A Portfolio Ended My 4 Month Job Search and Started My Side Income
Job hunting as a junior AI/ML engineer is brutal. I was about to graduate and spent four straight months applying everywhere, startups, labs, even freelance gigs. Nothing. Not a single callback. At one point, I even looked into those career consulting agencies that promised guaranteed interviews, until I saw the prices. Out of desperation, I figured maybe I could at least make a small portfolio site to look more legit. So I used MGX, nothing fancy. I uploaded my resume PDF and gave it one simple prompt: "Turn this resume into a clean, functional portfolio site deployable on Vercel. Use only the exact information and links from my resume, ensure every link works and all functions run properly. Here are my project GitHub links to include. Please replace the phone number field with a 'Schedule a Call' button linking to my calendar, and keep the section headers clickable for navigation." Two minutes later, I had a fully built page with all my resume sections intact, just a free personal blog template that I tweaked to showcase my work. I dropped the link on LinkedIn and X, and within three weeks, things completely changed. I started getting messages from recruiters. Real ones. Then came interview requests, more than ten in less than a month, and a couple of part time remote offers for small AI automation projects. I'm now working full time, finally, and still earn $150-$300 a week from one of those side projects. I know it sounds a bit dramatic, but that tiny website literally flipped my job search around. For anyone stuck in the same boat, seriously, just build something visible. Even a simple AI generated portfolio makes you stand out way more than another PDF resume floating in someone's inbox. Would love to hear if anyone else had a similar AI tool changed my job hunt moment.