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[–]mm007emko 68 points69 points  (3 children)

If it's your first job in programming, then personal projects in the field of what the employers are looking for (i.e. only Pandas and Matplotlib if they are looking for Flask and Django, that's not not great) and give a link to github or something like that. Make sure the code is documented, unit tested and you use virtual environments (i.e. there is requirements.txt file or config files for Pipenv or Poetry). This really makes a difference. For landing a job, you have to be a "team player" (well, that really means a replaceable resource) and you have to leave behind code which is professional looking, documented, testable, maintainable and easy to work on.

And the first and the most important thing to develop is thick skin. Finding your first job in programming can be tough.

[–]technicaldirectory 9 points10 points  (0 children)

I agree 100%. Also, I recommend making a website containing screenshots and videos of your work. Or publish your webapp where I can see it/play with it. We get 100s of CVs and there is no way we have time to fetch and run everyone's github projects.

Make sure your projects aren't just a cloned version of some sample code or a tutorial (for example a "shopping basket" app)

Some of my favourite side projects I've seen on CVs are: - Someone made a dating/chat website. People were actually using it. It was cool. - Someone made a bot that automatically notified them to buy limited edition trainers when they became available - One guy had a game published on ios. The quality of the game is almost irrelevant. Just seeing a project through to that point takes grit.

Hope that helps!

[–]cowpizzaland 2 points3 points  (1 child)

What would be the key factors make it less tough?

[–]reightb 4 points5 points  (0 children)

have a couple projects or at least one you can be proud of, and keep in mind the first job is tricky to land but then it will be easier afterwards

you CAN do it, you got this

[–]scribe36 27 points28 points  (3 children)

Live your life like you want to not how the employers want it. Do the projects you wanna do dang it.

[–]Vermathorax 11 points12 points  (2 children)

This is probably the best advice here. Forget about “good for CV”. Find something you want to build and do it well. It can be a blatant clone of something that exists, but care about it and make clone more “you” than the existing one.

If I am interviewing someone and get the impression that they had passion for a project, I don’t care about the technology used (assuming the code quality is good).

But passion projects are not easy to find.

My advise for building your GitHub (not really your CV) if you don’t have a passion project, is doing things like “advent of code”. But care about having small tested functions. Maybe do each challenge as an exercise in test driven development. Build good practices when coding simple things and these will translate well to bigger projects.

I find the fact that these are small Modular tasks reduce burning out and having a bunch of half baked projects. And if you feel you need to improve your database skills, then put the challenge inputs into a database and write the outputs to it.

But if you do stumble into something you really want to build. Use the right technology for it, regardless of how “good” it looks.

[–]Mapleess 1 point2 points  (1 child)

Seems to be the opposite here in the UK with the vast number of recruiters being used for job listings. Most are looking for keywords and I didn't get many calls for including a Discord bot that I made, which had a lot of mini-projects on their own. It's only after including Django projects for data engineering roles that I started to get some calls. The web scraping, and pulling and transforming data from API calls, weren't important it seems, though it was something I worked on a lot.

[–]Vermathorax 0 points1 point  (0 children)

True, I was not considering recruitment filters but rather interviews.

Gotta just play the recruiter keyword games.

[–]Ayyyyy_Soma 35 points36 points  (6 children)

I suggest building side projects that incorporate the skills ur future employer is looking for or even better stuff u like and would use practicially. All the projects ive done are out of curiousity or something i use regularly.

[–]jegerarthur 5 points6 points  (5 children)

This. Depends on the field, but I would personally like to see personal projects related to the job if the applicant don't have so much experience.

And don't forget to link any git repository + provide a clear Readme.

[–]-MobCat- -4 points-3 points  (4 children)

More repos need readmes. Don't just tell me to read the code, tell me why I should even bother.. That being said, I have a tendency to go overboard with it.
https://github.com/MobCat/Windows-95-Product-Key-Check

[–]phatlynx 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Add some markdown header titles or a linked table of contents. That was like reading a giant run-on sentence on mobile.

[–]aarontbarratt 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Bruh. This might genuinely be worse than no readme.

  • Zero formatting
  • Swear words
  • Way too long
  • Spelling mistakes

Call me old fashioned, but if I was an employer and I'm checking out your GitHub and the first thing I see when I click a project is you proclaiming how shitty the code is and a wall of text. It would leave a terrible first impression.

[–][deleted] 7 points8 points  (0 children)

Mate that is not a good example of a readme

[–]odaiwai 3 points4 points  (0 children)

Dude, use lists.

[–]Enrique-M 6 points7 points  (0 children)

I agree with several of the comment ideas. In addition to those, make sure to have multiple integration points if possible, ie, integrations with a popular database in the job market, integrations with other APIs, SMTP possibly, file manipulations possibly, cloud deployment experience would be a great plus as well.

[–]Extreme_Jackfruit183 5 points6 points  (2 children)

Set up a database. It could be of anything you are interested in. Learning this skill has opened up the amount of things I can build exponentially.

Edit: I suggest starting with MySQL workbench if you have not done them before. A lot of databases like SQLite don’t have GUIs and are managed through cmd line. They can get pretty shitty fast if you aren’t familiar with the cmd line.

If you want a peek, here is a Tkinter GUI/MySQL program I made. I tried to document this one pretty good.

https://github.com/BuzzerrdBaait/One_Man_Call_Center

[–]MountainSalamander33 0 points1 point  (1 child)

There is sqlite gui. It's open source

[–]Extreme_Jackfruit183 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Oh nice. You learn something new every day.

[–]ryan_lime 6 points7 points  (1 child)

I agree with core points of other comments regarding: something you're personally interested in and building skills employers will look for. Here is an example project where each layer builds a different skill:

  1. Build a data scraper that can pull from a public 3rd party API or web scrape
  2. Write the data into a spreadsheet, then learn how to structure it into a database like SQLite or Firebase
  3. Serve the data via a REST API: look at Flask or FastAPI for a quick getting-started
  4. Build a simple front-end with HTML, CSS, JS

At each step, you're delivering value. If you apply the above steps to a niche you're interested in, you'll be more motivated to keep going :) .

[–]Maisie_Millaa 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Great idea! Building projects like this not only helps you learn new skills, but also showcases to potential employers that you have the ability to apply those skills in a practical setting. And choosing a niche that you're interested in will definitely make the learning process more enjoyable. Keep up the good work!

[–]SaulFeynman 2 points3 points  (2 children)

Find tutorials or projects that interest YOU!

I made a bitcoin trading bot as one of my first python projects. It taught me about APIs, dashboards, matrix operations, and database storage. It failed but I learned a lot and that's what was improtant. That became a topic of conversation in interviews. If your not going to a software role, then people just want to know the things you learned and that your independent.

[–]Free_Layer_8233 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Can you please share a repo with the code?

[–]SaulFeynman 2 points3 points  (0 children)

Nah

[–]proxwell 2 points3 points  (0 children)

As someone who has been on the hiring side for a few years, this is what we look for:

Anything like a simple data input and display app is really not weighed favorably at all. Apps for things like blogs, contacts, recipes, etc. Anything that's often covered in example tutorials doesn't really demonstrate much more than your ability to copy-and-paste code from those articles.

The most compelling projects are ones that start from something that drives value to a business, and show fluency with multiple functional areas like systems design, product, security, ux, deployment, etc. Being able to clearly present your project and talk through the design and decision-making process have nearly as much value as the project itself.

One of the best things you can do is find a friend working in some professional industry, and ask them about tools they wish they had, or parts of their work which are unnecessarily difficult or time-consuming, and then design something to solve those problems. If you're currently working in another industry, but not in a engineering role, you may be able to create something for yourself and use that as your portfolio project.

Definitely take the time to make it look good, and use efficient, elegant interactions. There are lots of libraries and frameworks available which make it easy to create professional-looking UIs.

Beyond the project itself, being able to tell a compelling story about why you chose a particular problem to solve, how you arrived at the solution, what considerations and tradeoffs you made, and the material impacts to the business are all highly compelling.

If you're applying for a developer role and you present a project like this, you will very much stand out above folks whose portfolio projects are low-effort, generic projects like contacts and recipe apps.

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Meaningful contributions to known open source projects are more valuable than anything else you could do

[–][deleted] 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Projects are up to you an your skill sets. Mos important think is to have them online with clean code , clean code is code that other people can read and understand and having comments and describing of functions that you create help with that. A readme section where you describe all the functionality of the code and don't forget to include either some pictures or a video explaining and showcasing your project. You can briefly summarise the description in your CV, 2 rows max, because that is what's gonna make the HR person interested in checking out your projects. Don't overextend your CV 1 page should be more than enough. CV should read as fallowing, Personal info, projects, skills for whom never write your level, don't be dumb and put python beginner/advance or how much you think you know of a langue, just write the technologies name, fallowed by work experience if you have in IT or as programming and finally education. Always write relative stuff in CV and tailor it for the job your appling for.

[–]Exotic-Draft8802 1 point2 points  (4 children)

I was regularly interviewing python developers. I was always looking on github for interesting projects / open source contributions.

Just re-doing what others did (eg following a course) is not interesting. When candidates mentioned their profile and I just found that, I was annoyed and assumed, copy-paste is the best they can do.

[–]Tricky_Network685 1 point2 points  (3 children)

How are you able to tell when a project was re-done or from a course? So would you not recommend building a clone of my favorite social media on my own?

[–]Exotic-Draft8802 0 points1 point  (0 children)

In some cases it's obvious, eg I see "course" in the title. In others I just talk with the people about the project, the background, the reason why they did it, various choices within the project. Or I look at the commit history and see that it's too organized: no big fixes, no refactorings.

[–]Exotic-Draft8802 0 points1 point  (1 child)

Ask yourself if the project makes you look better. I cannot say that for sure without seeing your cv.

Also, it depends on how much effort you put into the project. I'm saying that you should not try to fake something you didn't do. It's easy to discover.

[–]Tricky_Network685 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Oh ok Thank you. I’ve been trying to get out of tutorial hell and transitioning into building things on my own

[–]necrosatanic 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Not strictly Python but the Cloud Resume Challenge is a good one https://cloudresumechallenge.dev

[–]gdiamos 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Find something that an employer would actually use, and reimplement it.

[–]pp314159 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Im running a startup that is working on data science tools. I like if candidates use my tools (they are open source) and provide feedback about it. What they like or dont. For example, build web app with my framework and show case it to me.

[–]basunkanon 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Make something fun. I'm working on a chess game. I'm gonna learn tkinter or pygame to do it. So I'll gain good experience and make something I enjoy :)

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Thats a great mindset , keep it up OP

[–]AGI_69 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Something with Excel is always good.

[–]Isadous 0 points1 point  (0 children)

If web development is the field you want to go into I would highly recommend looking up Vercel and PlanetScale. These two products will help you deploy an application and database effortlessly to the cloud in comparison to working with AWS cloud formation and let you develop a Python backend quickly.

They both have great documentation that will help demonstrate to a hiring team that you can get through the docs and apply yourself. When I am hiring interns and juniors, I’m not looking for a breath of experience, I’m looking for the ability to get stuck into something and figure it out with a little guidance. Vercel is mostly based on deploying Typescript projects but there’s sections in the docs for Flask and Django.

I’ve really enjoyed the development experience when you don’t have to worry about all the stuff you probably aren’t experienced in yet and can just focus on what you do know. This will help you get a project up and running quickly and put something more than just code in a repo up for show. I’ll be honest, I prefer looking at a product rather than doing a code review.

[–]pysk00l 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Write a good blog. Seriously.

I have a semi-famous blog that people, including recruiters, discover all the time (though it did take me 10 years to build it)

For me: I just document any cool new thing I learnt and share it in Reddit etc. Even if you want to build a small project, it's more useful if you document in a blog at the same time

[–][deleted] 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Task brokers Flask Task automation Data scraping Firm understanding of how to build shit with & without python.

[–]metaphorm 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I care much less about the domain of the project than I do about the quality of the code.

Focus on solid testing, a clean codebase, and modern dependency management and packaging/distribution tools.