What to put on a personal website when you are between jobs

Being between jobs is an ordinary part of working life, and a personal website is a calm place to stand while it lasts. It gives a recruiter, a former colleague or a curious stranger one page that says who you are and what you would like to do next. This post is about what to put on that page, and what to leave off.

You do not need a full portfolio, a logo or a long story. You need a few honest sentences, three things worth showing and one clear way to reach you. A small casa can hold all of that, and you can publish it at your free Mini Casa address in an afternoon.

Lead with the work you want next

Open with one line that names the kind of work you are looking for, not the gap in your calendar. "Product designer who likes untidy onboarding problems" tells a visitor far more than "open to new opportunities". If you are not sure of the exact title, describe the work instead: what you make, who it helps and the size of team you like.

This line is the first thing people read, so write it for a stranger. It should still make sense if someone sees it with no other context, on a phone, in a hurry. Leave the explanation of why you left your last role for a conversation. A website is the wrong place for it.

Show three things you are proud of

Pick three pieces of work and stop there. They can be projects, articles, talks or small experiments. For each one, write two plain sentences: what it was, and what your part in it was. Saying "I wrote the onboarding emails and tested them with real customers" is better than a list of tools.

If a project was a team effort, say so, and say which part was yours. If the details are private, describe the problem and the result in general terms rather than leaving it out. Three honest pieces are more convincing than a long gallery with no explanations. If you want a way to tell one project well, our guide to writing a project story walks through it.

Photos, screenshots and sketches all help, as long as each one has a short description for people who cannot see it. The portfolio feature is built for this kind of small, careful showing.

Say what you are doing now

A short "now" section turns a gap into a story with a direction. It can be a course you are taking, a volunteer project, a side project you are building or a skill you are practicing in public. Keep it specific and keep it true. "Learning to build small accessible forms, with three finished examples below" is a good sentence. "Always growing" is not.

If you have nothing to put here yet, that is fine. Start something small this week and write one line about it. A page that shows movement feels alive, and a quiet visitor can see that you are still curious.

Make contact easy

Choose one reliable way to be reached and put it where nobody has to hunt for it. A work email address is the usual choice. Add a short availability line, such as "Open to full-time roles from January" or "Taking freelance projects now". Tell people how quickly you tend to reply.

Keep private details off the page. A home address, a personal phone number and your date of birth have no place on a public website. If you want to link to a professional profile, link to one, not six. A link-in-bio style list can hold them neatly, and a tidy short list reads as confident.

Keep it current

The most useful habit is also the smallest. Update the first line the week something changes, whether that is a new interest, a new project or a new job. Check that every link still opens. When you start somewhere new, you can keep the page as a quiet home for your work, or turn it toward the next chapter.

If you would like a starting point, Focus Hours suits a calm, one-thing-at-a-time page, Paper Trail suits a writer or a thinker, and Build Little suits someone who makes things. Each one comes with a small resident, and you can keep the one you like while you change the details around it with Casa DNA.

A short checklist

Before you share the page, read it once as a stranger would. Does the first line say what you do? Are there three pieces of work, each with a plain description? Is there one clear way to reach you? Does it avoid private details? If the answer to all four is yes, the page is ready, and you can share it with confidence.