Best examples of common mistakes: omitting portfolio links on tech resumes

Before getting into tactics, it helps to see how this actually plays out in the wild. The best examples of common mistakes: omitting portfolio links usually look totally harmless at first glance. The resume is well formatted, the experience is solid, and the skills section is stuffed with buzzwords. But when a hiring manager wants to see proof, there’s nothing to click.

Picture a front-end developer applying to a React role. Their resume lists four projects with phrases like “built a responsive dashboard” and “optimized performance,” but there’s no GitHub link, no personal site, no live demo. The recruiter has 60 more resumes to review. Instead of hunting them down on LinkedIn, they move on to the candidate whose resume has a clear “Portfolio & Code” section with one clean URL.

Those are the kinds of real examples that quietly decide who gets an interview and who never hears back.

Examples of common mistakes: omitting portfolio links for different tech roles

The most damaging examples of common mistakes: omitting portfolio links vary by role, but the pattern is the same: you describe work instead of showing it.

For software engineers, a classic example of this mistake is listing a long stack (Python, Go, React, Kubernetes, Docker) and several side projects, but including no GitHub, GitLab, or Bitbucket link. In 2024, many hiring managers expect at least a minimal public repo history, even if your best work is in private company codebases.

Data scientists and machine learning engineers often fall into a similar trap. They talk about models, A/B tests, and pipelines, but omit any portfolio link to a notebook, a Kaggle profile, or a write-up. A hiring manager can’t see your thought process, feature engineering decisions, or how you communicate results to non-technical stakeholders.

UX and product designers might be the worst hit by this. They frequently submit polished, visually appealing resumes that somehow don’t link to a portfolio site or case study collection. When a recruiter at a large company is scanning hundreds of applications, they will often reject otherwise strong design candidates simply because there is no clickable proof of work.

Even IT, DevOps, and SRE candidates get hurt by this. They may not think of themselves as having a “portfolio,” but examples include Terraform modules, Ansible playbooks, homelab write-ups, or public contributions to documentation. Omitting links to these artifacts makes it harder to validate that you can actually operate and automate real systems.

Specific examples of common mistakes: omitting portfolio links

To make this less abstract, here are real-world style scenarios that show how small portfolio-link mistakes can cost interviews:

Example of a buried link in the wrong place

A full-stack engineer adds their GitHub URL only in a tiny footer line under their email, in 8-point font, with no label. On a quick skim, the recruiter never notices it. This is an example of common mistakes: omitting portfolio links in practice, because if a link isn’t obvious and clickable, it might as well not exist.

Example of relying only on LinkedIn

A data analyst assumes that linking to LinkedIn is enough. Their LinkedIn profile, however, doesn’t contain any dashboards, SQL snippets, or project write-ups. This is another example of common mistakes: omitting portfolio links, because LinkedIn without concrete work samples is just another text resume.

Example of using portfolio links only in email

A front-end developer emails a recruiter and includes a link to their portfolio in the email body but not on the resume or PDF. When the recruiter uploads the resume to an ATS, the email is lost, and the hiring manager never sees the link. This kind of situation shows how examples of common mistakes: omitting portfolio links can be more about placement than effort.

Example of private-only GitHub

A backend engineer proudly lists “GitHub: github.com/username” on their resume. The profile exists, but all repositories are private, and there is no pinned public project, no README, no activity. From the hiring manager’s perspective, this is effectively another example of omitting portfolio links, because there’s nothing they can actually review.

Example of expired or broken portfolio URL

A UX designer lists a custom domain portfolio: www.firstnameux.com. The domain expired six months ago. The recruiter clicks, gets a domain parking page, and moves on. Broken URLs are among the best examples of common mistakes: omitting portfolio links, because they create friction and signal a lack of attention to detail.

Example of using only a company-internal portfolio

A cloud engineer mentions, “Portfolio of automation scripts available on internal Confluence” in the resume. For an external application, this is useless. You’re effectively omitting a portfolio link from the hiring team’s perspective.

Example of non-clickable links in a PDF

A mobile developer exports their resume from a design tool where URLs are not converted to clickable hyperlinks. On desktop, a recruiter can copy-paste, but on mobile or within some applicant tracking systems, those links are dead text. In a stack of resumes, this friction can be the difference between a click and a pass.

Why omitting portfolio links is a bigger problem in 2024–2025

The tech hiring process has become faster, more automated, and more skeptical. Recruiters and hiring managers are dealing with higher application volumes and more noise. Research from organizations like the National Association of Colleges and Employers (NACE) shows that employers increasingly value demonstrated skills and projects, not just degrees and job titles. You can see this in their guidance on career readiness and evidence of skills.

At the same time, many companies now use skills-based hiring frameworks and structured interviews. That shift means your resume is expected to surface evidence of skills: code, designs, dashboards, documentation, and writing samples. When you omit portfolio links, you’re swimming against the current.

There’s also the reality that many hiring managers quickly Google you. If they can’t easily find a professional site or code profile, they may assume you don’t build outside of work, or that your skills are stale. In a competitive market, that assumption alone can cost you a callback.

Where to place portfolio links so they actually get used

Understanding the examples of common mistakes: omitting portfolio links is useful only if you know how to fix them. The fix is not just “add URLs somewhere.” It’s to make your best work unmissable.

A clean approach is to put a single, primary portfolio or code link in the top third of your resume, near your name and contact details. Use a label that makes its purpose obvious, like:

• Portfolio: janesmith.dev
• Code: github.com/janesmith
• Design work: dribbble.com/janesmith | janesmith.design

Then reinforce it in a dedicated section. For example:

Selected Projects & Portfolio
Short bullet-style descriptions of 3–5 projects, each with a concise hyperlink:

• Internal analytics dashboard (React, Node, Postgres) — janesmith.dev/analytics-dashboard
• Image classification demo (PyTorch) — github.com/janesmith/pytorch-images

This approach avoids the examples of common mistakes: omitting portfolio links by making them central, not decorative.

How to tailor portfolio links by role

Different tech roles should highlight different types of work. Some of the best examples of effective portfolios are tightly focused on the target job.

For software engineers, a strong portfolio link usually points to:

• A GitHub profile with a few pinned repos that reflect the languages and frameworks in the job description
• Clear READMEs explaining what each project does, how to run it, and what you learned
• Evidence of tests, documentation, and commit history that shows consistent work

For data roles, examples include:

• Jupyter notebooks hosted on GitHub or a platform like Google Colab
• A personal site with data stories, dashboards, and visualizations
• Links to competitions or datasets on platforms like Kaggle

For designers, the portfolio link should go to:

• Case-study style pages that explain problem, process, and outcome
• Screens that show both UX flows and UI polish
• Clear notes on your role, constraints, and measurable impact where possible

For DevOps/SRE/Cloud roles, examples of a strong portfolio link might include:

• Infrastructure-as-code samples
• Write-ups of homelab setups
• Documentation-style posts explaining incident response or reliability improvements

The common thread is that the link should not be a dumping ground. It should be a curated, front door to your best, most relevant work.

Avoiding privacy and NDA pitfalls while still sharing work

One reason some candidates omit portfolio links is fear: fear of violating NDAs, exposing proprietary code, or sharing sensitive data. That’s a valid concern, and you absolutely should not post confidential materials. But you can still avoid the examples of common mistakes: omitting portfolio links by creating safe, anonymized, or personal projects.

For example, instead of sharing a client-specific dashboard, you might:

• Recreate the structure with fake or public data
• Generalize the layout and metrics while stripping brand names
• Write a case study that describes the problem and outcome without revealing private details

For code, you can:

• Build small, self-contained sample projects that demonstrate the same patterns and stacks you use at work
• Contribute to open-source projects, which are inherently reviewable and shareable

If you’re unsure about what you can share, many universities and career centers provide guidance on professional portfolios and confidentiality. For instance, the University of Washington Career & Internship Center offers general advice on building portfolios while respecting employer boundaries.

How ATS and recruiters actually interact with your links

Another misconception that leads to examples of common mistakes: omitting portfolio links is the belief that “ATS can’t handle URLs, so why bother?” Modern applicant tracking systems used by large employers typically preserve URLs in resumes, especially in PDF or DOCX formats. Recruiters can click them directly from their interface.

The bigger risk is not the ATS; it’s human behavior. Recruiters skim. Hiring managers skim even faster. They are more likely to click a single, clear, well-labeled link near the top of your resume than multiple tiny URLs buried in dense text.

You can improve your odds by:

• Using short, readable URLs instead of long query strings
• Avoiding link shorteners that look suspicious
• Making sure the landing page loads quickly and is mobile-friendly

If your portfolio is a personal site, following general usability and accessibility practices (like those outlined by the W3C Web Accessibility Initiative) will also help ensure that whoever clicks can actually navigate your work.

Quick self-audit: are you quietly omitting portfolio links?

To avoid falling into the best examples of common mistakes: omitting portfolio links, run a fast self-audit:

• Can someone who has never met you open your resume and, within 3 seconds, see a clear link to your work?
• If they click that link, do they land on a page that makes sense for the role you’re applying to?
• Are the links in your PDF actually clickable?
• Are any links broken, expired, or pointing to private content?
• Does your LinkedIn profile reinforce your portfolio, or does it just repeat your resume text?

If you can’t answer “yes” to most of those, you’re probably living one of the real examples of common mistakes: omitting portfolio links without realizing it.

FAQ: examples of portfolio-link mistakes and fixes

Q: Can you give examples of small portfolio-link errors that really matter?
Yes. A few examples include: using a personal site that isn’t mobile-friendly, so hiring managers on phones bounce; linking to a GitHub with no README files, so your projects look half-finished; or using a portfolio URL that redirects through multiple domains, which some corporate networks block. Each of these is a subtle example of omitting portfolio links in practice, because they prevent people from effectively seeing your work.

Q: Is it better to have no portfolio link than a weak one?
Usually, a weak portfolio is still better than none, as long as it isn’t broken or inappropriate. A minimal GitHub repo with one or two clean, well-documented projects beats a resume with no proof at all. Just avoid obvious red flags like placeholder text, lorem ipsum, or test pages.

Q: Do junior candidates really need portfolio links?
Yes. For interns, new grads, and career changers, portfolio links often carry more weight than job titles, because you don’t have much formal experience yet. Even a few class projects, hackathon apps, or personal experiments can show initiative and learning speed.

Q: What if my best work is all under NDA?
You can still avoid the examples of common mistakes: omitting portfolio links by creating anonymized case studies, personal projects that mirror the tech stack, or open-source contributions. Focus on showing how you think and build, not on exposing proprietary details.

Q: Should my portfolio link go on every resume version I send?
Yes. Even if you tailor your resume for different roles, your primary portfolio or code link should appear consistently. You can adjust which projects you highlight on the portfolio itself to better match each job.

By treating your portfolio link as a first-class part of your resume—not an afterthought—you sidestep the most common examples of mistakes: omitting portfolio links and give busy hiring teams exactly what they’re looking for: evidence.