Type Of Projects One Should add in their Resume

Hello Folks !! As the heading suggests, we are going to discuss what type of projects one should practice, implement & showcase to others whether it’s for job recruitment or contributing to the community.

At first I would like to discuss why you should avoid making the following projects:
1. To do List App 
2. Weather App 
3. Salary/Bill Calculator 
4. Desktop Assistant 
5. Online Countdown/Timer 
6. URL Shortener and likewise 

While doing these type of projects, you should be mindful about the following things: 
1. The above mentioned projects are just for practice or to clear your basics and ensure that you know the tech-stack.
2. These projects don’t add value to your resume as you would get numerous tutorials/blogs related to these projects on a quick Google/Youtube/Github Search. 

“Change begins at the end of your comfort zone”. 

The points mentioned below helps you in selecting your project idea and pulls you out of your comfort zone

1. Your projects should not look like it was created as a “resume-filler”.

2. Students generally copy source code from open source platforms like Github and showcase it to the interviewer, Please don’t do that. Work on projects where you can learn, where you solve a problem, where you can think of improvements and implement it, where you analyse what tech stack you’re using – it’s pros and cons. No one will judge you while you self evaluate and implement your project.

3. Avoid shortcuts. Let’s say, you write just 8-10 lines of code by importing certain libraries, packages, modules etc and that’s how you create your project. This code doesn’t reflect your contribution to the project or what you learnt from it. 

4. Don’t follow tutorials blindly. It’s common knowledge that there are hundreds of tutorials available freely, first pick the right tutorial for you and then just pen down the concepts, tips & tricks, approaches & algorithms to carry it out. Don’t try to replicate it or showcase it to the interviewer, it will be worthless and would finally result in waste of time. 

Time to discuss how one should go about implementing a project

1. While looking for ideas, one should use Google, YouTube, Github, community groups & forums, and different platforms like Dev.to, Medium, Research publications, documentations etc as their fast friend. These are the places where millions of ideas are posted each day and you can get lots of people to discuss things. After all, ideas evolve through discussions and constant research. 

2. Once you have an idea, create a proper mind map covering the points mentioned below: 
• What is your idea? ( the problems it will solve/ objectives of this project) 
• Your current skill-set 
• Is it enough to complete 50-60% of the project? If yes, then you should continue with the project. You would learn other things easily while building the project and exploring more about project requirements. 
• “I require some time to think, and I guess I should learn more concepts about the tech I’m going to use”. If this is the case, then you should start with learning the core concepts, and then work on implementing it. 

In a nutshell, brainstorm your idea as much as you can before its execution. 

Things to keep in mind while implementing the project idea

1. ”5 minutes of reading Readme saves you from 5 hours of finding bugs/issues.” 

Make proper project documentation. If you are deploying it on a platform like Github then make a proper Readme/Markdown file. In a markdown file, you must include how your idea was brainstormed(discussed above), then mention salient features of the project with demo gif or video, attach screenshots, provide credible documentation, videos & reference links and finally appreciate the project creators & maintainers. Moreover, you can mention how an external user can use it by forking & cloning the project. (Like basic git controls to suggest changes/improvements in it). 

2. “ It does not matter how you build, what matters is how you present and make it usable.” 

Host on live url service ( for example: Netlify, Vercel, Heroku, custom domain provider like GoDaddy, Hostinger etc) so that user/ interviewer can interact with it. This way your project becomes presentable and recruiters get a better understanding of the functionalities of your project. You might even get a bunch of feedback/suggestions to improve it. So, listen to them, absorb what you feel is important and then try to implement it. 

3. “Only thing you need to buy is : Time. Make proper use of it.”

Does the project building duration(time taken to build a project) matter? Well, this depends on the quality of idea you have for your project implementation. If you are investing time in learning basic concepts again during the course of implementation, then you should try to avoid that. Instead, while implementing, it is necessary to explore different options, new approaches & algorithms and wisely choosing the optimised one. This will help you learn new concepts rather than going over the same things again and again. 

4. “Perfection requires persistence and continuous efforts in the right direction.” 

Regularly update, test, debug & make improvements in the projects you build. 

Resources for ideas/inspirations to build & implement projects of your own 

• Hackathon Projects 
• App-Ideas 
• Project Ideas & Resources 
• GSoC Organizations 
• Community Project Ideas
• Awesome Project Ideas 
• Open Source Ideas 
and many more, please comment down below, if you find new ones. (“Keep Sharing, Keep Learning.”) 

Keynote

How can one improve their project development skills according to industry standards?
• Single line answer is “ Learning In Public”. How to do that? By contributing to different open source projects out there (according to your skill sets). 
• Participate and build projects/hacks in various hackathons, ideathons and challenges. 
• Teach, mentor and guide people on their projects or you can make genuine project tutorials that you are proud of.
• Finally, you will improve day-by-day in project development if you follow the above mentioned points.

Cuvette is always ready to help you connect with companies for internships (part-time/ full-time) in software development throughout the year where you can learn by working directly on live projects with industry people. Both work from home(remote) & in-office internships are available on the platform, visit the trending internships page of Cuvette and Apply now!