Unleashing the power of GitHub

Before you can truly under the relevance and importance of GitHub, I feel it is very essential to understand what open source is. So, if anyone who has been following me might have read my previous article on getting to understand the difference between open-source and proprietary software.

So, to put it out loud and clear, open source is a block of code that is being designed and made available to the public, which means that any of our code can be viewed, altered, or improved by the public. What this means is that you can use a part or whole block of code in some of your projects or can derive a whole new project based on that.

Now, moving to the world’s largest open-source community, GitHub, you can think of it just like any other social media platform which we use on daily basis be it Instagram, Facebook, Twitter, or LinkedIn where people post their pictures, videos, or other updates for their friends, or connections to see. The same posts are being liked, replied and tweets being retweeted.

The same goes with GitHub, which is a social coding platform, where people can share, star, fork your projects, and can give valuable feedback by commenting on ideas and issues. However, they will still need your approval before those changes/ modification is reflected. In short, it’s all about adding value to your work and encouraging people to work in a more collaborative manner.

Some might be wondering that only hard-core coders would be using this platform, but you are wrong, even people with very little coding knowledge or background make use of this platform which has resulted in nearly 56 million active users as of September 2020, with more than 180 million repositories. So, if you are not on the platform you should join soon as no coding is required for that, you just need to have access to the internet and you are good to go.

Now, I do not want to dwell upon the basics of using it as you would find many tutorials and articles available online which can give you a better understanding of specific terminologies. What I want to focus is on the larger picture that how this platform could help in building an excellent portfolio for yourself. This is especially for soon-to-be graduates or recent graduates looking to kickstart their career but has limited work experience.

Now, you might not be having 1–2 years of professional experience which most employers expect from a graduate student, but you could make up for this by showcasing the right attitude and some relevant projects which I believe everyone has done during their undergraduate and graduate studies.

This can give you that initial edge over other candidates and can place you in a better position and get your mind percolating on projects or tools you are truly passionate about and help you to learn or improve your knowledge. I believe everyone puts extra effort while posting a picture or post on other social media platforms the same efforts are required to be put on GitHub as well.

So, now the big question is how you can do this? Well, I have identified few simple strategies which can come in handy for a beginner, so here it goes…

Customize your profile page

Well, it is very simple to begin as the first thing you could do is be a project maintainer, what I mean by this is you could customize your profile Readme. This can be easily done by just creating a repository of your GitHub username and anything which you add that would be displayed on your profile page. you should not worry to make it perfect initially as it would get improved gradually.

Make pull requests

Now, this is something every one of us should do as often. However small or big the issue maybe, but you are making that contribution will add that value to the piece of code and help you grow your network and be on the radar of the recruiters. It's also useful if you have got the same username to your other accounts like medium or LinkedIn to that of GitHub as this would keep you in the memory of your network. You can start by looking at the close issues and pull requests of the project you are interested in or have a good understanding of as this can give you that fathom of how the community functions. You might also find milestones that are nothing but a collection of those issues with due dates. Even templates are made available in some of the projects to get you to start contributing and looking into the issues.

Get used to the Action, Insights, and Project tabs

It is equally beneficial to start using the project board available instead of relying on some other 3rd party tools. This would help to convert the notes to issues and get those green squares on your profile. The same goes with the action tab which has two different types, community, and stale. The issues which are having no activity are eventually removed and closed after 30 to 60 days. To see how inclusive any project is you could always check the insights tab and can start by contributing a file by yourself, even if you add 1 line of code you are still adding value to it.

Understanding Discussion tab

You could also take advantage of the discussion tab where people just like other social media platforms reply to replies and you can quickly get noticed upon your active participation. The discussion could also be moved to an issue than to action if you put a good amount of work into it.

Start Making money

Just like some other social media platform, GitHub also provides you with an opportunity to make money both directly and indirectly. You might have noticed the sponsorship button which some pages have. This allows people in your network to sponsor you if you contribute well to the community. Anyone who contributes to open-source be it in code, design, or documentation is eligible for this. Apart from this you could indirectly benefit from GitHub and make money by showcasing your work and skills and most importantly your attitude. GitHub is also about collaborating with others and working as a team which is one trait most recruiters are looking for.

In the end, I would say that this is an excellent platform, and you should not undervalue its overall potential and power. As people are incredibly interested in seeing your actual work apart from your LinkedIn or other coding platforms. They are not looking for a complete or perfect code, but they just want to see how you have gradually improved from the time you started. And this would also give an opportunity to put your skills and learning into practice by implementing them.