of my boat captain self. While a profile pic may not be the tipping point, mixing an appropriate amount of personality or fun helps create intrigue and compel the right person to learn more about the project and what you would bring to a data team
Optimizing the design elements assumes you’ve done the work to create well-conceived, well-executed, domain-specific projects that would impress even the most cynical engineering manager.
Because the last thing you want is for them to keep scrolling.
Thanks for ingesting,
-Zach Quinn
**I am not affiliated with nor am I being compensated by Gittok or its featured contributors; I simply admire the platform**
