What Kind of Personal Projects Did You Do To Showcase on Your Resume ?

Personal project section is probably the most important section in your resume after your work experience. For freshers it becomes even more important as it helps their profile stand out while applying for jobs. It is important to understand exactly how this section can help you in getting a job so that you can prepare and choose your projects accordingly. This post will aim to answer this very question about what kind of personal projects to showcase in your resume.

Why do personal projects ?

Getting a job is majorly a two step process. The first step is to get shortlisted for the interviews and the second step is to perform in those interviews. Project predominantly helps with the first step. When you are applying for a job positions, the recruiter will look at your current skill sets and see if there is a suitable match between your profile and the job requirements. If there is a match you will get a call for the interview. Now the tricky part here is that due to high competition, even if there is a match, many candidates end up not getting a call. Projects can help exactly at this step to increase your chances of getting shortlisted.

Which projects to add ?

Recruiters need a way to validate if you actually possess the skills written on your resume. Say you are claiming to know cloud technologies like AWS, recruiters would need a way to ensure that you have actually developed something using Amazon Web Services. A project say a website server hosted on AWS will help make your claim stronger. So you need to showcase those projects in your resume which matches the core skills you have mentioned. Additionally, if the job is for a specific technology role, it is important that your project matches the technologies mentioned in the job description. For example, if you are applying for a data analyst role, it will help if you have done a data crunching project in python.

Which projects to “not” add ?

Another important role played by the projects on your resume is that they give a conversation pointer to the interviewer during interviews. This way the interviewer is able to start a conversation by going into the high level details of the projects you have done. They will usually not go into finer details like exact code written, but they would be interested in knowing why they used a particular technology, what were the challenges faced, what was the architecture design and so on. It helps the interviewer understand your thinking process. It is important to ensure that you know the details of the project you are mentioning in your resume. If you have done a project at a shallow level or were not involved in the deeper implementations, it will be wise to leave them out of your resume.

How many projects to add ?

Another important question that comes up is how many projects are sufficient. In my opinion, two to three projects are good enough to showcase multiple skills. Keep your top 2-3 projects and leave the rest out. This keeps the resume clean, and also helps you focus on a few things so that you can prepare in detail about those projects. If you are targeting big tech companies like FAANG, your personal projects would be important mostly during the resume shortlisting stage. During interviews, the focus will be on the technical questions related to DSA and System design. But if you are targeting startups, there is a higher chance that you can be asked to go into high level details of the project you have worked on.

Summary

To summarise, choose your top 2-3 projects to put on the resume, prepare them well before the interview so that you are able to answer questions even if you have done the project some time back. Ensure that the project matches the skills you are claiming in your resume and the job description you are applying for. Add the Github links and demo links if available on the resume itself, so that your future employer can see what exactly you have worked on. A good project can convert your job application into an interview call.