What Projects For My Developer Job Application?

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all right it's the not the first day of the year I guess but the first video recorded in the year it's January 2nd I already had to check the date how bad is that uh I'm headed to CrossFit so these videos I'm usually not totally awake yet but that's that's how it goes in the morning um the problem is that I can't uh It's Kind of a Funny problem I can't caffeinate before CrossFit because uh my heart rate still is like my one of my huge limiting factors in CrossFit uh so if I caffeinate like just to wake up then my heart rate will be way too high as soon as I start working out so really sucks because I have to basically not be awake and then go do CrossFit which means my workout usually sucks so anyway that's going to take a long

time before that's all kind of balanced out but on the way um but I have a topic for today uh it's from Reddit I jumped to I think the the subreddits Cs career questions and not experience devs I was going to switch things up a little bit and um the question was around uh projects that employers care about and I've talked about this before but I wanted to like there's going to be repeat topics that come up on on code commute sort of the the reality of the of the situation here so um let me just get the heat on so I'm going to talk through that from my perspective as a hiring manager for over 12 years um and I want to preface everything but this is my opinion from what I've seen how I approach things and if people were coming and asking

me directly what I would recommend that does not mean it's the only way that does not mean that other people will do this different ways uh nice green lights um so keep that in mind you know don't you have to kind of anything I say online or what other people say online please take it as a data point a perspective and then uh you know interpret these things and and take your own actions uh with that said though uh if you want questions answered please leave them in the comments uh or look for Dev leader on any social media platform send me a message uh if you want to write more keep it Anonymous what have you and a friendly reminder that Mondays at 700 p.m.

Pacific on my main Channel Dev leader I do a live stream on topics like this but uh there's chat because it's live so you can interact with me ask your questions live uh and yeah I'd love to see there so when it comes to projects I think one of the reasons this is a tricky thing to answer while you'll see so many varieties in answers is because like there some like it's almost like there's a lot of right answers and not necessarily uh every answer is wrong just because it's different which sounds funny but um one of the things that's really important for projects just to kind of start things off here is impact because employers and like when people are looking through resumes and stuff and you you probably have seen this if you've already been in the industry like impact is really important

you want to be able to demonstrate impact so when we're talking about projects on a resume what I would say is if you've already been working okay you've already been working you have some years of experience I would say the projects you want to list on your resume from your work experience it would be really good to show things with impact and how you talk about them demonstrating impact is really important okay um I also want to mention as I go through this I my goal is to try and talk about this from a few different angles one is going to be during interview and the other is going to be sort of like from a recruiter perspective so impact is going to be especially important during the interview process because uh people will be able to kind of uh ask behavioral interview questions about

that impact um now hopefully recruiters are also like able to kind of scan for that kind of thing and say oh okay like this person worked on things that did have a high impact the the difference here is that when people are talking about like or asking questions about what projects to list I think a lot of the time this and obviously there's going to be a variety here but I think a lot of the time it's actually very beginner people that are saying hey I was told to go build projects so that I could apply for jobs what should I list here and I think personally this is where I think there's a like some confusion and uh probably the most room for like arguing different perspectives but um if you haven't ever worked before okay like yes it would be great to be

able to show impact but if you're just starting out it would be kind like my opinion is it's kind of ridiculous for me to expect that you have uh experiences that you can list down that demonstrate a lot of impact and this is where people will say oh like what employers want to see is that you've started a business that you have paying users that you're solving real world problems and like i' this is what I've talked about before and like my opinion is like sure that's nice but also like I'm literally not hiring you for the side business that you've started so yeah I think it's cool I think it's helpful um I don't think that it's a negative by any means like that's actually great but I think that when I'm looking for hiring more Junior people I just want to see that

you've tried building real things because the reality is if you are someone who has been building software regardless of whether or not it has real paying users or you know you're solving you know like these worldly problems the fact is that you're putting software together and building things you're already a step ahead of everyone else who literally has not demonstrated that right and this is a tricky thing I I think for some people to realize because I get that you want to put your best foot forward but there's actually a lot of people that aren't even doing that so having some type of project listed is already helping my personal opinion is that when you're a beginner and you're listing projects sure if you have something where you've been able to get real users and stuff like that that's that's super cool but that's actually

a a whole a lot of work that's not just software engineering and I can say this with a high degree of confidence like I'm building something on the side called brand ghost to be able to sale like sales to be able to do sales and marketing for that and acquire users is not trivial and it also has literally zero to do with software engineering okay so th those are whole different skill sets so it's not like it's bad if you have those but the amount of time and effort that has to go into that is completely disproportional to the other skills that you probably want to be trying to build up as a software engineer in the beginning again I'll say it it's not bad if you have them it's great but it's there's like a disproportion at return on investment than if you were

just like learning how to build something in a framework or practicing refactoring code or you know working with a database that you've never worked with before so again my opinion when it comes to Juniors and like new newbies putting stuff uh like projects on resumés is highlight Technologies and stuff you're learning demonstrate that you're building things I think that goes a super long way um and that's my kind of take on that part uh I did a a quick scan on this thread and to kind of go back to my earlier point about during the interview versus what uh recruiters and stuff are looking at this is kind of like a a bit of like a unfortunate reality but I think it needs to be talked about and I I've talked about this in general for years now but when we think about um job

applications when we think about interviewing and when we think about actual experience on the job um unfortunately these aren't the same thing and I think in a perfect world we'd be able to you know just simply write down what we did at work and that would work effectively on a resume uh and it would work effectively for recruiters and then during an interview we could simply just describe the things we did and that would work perfectly in all interviews and then obviously when you're starting the job it's all just things that you've simply discussed but it's not like that it's uh it's very much like different things that you're trying to Target so is the first phase when you're just trying to make sure that your application can get seen can get picked up by recruiters like there's a visibility element that's really important and

it's kind of two fronts in my opinion this is honestly where I have the least experience on um like from a big Tech perspective because I've never seen the systems that get used in big Tech okay I must imagine based on the volume of applications there is a bunch of Automation in place just sheer like purely based on volume of applications I think it's impossible for a human being to to go through all of them effectively so that's the first thing I wanted to mention so if there's going to be some type of Automation and I would just encourage people to assume that people will be turning more and more to automation to go through job applications because it's unrealistic for one human to go through thousands of job applications in a timely manner if that's going to be the case what types of things

will automation look for so I do think that keywords are an element to this so being able to mention Technologies you use I think that if you want to make an argument that like oh that's not necessary uh like that's I would say in an Ideal World I don't think you need to list every technology or language because I've even said this as a higher manager when I'm interviewing someone I don't even care if you like know C and that's the language we use you will be taught CP um the problem is that like if I give you that advice like hey it doesn't matter if you know C and then you go cool I won't even mention it on my resume like that's kind of dangerous advice because if there's any automation that is looking for keywords like that it's just not going to

help you in fact it might harm you because other people have mentioned it and now you have X number of candidates that are scoring higher in automation than you are so I would recommend put some keywords down especially when you're talking about your projects what technolog is being used um and I think that helps during that first phase of being screened okay so that's important uh my experience at startups with this kind of stuff is that uh I can remember remember talking with uh HR or even some of the other software Engineers cuz we would do a bit of distributed like uh like resume review it's um it's one of those things where we'd say it's great if they have it like then we understand where they're at but like that's not something if someone had a lot of really good experience and not in

the language we use we're not going to say oh well no and that changed over time right because when we were a startup in the very very beginning cuz I started at the at Magnet forensics when it was like seven or eight people it's really difficult to bring on someone that doesn't know the language that you're using when you're seven or eight people including like sales and marketing and stuff right you don't really have capacity to teach people that stuff as much as we'd like to say that we do but that changed over time when there was enough capacity to have Engineers on board people so during an interview for me at least I was kind of hinting at this already right but I'm less I'm less interested in knowing like oh you worked on this project oh like oh you didn't use C oh

okay like hm maybe not or oh you haven't used asp.net core oh big red flag it's not to me it's not like that uh when I'm interviewing and going through projects I want to just talk through through your approach to to building those things I got to move over lanes and people aren't making the space we will do it a different way and one more okay um so that's already like a difference between like job applications and interviews right like I guess what I'm trying to say is like hey if you want to keyword stuff a little bit because it's going to help with automation I don't think that's a terrible idea as long as those are real things that you have experience with right if you don't actually have experience with them that's just lying so don't do that uh because that will come

back to haunt you uh I will say though that during the the interview itself if I'm asking about Technologies and languages and stuff it's not to test for you to prove to me that you you viewed C or aspe or something like that I would be asking because I'm just curious like oh well why is it that you chose C or why did you use asp.net core or why did you pick that database technology it's just about understanding your thought process right um why did you go refactor this why did you have to go rewrite this why like you know just walk me through your thought process because what you're going to be doing when you're hired on is building software I want to understand how you think through things how you approach solving problems and walking through projects I feel like is an awesome

way to do that okay so quick recap so far um I think that impact is really important to have somewhere on your resume so if you are experienced already taking projects from work is a great way to do that if you have no work experience again if you're able to show that you've built something with users and stuff that's super cool I would say that does help demonstrate like some type of impact or like or use case that's super cool it's just not my expectation for really Junior people and the other thing that I wanted to call out with that is that it's not what I'm hiring for right like for you to be able to say I have this many users and make this much money for my application I think that's so cool for you but I'm also not hiring you to get

your application right so um the skills that you have from doing that might be might be great and they might have some carryover uh you know I I've talked about about this before too from a a startup perspective it might be really helpful uh to show that people really get like um this this uh view of like kind of thinking about business as well as as building like actual codee so like that can be helpful and I would say more helpful in maybe like a startup context but like if I were hiring people for my team uh right now at Microsoft like it just it's not it's not going to be a value ad um for folks that I'm looking for again doesn't mean right or wrong I'm just saying that's the reality of it for me um if you don't have something that shows

impact like that uh and you're junior I think that's totally fine I would focus on things that demonstrate your learning right so talk about projects talk about what you were learning talk about uh you know if you were refactoring rewriting like why those things were happening like I think that's super cool um if you are experienced right you've been in the industry for a while and you're looking at your resume and you're like hey these projects don't really talk about the impact I would say that's a really good opportunity to go back and uh revisit your resume especially if you've been having challenges with uh with job applications and stuff like that uh it might be a really good opportunity to say like it's not the it's not that the projects were bad or something like that but it might be how you're messaging those

things okay so take that opportunity to talk about what you did and how you delivered impact and how especially if it's quantifiable super helpful right that really helps people see like like a lot of the time I think as software Engineers what happens is that we go to talk about accomplishments and what we like to do is just talk about all the super technical details but imagine someone who's reading your resume who has literally no idea what you're doing and then you just dive deep on all the super technical details like that's going to be hard for them to interpret so being able to speak to these things at a different level like the impact is very helpful uh but then also the other thing I mentioned is that including some types of keywords is is a helpful strategy and I think that's purely because

automation um but that's my take on that so I'm just getting to CrossFit right now I hope you found that helpful um again I'll I'll say it out loud that's my perspective on this stuff as someone who's been hiring uh and and as a manager for 12 years uh other people might have different takes on that so I truly I I wish you success in your job applications and uh you know New Year I hope that I hope that things start looking up for people so if you have any questions on any of that please just leave a comment you can message me like I said and uh yeah happy New Year and I'll see you next time take care