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If you have been trying for some time, you might have already realized there’s a missing part on your resume: programming projects.
In this guide, you’ll learn everything you should know about selecting and listing programming projects for your resume.
This includes:
- 15+ programming project examples: code, no-code, and low-code.
- How to list them on your resume: the right way.
- How to get hired even when there’re no active vacancies in the company.
- Tips to land your dream job faster with your programming projects.
A programming resume needs a modern resume template that blows away the hiring manager with its simplicity of design. We have listed many resume templates that suit programmers’ profiles which you can try for FREE.
Why Do You Need to List Coding Projects On Your Resume?
Your work experience on the resume would speak about your skills and achievements. The problem is that everyone has worked somewhere in IT and the technical skills they have mastered are almost the same.
Then there’s you with a portfolio of outstanding personal projects that are highly relevant to the position you’re applying for.
I would love to be that hiring manager to make an on-the-spot hiring decision.
There’re reasons to list projects on your resume for both entry-level and experienced programmers. Here are a few of them 👇.
When you are new
When you’re applying for your first programming job or internship, you can’t keep your experience section empty. A great way to fill up your resume is with your personal programming projects.
The best time to start is while you are still studying. Start early.
In a Career Transition
If you’re an experienced network engineer or a web developer and trying to change your career into a software development job, your previous experience though they are technical would not impress a hiring manager.
Taking some quality time to develop a few programming projects that showcase your skills would be ideal rather than explaining your coding skills in an interview.
It’s also a great way for you to assess the technical requirements and skills for the new job.
Shows your passion
Even if you are an experienced candidate, having worked on a couple of personal projects would come in handy – it shows your passion for the task as opposed to most people coding just for the paycheck and not having a real interest in their work.
More Exposure
A personal programming project gives you more exposure to technical and non-technical aspects of development.
At work, you only get to handle a part of a project and you won’t have time to think about the rest. You’ll be working with a team of developers, designers, copywriters, and even with marketing teams.
Now, in your personal project, you’ll take charge of everything – and that will give you a sound understanding of how each function interrelates to develop a final product.
15+ Coding Projects You Could List on Your Resume
This list consists of projects that you can complete by yourself. However, the area of specialization, skill requirement, and time consumption would be different for each project. Choose what is relevant to you before you start.
We have listed 15 categories of best programming projects to list in your resume where you will find many project ideas under each of them.
1. A website
Creating a website would be a great project if you’re interested in web development.
Personal blog
The simplest project you could start with is a blog or a personal portfolio.
You could use any content management system (CMS) to build your website – you could use Squarespace, Wix, or WordPress. The most cost-effective option is WordPress as it’s completely free. You’ll only have to spend on the domain, hosting, and any third-party plugins if necessary.
The basic programming skills in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript would come in handy to create a personalized web experience.
If you create a personal portfolio, you could easily demonstrate the other programming projects on the website so that it will be easier to send it to the recruiters. Make sure the website you create is mobile responsive.
E-commerce and other commercial websites
If you’re particularly looking for a career in web development, creating a basic e-commerce website would add a lot of value.
In this project, you’ll use HTML, CSS, and JavaScript. You’ll also learn product integration techniques, add to cart, check out, and payment gateway integration.
Also, consider creating a listing website for real estate, used car selling website, or garage sales, which could even turn out to be a side hustle if you could bring in some traffic.
2. A game
Games are a great way to showcase your understanding of basic logic and algorithms.
Based on your interest and requirement, the type of games you should be creating would be different.
If you’re planning to apply for a major game development firm, that won’t be enough. Then you should use C++, Python, and JavaScript to create more complex games – you could start with a Chess game or Snake game.
Though creating more sophisticated games with 3D characters and storylines takes more time and resources, if you’re interested, you could create one with a game engine software like Unity, CryEngine, Godot, or Unreal Engine may be as a group project.
3. A mobile application
If you’re interested in developing mobile applications for Android and iOS, having a couple of projects on your portfolio would be important.
You could showcase your technical skill in Java with Android app creation and Swift is a robust open-source programming language created by Apple to develop iOS applications.
Start with simple mobile applications such as a calculator, To-Do-List, Daily Planner, or a task management software and eventually move into more complex programming projects such as a listing app, messaging app, or a simple mobile shopping app.
Be creative. Think about a concept that you’ll throw your money to make an impulsive purchase decision on your app store or play store. If you as a user value it, there’ll probably be many people who think it is useful.
Check on platforms like Quora and Reddit to learn what people talk about in terms of their needs. Create an application to solve such a problem.
Top firms need top talent who make creative developments with their technical skills.
4. A data analysis model or data forecasting model
Data analysis or data forecasting models are not generic applications. Thee are very specific to a problem an organization or a project face.
Therefore, the solution is also a unique one.
You’ll be able to showcase your understanding of basic statistics, data structures, math, logic, and machine learning algorithms in coding such a program.
Python, C, and C++ are excellent programming languages to develop data models – data analysts will use SQL to communicate with the database.
5. A chatbot
Chatbots are widely used on corporate websites, mobile applications, and social media pages to save time on repetitive communication.
If you’re to create a chatbot, you need to collect the right data to feed into the AI and test them to train it.
You can use any popular programming language including Python Java, and PHP to create one.
Choosing a suitable algorithm would be important here. Some of the popular algorithms used to create chatbots are Markov chains, Natural Language Processing (NLP), Support Vector Machines, and Decision Trees.
These are projects with great commercial significance and the hiring manager would love to explore more about you.
6. An API
API stands for Application Programming Interface – which enables two software components to communicate with each other to perform a task.
Here’re a few example programs you could create with APIs:
You could create an API using any language that can interface with SOAP (Simple Object Access Protocol) – Java, PHP, and Python are mostly used.
7. An AI-powered software
What if you could create something so exciting like Google Assistant, Alexa, Siri, or Cortana?
You could showcase your programming skills, artificial intelligence knowledge, and data processing skills in a single project.
However, this could be quite complex. So if you’re an experienced candidate trying to get a placement in one of the fortune 500 companies or applying directly to an AI-based programming job, you should try this.
You could create a self-driving toy car, a virtual assistant, or an AI-based marketing automation software. The right project could even make you an entrepreneur and you’ll no longer need your resume.
8. A SaaS
SaaS (Software as a Service) is a way of delivering applications over the internet instead of the conventional installation method. Most applications are delivered either free of charge or at a monthly subscription which the user can cancel at any time.
There’re hundreds of Billion Dollar businesses that have emerged in SaaS in many industries such as healthcare, fitness, technology, communication, design, and many more.
These are some of the popular examples:
Especially if you’re applying to work for a SaaS platform, having a simple yet creative SaaS in your portfolio would be an advantage.
You could even use JavaScript or SQL to develop your SaaS, but Python would be a great choice because of its flexibility in many use cases.
9. A payment gateway
Though this will be a quite challenging project to take up, it surely will stand out your application from the rest of the developers.
Python would be the go-to language for developing a payment gateway while you’ll get experience in different APIs and web security features – such as two-factor authentication and fraud detection systems.
10. A simple robot
Use Python, C, and C++ to code a robot.
Robots are being popular for the last half a century and the developments are still going on to create use cases to effectively utilize robotics technology.
You don’t have to create a complex robot that can drive a vehicle or go shopping with your grandparents.
Create a simple project that showcases your programming skills and mechanical systems knowledge. You’ll get hands-on experience using motors, motion sensors, cameras, and a whole lot of hardware.
Consider creating:
- A stair climber
- A line follower
- A floor cleaner
- A robotic arm
11. A simple simulation
You could build an interesting computer simulation project. Every simulation doesn’t have to be visual and some could give a numerical or textual output depending on the project.
You could use JavaScript, Python, or C++ to code the simulation.
12. Web scraping
Web scraping is the process of extracting content and data from a website. This is particularly an illegal practice to do it for a publically unavailable domain.
But if you do it right: the legal way, it would have tremendous applications for companies to collect important data efficiently from other websites on the internet.
Python is the most popular language for web scraping. Its large collection of libraries such as Numpy, Matlplotlib, and Pandas provides faster web scraping and data manipulation techniques.
13. A simple blockchain project
A blockchain is a digital ledger of transactions that is publicly distributed across its entire network making it impossible to cheat, hack, or change.
As blockchain is becoming popular and powerful with web 3.0, having a project under your wing would be highly valuable.
Here’re some of the projects you could consider creating:
- A cryptocurrency wallet or a blockchain wallet
- Digital asset marketplace (DAM)
- A fake product identification system
- A peer-to-peer ridesharing platform
- A blockchain-based simple voting system
Solidity is the most stable programming language used for blockchain developments while other coding languages such as Java, Python, C++, and Ruby can also be used.
14. A simple NFT project
This is a type of blockchain project that is widely popular these days with many use cases and most employers are requesting candidates to have a basic understanding of the technology.
NFT (Non-Fungible Tokens) are unique cryptographic tokens that exist on a blockchain. These tokens can not be replicated making them easier to buy, sell, and transfer without fraud.
Though you could create an NFT without any coding, try creating it from scratch to take full technical advantage of it in your portfolio. Coding the solidity smart contract, deploying it onto the Mainnet, and setting the NFT price would get you through an important earning curve.
You’ll need the skills in Metamask, Solidity, Hardhat, Pinata, and Alchemy for the project.
15. A no code or low code project
The world is going in the direction of no-code and low-code developments. If you’re a programming specialist, you’re part of a team that facilitates this change.
But if you’re a beginner in IT, you could create some low-code and no-code projects to showcase your creative thinking and logical problem-solving approach.
Here’re some example projects you could create without coding:
- Websites: most CMSs allow to build websites with just drag and drop functions
- Mobile apps: simple task manager, weather app
- CRMs
- SaaS
- NFTs
- Chatbots
- Games
How to Find Relevant Programming Projects to Work On?
All these projects need skills in different programming languages and most importantly TIME. You can’t do all these and you don’t have to before applying for a job.
As a programmer, you might have already decided your path – the type of work you’re looking for – and the type of company. If you haven’t decided yet, it’s time to do that.
Search your ideal job description on LinkedIn and see the type of coding skills they’re looking for.
Go to your ideal company website and crawl through it to find out the company’s vision, mission, and future strategic direction. Study their plan for the next 10 years – and their views on new technologies.
With these, you’ll have a pretty good understanding of what projects you should focus on.
Get Paid for Your Projects
When you decide which projects you’re going to execute, without jumping straight into coding, see whether you know anyone in your network who would need this.
You can post about the project on LinkedIn stating that you’re looking for a sponsor or a client for the project.
For example, if you decide to build an e-commerce website, build it for a real business. Give the client a great price that they can’t get from outside.
This is important for three reasons:
- You can cover your cost and the value of your time.
- You don’t have to keep paying for the domain and hosting for years.
- A live project example is worth more in an interview than a mere sample.
Tips to Land Your Dream Job with Your Coding Projects
This is an approach in which you could get a placement in a firm even if they don’t have active vacancies right now.
This is also called Permissionless Apprenticeship.
The best platform to execute this is LinkedIn.
Connect with the technical managers, hiring managers, and C-level executives of the company you want to get a job in.
Find an immediate solution or improvement you could make to their software, system, or product.
Create a sample of the work and post that on LinkedIn mentioning the managers who are connected.
Showcase where they can improve instead of criticizing their existing systems.
There’s a higher chance you’ll get a placement for a job, internship, or even a chance to implement a one-time freelance project in the company.
How to List Programming Projects on Your Resume Masterfully
When writing your projects on the resume, use a consistent format. Make a separate section on your resume after your main experience and education sections – name it "Personal Projects", "Programming Projects", or "Coding Projects".
As you send your resume in digital format, include links to your projects.
Here’s the format we suggest to write your projects:
- Name of the project and timeline
- Project description
- Client (if available)
- Programming languages used
- Challenges faced/ results achieved
- Link to the project
- Link to the source code
Pick the information you’re going to write based on the project and the space availability.
Eg:
Where Else to List Your Projects on the Resume?
You could list some of your projects in the other sections of your resume if you find them related to the position you’re applying for.
Header
Add the link to your portfolio website that you created in your header. That is your project which consists of detailed information about all other projects you carried out.
Professional Summary
If one of your projects is directly related to the position you’re applying for, you could include that in the professional summary.
Professional summaries introduce candidates and their key achievements to hiring managers – show them that you’re a perfect fit for the job by including the most relevant project from your portfolio.
Example:
Include any achievements or accomplishments related to your project in your professional summary.
Cover Letter
A cover letter should consist of 3 or 4 short paragraphs describing your key skills and experience. Use one paragraph to briefly describe your key project experience related to the job.
Show the hiring manager that you're already familiar with the work you'll be doing.
Check out our resume builder to create a perfect cover letter.
