I always ask people if they looked at website, my code or anything before hiring me and the overwhelming answer is no. I've always had to get things in front of people just get them to see the extent of work. People think you need a portfolio to get hired you don't. I've built over 30 web-apps in the last decade, and I've never bothered to screen cap them.
People only care what you can immediately do for them and if its not 1-to-1 with what they want they don't care.
The last three jobs I had at smaller companies definitely had someone at least look at my Github portfolio which is quite extensive. I know because the person who looked told me once they were my coworker.
They said it was immediately obvious I knew what I was doing. Nice to have that edge over people who have nothing to show.
The reverse of this, however, has impacted our hiring process in the past. We never really looked for things from someone's portfolio or personal website as a way to judge their skill level, but we have been much more critical on some prospects due to their personal site.
I won't personally judge harshly if it's not prominently displayed on linkedin, or easily searchable. But we've had several candidates that had links to their personal website on linkedin, or even in their resume, and they were ATROCIOUS. I just find it crazy that someone would advertise a personal website that was poorly written. If it's a personal project you don't work on much, then don't show it off on your professional resume.
But I agree with your initial point, we never really used portfolio sites to determine if they were worth hiring.
The only time I was ever asked about "portfolio" type stuff was when my resume was extremely short (1.5 years of not-super-interesting work). Landed a job that was way more interesting solely on the strength of some research-y stuff I'd done in school while contemplating going to grad school.
Bring a color-print out of your projects. This worked wonders for me when I was applying to jobs.
For reference, my website is here: https://www.alexpetralia.com. I printed out the first page, then could talk about each project quite tangibly with the print-out in hand.
You still need a portfolio, you just also have to SHOW it. It is your job as an applicant, not theirs to research every candidate that comes by.
I do have a somewhat unrelated comment, though. Looking through some of the examples, I have found an analysis of charity „effectiveness“ where effectiveness is defined very simplistically as the amount of money directed to the cause. I just want to highlight that this kind of measure does not tell you much about the real life effectiveness of charities in terms of how much GOOD they actually do because the effectiveness of causes/interventions themselves vary wildly per charity. For example, there is an organization called playpumps international which has likely worsened the life of villagers where they sponsored complicated water pumps that required kids to play on them to produce water compared to simple water pumps that looked less fun but could be used without this effort. Compare this to the Against Malaria Foundation which has consistently shown to be able to save lifes by costeffectively distributing treated bed nets in rural areas of Africa.
For donation recommendations have a look at www.givewell.org or for more general information about the topic, check out www.effectivealtruism.com
If you are totally awesome you could also consider to update your project with references to these websites and if you should use this project in a future pitch shine with great evidence and expertise on the topic ;)
Yeah -- mine is more for speaking and blogging instead of looking for jobs. Though, I do get approached by companies all the time because of my portfolio. Definitely not necessary, but it can be really helpful as well.
People only care what you can immediately do for them and if its not 1-to-1 with what they want they don't care.
Its sad but its true.