Completing your GitHub Profile

3 min read #github

Completing your GitHub Profile

While I’m looking for a job I thought I’d find out how I could improve my Github profile. This was the advice I found…

1. Fill in your profile — properly

Most developers leave half the sidebar blank. Don’t.

Bio: Don’t just write your job title. “Senior Software Developer” tells nobody anything. “Senior Software Developer — Kotlin, Spring Boot, clean architecture” tells a recruiter immediately whether to keep reading.

Location: Hiring managers filter by location. Put yours in. If you’re open to remote, say so in the bio.

Links: LinkedIn, blog, portfolio — add them all. Every link is a trail someone can follow. No links means a dead end.

Photo: Use a real one. A face signals a real person maintains this account.

Ten minutes. Do it now.

2. Pin six repositories — and choose carefully

GitHub gives you six pin slots. Use all of them.

Don’t just pin your most recent repos. Pin the ones that best represent the skills you want to be hired for. Recent and best are often not the same thing.

What makes a good pin:

  • It solves a real problem, not a tutorial exercise
  • It has a clear one-line description (fill in the description field — most people don’t)
  • At least one has a README that explains what it is, why it exists, and how it works

That last point matters more than people realise. A well-documented project tells an employer you think about communication, not just code. That’s what separates senior candidates.

To set the repository description: In GitHub, go to the repository page, then click the ⚙️ gear icon on the right side of the page — it’s next to the “About” section (top right of the repo, not the main Settings tab).

A small panel pops up where you can set:

  • The description (one-line summary)
  • The website URL
  • Topics/tags

It is NOT in the repository settings!

3. Add a profile README

Create a public repo named exactly the same as your username. Add a README.md. It renders as a block at the top of your profile — the first thing anyone sees.

Keep it tight. Cover:

  • Who you are and what you’re looking for (two or three sentences)
  • Your tech stack — use badges, not a wall of text
  • Two or three project highlights with links
  • Where to find your writing or other work
  • Links to LinkedIn and your CV

It’s not a second CV. It’s a landing page. Give people enough to know if they should reach out, and make reaching out easy.

4. Make your activity visible

An empty contribution graph creates doubt, even for experienced developers.

Two quick fixes:

Turn on private contributions. Settings → profile → “Show private contributions.” If most of your work is in private repos, your graph looks empty by default. Fix that.

Keep at least one public project active. One well-maintained side project updated regularly beats ten repos last touched three years ago. Doesn’t have to be big. Just alive.

5. Tag your repositories with topics

GitHub Topics are the tags you add to repos — kotlin, spring-boot, rest-api, etc. Two reasons to use them:

  1. They help GitHub surface your work in search
  2. They let someone scan your profile and immediately understand what each repo is about without reading any code

Two minutes per repo. Worth it.

Put it together

None of this requires writing new code. It’s all presentation — and presentation compounds.

A complete profile, six curated pins, a tight README, visible activity, and tagged repos. That’s the whole thing. A recruiter landing on your profile sees a credible, active developer with interesting work and easy ways to learn more.

Note: I’m not sure recruiters or interviewers look at Github… But just in case, I reckon it’s worth making the most of your profile.