Why adding a list of projects to your résumé is important

I have seen lots of CV attemps in the last 10 years. They are mostly from web developers and the occasional designer or marketer. The sad part is that they all seem to be built on an old idea that education is the most important part on your résumé. I can tell you that most of the time it is not.

As an employer who sometimes gets nearly 100 CV:s for some of our positions I have to quickly remove some of the CV:s from the pile. First i check the skillset and see if it matches our requirements at all. The second thing I look at is the list of recent and/or highlighted projects.

What you did is important

I am amazed over how many people fail to include basic info in their resume on project that highlight their skills. It is one thing to list your skills, and a completely different story to display that you have used said skills in an actual project.

It does not have to be paid projects

Sometimes when you are new as a programmer or when you change careers you may not have any paid projects with real customers to show off. It is okay to include open source projects, things you did for a friend or even a hobby project where you use the skills that the employer asks for.

What I want to know about the project

The best project lists are simple. Give me a project title that gives me a hint about what the project is: ‘Intranet in PHP for Acme Inc’ (descriptive) rather than ‘Acme Inside’ (real internal project name).

Next, I want a description of what you did in this project. Did you solve a problem particularly well? Did you deliver in time and on budget? Did you save someone’s ass? Describe what you did rather than repeating a list of skills or technologies used in the project.

If you are able to, include a link to the project’s website, or a demo version of it or at least a screen shot of the finished product. Extra bonus points for links to the source code (or relevant parts of it) – which is a no-brainer if it is an open source project.

That is it. I built my own cv with Devb.io - the free cv service for programmers - but that is of course because I built that service. :) You can probably do the same thing using Word/Google Docs.

Did I miss something? Please leave a comment below so I can update the article accordingly. Did you like it? Share it or tell me.