For a developer role, a GitHub profile is often checked before the CV is read closely — it is faster proof than a paragraph of claims. It does not need to be extensive. It needs to look like an active, real account rather than an empty one.
Nobody expects hundreds of repositories or a packed contribution graph. A handful of genuine, explained projects is worth far more than a large number of copied or abandoned ones.
A project uploaded as a single commit reads as "I built this somewhere else and dumped it here" — even if that is not what happened. A project with a real sequence of commits shows the actual process: getting something basic working, then improving it. That sequence is itself evidence of how you work, which is exactly what a reviewer is trying to assess.
# A believable history — small, incremental commits
git commit -m "Add basic task list with add/remove"
git commit -m "Persist tasks to local storage"
git commit -m "Add drag-to-reorder"
git commit -m "Fix reorder bug when list is empty"
# Not this — one commit, no visible process
git commit -m "Finished project"A minimal README that helps a reviewer: what the project does, in one or two sentences; how to run it locally; what you would improve if you kept working on it. That third point matters more than it looks — it is a direct, low-effort way to demonstrate judgment, and almost nobody includes it.
Do not over-curate
Do not delete everything imperfect. A profile with three polished projects and nothing else can look staged. A messier history with visible early struggles alongside genuinely good recent work reads as more credible, not less — it shows growth, which is exactly what a junior candidate is supposed to demonstrate.
A small, genuine contribution to someone else's open-source project — fixing a typo in documentation, a small bug fix — is a real signal, because it means working within someone else's existing code and conventions, which is closer to an actual job than a solo project is. It is optional and not expected of a junior candidate, but it stands out when present.