When an engineer's application looks promising, someone technical opens the code-hosting profile linked on it — for five minutes, maybe ten. They will not read your algorithms. They will look at what is pinned, open one or two READMEs, skim a file for style, and glance at your activity. That is the whole review. This checklist optimizes exactly those five minutes, item by item, with the reasoning per item so you know where the effort pays.
The profile
- Pin your best four to six repositories. Unpinned, your profile leads with whatever you touched last — usually a fork or a config dump. Pinning is curation, and reviewers read curation as judgment.
- Write the profile README. Three lines: what you build, {{Your specialty}}, what you are looking for, and a link to {{Portfolio or contact}}. It is the first thing rendered and most engineers leave it empty.
- Archive or hide the noise. Tutorial follow-alongs, abandoned three-commit experiments, and forks with zero changes dilute the signal. Archiving is free; a profile of six strong repos beats sixty mixed ones.
- Real name and photo matching your resume — reviewers cross-reference, and friction here costs credibility.
Each pinned repository
- A README that answers four questions in the first screen: what it does, why it exists, how to run it, and what it looks like ({{Screenshot or demo link}}). Reviewers decide in fifteen seconds whether to open the code; the README is that decision.
- One-command setup where feasible. A run instruction that works signals you care about other people using your work — precisely the trait teams hire for.
- A live demo or hosted instance when the project is visual. Nobody clones your side project; everyone clicks a link.
- Honest scope statement. Built to learn {{Technology}}; not production-hardened reads as self-awareness. Silent gaps read as blind spots when discovered.
- Tests — even a thin suite. The presence of any deliberate testing separates you from most side projects. State how to run them in the README.
- No secrets in the history. Scan for committed keys and credentials before you share a repo — a leaked token in an old commit is an instant negative signal, and rotating it later does not un-signal it.
Commit and code hygiene
- Commit messages that narrate: fix pagination off-by-one on empty result pages beats stuff and wip. Reviewers skim the commit list as a proxy for how you communicate in a team.
- Consistent formatting via a formatter/linter config committed to the repo. Style consistency they can see; the config file proves it was intentional.
- Meaningful project structure — a reviewer opening the file tree should infer the architecture without a guide.
Contribution signal
- A few real open-source contributions beat a green-square lawn. One merged fix to a library you actually use — with the linked discussion — demonstrates collaboration in public better than a year of daily solo commits. Do not game the activity graph; reviewers discount it and gaming it is legible.
- Issues and code reviews count. A well-written bug report or a thoughtful review comment is collaboration evidence, and it is searchable.
- If your best work is private (most professional work is), say so in the profile README and let one or two demonstrative side projects carry the public signal. Never publish employer code.
What you do not need
- Daily commits or streaks — consistency theater impresses no one who matters.
- A complex original project in every language you list. Depth in one or two stacks with clean execution beats breadth of shallow demos.
- Contributions to famous projects. A useful fix to a small library carries the same collaboration signal.
The five-minute self-audit
- Open your profile logged out. Is the first screen your four best things?
- Open your top pinned repo. Does the README answer what, why, how to run, and show it?
- Read your last ten commit messages aloud. Would you say those sentences to a teammate?
- Search your repos for keys, tokens, and .env files in history.
- Every link on your resume and profile resolves — today, from a clean browser.