LinkedIn & GitHub — Your Public Presence

These two profiles are your resume, portfolio, and signal to recruiters — all in one. Kaggle and competition platforms are your 3rd profile.

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GITHUB — The Portfolio That Proves Everything

What Recruiters Look For

• 3–5 high-quality repos (beats 50 half-finished ones every time)
• Clean READMEs with: problem, approach, results, how to run
• Working code — not just notebooks with outputs cleared
• Consistent activity (green squares on contribution graph)
• Competition solutions with writeups

What Your GitHub Must Have

github.com/yourusername/
├── competition-solutions/       <- One folder per competition
│   ├── kaggle-titanic/         README + notebook + score
│   ├── dorahacks-hackathon/    README + demo video link + how to run
│   └── worldquant-iqc/         Alpha strategy writeup
├── ml-templates/               <- Your reusable ML pipeline (like 05_TEMPLATES)
├── portfolio-project-1/        <- Original project (not competition)
└── portfolio-project-2/

How to Write a Competition README That Gets You Hired

# [Competition Name] — [Your Rank] / [Total Participants]

## Problem
[1 sentence: what were you predicting/building]

## Approach
- Feature engineering: [key ideas]
- Model: LightGBM + XGBoost ensemble
- CV strategy: 5-fold stratified

## Key Insight
[What YOU found that others missed — this is the most important part]

## Results
- Public LB: X.XXXXX (rank: XX/XXXX)
- Private LB: X.XXXXX (rank: XX/XXXX)

## How to Run
pip install -r requirements.txt
python train.py

GitHub Habits That Build Reputation

• Commit often: Even small progress. Daily commits = active profile.
• Star and fork: Star repos you learn from — shows taste and engagement.
• Contribute to open source: Even a small doc fix to scikit-learn/pytorch = credibility
• Follow competition winners: Their public repos are your textbooks.
• Pin 6 repos: Your best work. Keep them updated.

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LINKEDIN — The Signal That Recruiters See First

The 2026 Rules (Old strategies are dead)

• Generic connection requests damage your brand (LinkedIn's AI filters flag them)
• In-feed engagement beats cold DMs — comment thoughtfully on posts
• Quality over volume: 5 genuine comments > 50 generic ones
• Recruiters at top firms actively SCAN for people posting about competitions + projects

Profile Sections That Matter for Competition Careers

Headline: Don't just put "Student" or "ML Engineer". Be specific:

Machine Learning | Kaggle Expert | Top 5% IMC Prosperity | Building AI at [X]

Featured section: Pin these in order:

1. Your best Kaggle/competition result (link to your public notebook)
2. Your GitHub profile
3. A hackathon project demo video or Devpost link
4. A blog post or writeup you wrote

Experience section: Every competition result goes here as an "experience":

Kaggle Competition — Top 5%   |   Kaggle   |   Mar 2026
- Predicted X using LightGBM + feature engineering
- Achieved AUC of 0.945 (rank 87/1,842 participants)
- Key insight: [what you discovered]

Skills: Add: Python, PyTorch, LightGBM, Feature Engineering, NLP, Computer Vision, Time Series — then get endorsements from teammates

The LinkedIn Content Strategy That Gets You Noticed

Post 1–2 times per week. Mix of:

Post Type	Example	Impact
Competition result	"Just finished Kaggle X — ranked top 12%. Here's what worked..."	Recruiters see this
What I learned	"Spent the weekend learning WorldQuant alphas. Key insight: [X]"	Shows curiosity
Event recap	"Attended AI Tinkerers SF — 3 things I learned..."	Shows community involvement
Short tutorial	"How I use era-aware CV for time-series (5 lines of code)"	Establishes expertise
Hackathon demo	[video of your project working]	Proof of shipping

Engagement hack: Comment on posts by Kaggle Grandmasters, ML engineers at top firms, and competition organizers — they have the right audience.

Connection Strategy

1. After every competition: Connect with your teammates + top performers on LinkedIn
2. After every event: Connect with speakers + interesting attendees within 24 hours (memory fades fast)
3. Cold connections that work: Lead with context — "I saw your write-up on [X], the [specific point] changed how I think about [Y]"
4. Target: Kaggle Masters/Grandmasters, engineers at companies you want to work at, competition organizers

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KAGGLE PROFILE — Your Third Resume

Your Kaggle profile is a credential, not just a leaderboard:

• Medal tiers: Bronze → Silver → Gold → Kaggle Expert → Master → Grandmaster
• Make your notebooks PUBLIC after each competition — this builds followers
• Comment on Discussions with genuine insights — top contributors become known
• Follow top competitors — their public notebooks are your learning material

Reaching Kaggle Expert (First Major Milestone)

Requirements: 1 gold OR 2 silver medals across competitions, notebooks, and discussions

• Silver discussion medal = just write genuinely helpful posts
• Silver notebook medal = publish a clean, well-documented notebook
• Much faster path than winning a competition outright