by Khushboo Verma
Software Engineer, Microsoft
October 1, 2021
Hear how Khushboo Verma, software engineer at Microsoft, uses Polywork to generate side income, build her personal brand and more.
Are you a Polymath developer? Are you a jack of many trades? Do you possess skills and interests beyond your job title? If yes, then Polywork is the right platform for you to showcase your skills to the world, grow your network and land amazing opportunities.
How I discovered Polywork and why it fascinated me
I came across Polywork when a friend tweeted about creating their Polywork profile. I soon got an invite code through twitter and the first thing I noticed about Polywork was the beautiful UI and graphics. That intrigued me to explore the platform further.
I'm a multifaceted professional who loves technology, community and public speaking, among other things. Apart from being a software engineer by profession, I actively organise community events, meet-ups and hackathons. I regularly participate in interesting conversations on Twitter Spaces and I also host my own show.
Since I possess varied interests, I found it challenging to share details of all my endeavours, initiatives and accomplishments with the community on a single platform, until I came across Polywork.
Why Polywork?
You might be wondering why Polywork when we already have platforms like LinkedIn, Twitter and can also design personal portfolios. Polywork is a platform that lets you represent your entire journey and personality without limiting you to your job title. It helps you highlight all your achievements, key milestones and areas of interests.
You can be a software developer, community evangelist, start-up founder, podcaster, content creator, artist, freelancer, product lead, DevRel manager, angel investor, student, music manager, model etc. and find like-minded people to connect and collaborate with on Polywork.
The best part is that all of this can be done seamlessly through such an easy-to-use platform. Polywork saves you from the hassle of creating and maintaining a personal portfolio website that you always need to keep up and running. You also don't need to pay for any domain to host your Polywork profile. In fact, Polywork provides you with a short url that can easily be shared on your resume or twitter profile (for example, poly.work/khushbooverma). Not only this, you can also connect your personalised domain address with Polywork and redirect the audience to your Polywork profile.
It offers you a great visibility in your community, opens doors of collaboration and also helps you learn more about what's happening around.
How do I leverage the platform as a multifaceted professional?
The importance of personal branding is well-known in the digital world and it's very important to showcase the unique combination of skills and experiences that make us who we are in order to stand out from the crowd and land great opportunities.
As a Software Engineer with multiple interests, I leverage Polywork in the following ways:
1. Highlighting the key milestones on my page
Whether I win a hackathon, build a website or stream a new episode of my show, I add all of these key-milestones on my page which demonstrate my entire journey with a timeline. I add tags like "Hosted a workshop," "Won an award," "Received a scholarship," etc. to highlight these activities along with pictures, videos and links, where relevant.
2. Generating side-income
A company recently reached out to me through Polywork for a paid collaboration to beta-test their product and that is how I generated side-income through Polywork for the first time. This is just one way in which you can collaborate with others to generate revenue on the platform. You can mention the areas of work you're open to on your profile and people can reach out to you with collaboration requests. The best part is that they can continue to message you only if you accept their collaboration request. This prevents your account from getting spammed. I also receive collaboration requests for side projects through Polywork frequently and I think that's just awesome!
3. Building my network
Polywork has a booming community and provides me an opportunity to learn about and network with amazing people from the area of my interest which is technology and software engineering. I can follow them to stay updated with their activities, learn about what they're working on and connect with them through their profile to enhance my network.
4. Build my personal brand
Just like I can follow people, others can also follow me on Polywork which provides me an opportunity to showcase my work to a large audience to build my personal brand. I've added badges like "Software Engineer," "Content Creator," "Freelancer" and "Public Speaker" on my profile so that people can easily know about my areas of interests and reach out to me with relevant opportunities. My activities can also get featured on Multiverse which would provide me with additional visibility.
5. Staying up-to-date with the community
It's a fast-paced world and it's incredibly important to stay updated with what's happening in the community. Through the Multiverse feed, I can look at the featured posts and learn about new projects, product launches, industry events, communities, podcasts and much more. All these activities provide me valuable insights and help me in generating fresh ideas.
What else does Polywork offer?
Multiverse
Multiverse is one of the prominent features of the Polywork platform.
You can leverage Multiverse to:
- Check out featured profiles
- Filter profiles based on trending badges
- Get personalised feed with highlights from the community
- Filter highlights based on areas of interest
- Explore collaboration possibilities
- Find people to work with
Finding the right people and getting exposure to what's happening in the community can pave the way to your success.
Space Station
Through the Space Station, you can find people who are open for:
- Content Creation
- Investing in startups
- Beta Testing products
- Volunteering
- Brainstorming
- Public Speaking
- Open Source Contributions
- And much more
You can view their profiles to find whether they're a suitable fit as per your requirements and connect with them.
Similarly, if you add "Open to" badges to your Polywork profile, your profile will get featured on the Space Station page and it will lead to opportunities.
Collections
Collections is a new way for you to organise highlights into different customisable categories at the top of your profile so that people can easily navigate through them.
You can leverage this feature to convey your achievements and interests by creating collections for different categories like livestreams, awards, product designs, articles and much more!
Verification
If your profile truly stands out, you can also request to get verified on Polywork.
If you've reached this point and haven't joined Polywork yet, use my VIP link to skip the waitlist and I'll see you on the other side. You can connect with me on Polywork here.
