Why Should You Put Projects On A Resume
Listing projects on your resume will help you get a leg up over other qualified competing applicants.
A project-based resume, similar to a functional resume, is highly effective in conveying your unique qualifications, work style, field of specialization, and areas of expertise.
Project-based resumes are great tools for illustrating hands-on experience and your decision-making and conflict resolution skills. Describing projects youve been involved with can give hiring managers a glimpse into how you operate as an employee.
Including a list of projects on your resume will allow your job application to shine and illustrate your work capabilities and well-rounded personality< to hiring managers and job recruiters.
Adding A Projects Section To Your Resume
Another way to describe projects in a resume is to add a section to your document that specifically focuses on key projects you have undertaken during your career.
Example:
Career Project Highlights
Responsible for reducing waste by 23 percent during management tenure at ABC Co. by implementing a surplus inventory tracking system.
Designed and implemented new data processing program for 200-member marketing division at XYZ Corp. that saved more than $2 million in consulting fees over a 5-year period.
Spear-headed $1 million fundraising gala while director of development for Any Charity USA.
This approach offers an added advantage as you can easily swap out the projects category depending on the type of job you are applying for without having to rewrite your entire resume. For example, you may have one set of projects that demonstrate your management and leadership capabilities that you would use when applying for a supervisory position, and another set of projects that demonstrate your sales acumen you would insert when you are searching for a high-volume sales job.
Project Management Intern / Co
- Third or fourth year student at an accredited 4-year college or university pursuing a Bachelors degree in math, statistics or applied economics or a related field of study
- Cumulative GPA of 3.2 or better
- Eligibility to work in the United States now and in the future
- Successful completion of background check and drug screen
- Availability to work 15-20 hours per week during the academic semester
- Good organization and prioritization skills and ability to manage several projects simultaneously
- Experience utilizing MS Excel and Access to analyze data and create reports
- Strong analytical/critical thinking and problem solving abilities
- Exceptional interpersonal skills
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Electronics Project Management Internresume Examples & Samples
- Help manage the planning, execution, and delivery of prototype electronic products to customers and internal activities from the manufacturing teams
- Analyze and identify trends with engineering billing to projects
- Plan and organize test preparation activities. Check on availability of test equipment. Ensure replacement equipment is prepared and ordered
- Coordinate repair activities with technicians
- Create internal orders for financial tracking of project topics
- Measure and track product cost reduction implementation projects and the financial effects
- Support engineering testing and validation testing of products
- Support change management tracking activities on the project
- The project management intern should have interest in working in a Research and Development organization. They should have good organization and presentation skills
- Must be currently enrolled in a US accredited degree program
- Pursuing a Bachelors Degree in Engineering
- Completion of sophomore year
Why Should You Be Listing Projects On A Resume
It’s important to list your most relevant projects on your resume to communicate your experience and skills, but also to highlight hands-on examples of how you applied your capabilities to find a solution.
Depending on your role for a particular project, letting recruiters know what work you’ve done in the past could also show them your leadership skills.
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Overview Of Listing Projects On Resume
Highlighting projects on resumes provide hiring managers real-life and verifiable proof of your skills and experience and whether it is an ideal fit for their role. To impress potential managers with your professional achievements, it is important to know how to list projects on resumes to position yourself as the best candidate for the position. Learn more about the steps required for describing your projects to boost your employability.
If You Lack Relevant Work Experience
If you dont have a lot of paid work experience, projects can be a good way of demonstrating your skills and experience. If this is the case, the projects you choose to include need to be both relevant and significant remember, its better to have a very short resume than to pad it out with unnecessary fluff.
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Dos And Donts For Projects On Your Resume
- Use projects to demonstrate hard skills. Technical skills like programming, proficiency with specific software programs, or experience with social media marketing are all appropriate skills you may want to highlight.
- Tailor the projects to the specific job youre applying for. Not every project is relevant to every role, and not every single task within a specific project is related to all roles either be selective about what you include.
- Use hard numbers and metrics whenever you can. If you attended a coding boot camp, mention the specific programming languages you learned. If you used Facebook ads to sell your craft projects, state how much you were able to improve sales. Always be specific about what you achieved, not just what you did.
Dont:
- Don’t use projects for soft skills like communication or leadership. These skills are easy for anyone to claim and difficult to quantify, so youll want to use more relevant examples of how youve demonstrated these in a professional setting.
- Don’t include projects in your regular work experience section. No matter how hard youve worked on them, they lack the accountability and oversight that paid work experience requires, so dont try to frame them as something they arent.
- Don’t include projects just to bulk up your resume. Only include them if theyre truly relevant to the role and will strengthen your candidacy.
Which Projects You Should Include
When youre deciding which projects to add to your resume, you want to be strategic, Goodfellow says. Dont just dump every project you’ve been part of hoping something will catch the hiring managers attention. Instead, carefully go over the job description for any role youre interested in. Highlight any skills or qualifications the company is looking for that you have, as well as any job duties they list for the role that youve performed in the past. Then note any that can only be proven by including a certain project on your resume. If a project doesnt meet this threshold, it probably doesnt need to be called out.
Even if youre in a more project-based field, like engineering, IT, or consulting, consider whether all or any of your projects can emphasize your accomplishments in a way that general bullet points under each job entry cant. With too many projects crowding your resume, recruiters might not find the most important details. For example, if you generally do consulting for larger clients, but once worked with a small business and got great results, listing details for that one project might help you land a job at a consultancy with a small-business focus. But if most of your clients are small businesses, mentioning a slew of individual projects rather than overall achievements will take up valuable resume space without necessarily adding to your qualifications.
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Use A Professional Project Coordinator Resume Format
Write a slipshod project coordinator resume and theyll think youre lazy.
Thats why a well-formatted resume is vital.
Begin with the reverse-chronological resume layout.
Then use these formatting tips:
- Create 1-inch margins in a one-page resume.
- Leave a little white space to fight eye-strain.
- Write it in Calibri, Georgia, or another 1012pt resume font.
- Include the resume sections: Heading, Summary, Work Experience, Education, and Skills.
- Save it in the PDF format. PDF resume files work well on many screens.
Expert Hint: Networking is king. Cant afford a conference? See if your area has a project management meetup. Just rubbing elbows can open doors.
Why Is Work Experience On Your Resume So Important
Before we jump in to the ins and outs of writing work experience on a resume, here is why it matters. A hiring manager or employer looks at a resume to answer one question:
Does this persons work experience qualify them for this job?
The work experience section of your resume is the foundation that either qualifies you or disqualifies you for an interview or the next step in the hiring process. This resume section uses the last 10 – 15 years of relevant career history to tell a prospective employer whether you have the work experience in your cv that will fit the requirements of the role. The work experience section gives credibility to your application and should compliment every other aspect of your application materials .
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How To List Projects On Your Resume
This article has been approved by an Indeed Career Coach
Listing projects on your resume allows hiring managers to see your capabilities and determine whether or not your style of work would make you a good candidate for their company. But how do you list them and where?
In this article, we explain the importance of listing compelling projects on your resume and how to list them for the most successful impact.
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Tip #3 Explain The Goals Of Every Project
You already know that including stunning visuals of your work is a must. Those visuals can attract recruiters attention. However, if you want them to actually read what you have to say and stay on the Projects page, you need to give those visuals a context. As they say, content is king but context is queen.
Thats why we would advise you to write goals of projects and mention these at the beginning of the text. Mention what clients wanted to accomplish by hiring you to complete the project. You can mention some guidelines they provided.
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Project Management Internresume Examples & Samples
- The intern would be working for the Program Management Office in GE Global Operations Europe. The focus of the team is to ensure that the shared service migration projects follow the right migration framework, prepare the required deliverables, are appropriately resourced and that senior management has the right visibility into the overall program landscape
- The interns role would be to support the project managers and portfolio managers in the specific assigned projects with various project framework deliverables, organizing logistics for the migration travels and hold trainings for resources migrating work into Budapest
- Mandatory deliverable tracking for migration projects
- Migration documentation tracking & reporting
- Scorecard preparation for program level migrations
- Project logistic support
Summary & Key Takeaways: How To List Projects On Your Resume
So, all in all, in most cases it is a good idea to include projects on your resume.
No matter if your projects come from former work, high school, college, or if they are personal, they can only work in your favour.
The key points you need to take out at the end of the day are:
- If you are a freelancer, you might want to consider building a project-based resume, instead of using a reverse-chronological format
- If you have some additional projects to your work experience, you should include them in your Work Experience or Education sections. If you have more projects, consider creating a separate section for your projects only.
- If you have too many projects you want to mention on your resume, consider mentioning the most important ones and include a link to a professional portfolio
- If you have worked on a confidential project, better leave it out of your resume
So, there you go, you are ready to get your resume to the next step.
Include the projects you have worked on and get the interview for your dream job.
***What are your thoughts? Did you list your projects on your resume? Give us a shout out in the comments below. Wed love to hear from you!
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Professional Services Project Management Internresume Examples & Samples
- Working with teams in various business groups and project lead to assist in gathering business requirements necessary for implementing this project
- Provide feedback to the requirements gathering process, designing and developing solutions with minimal supervision, and troubleshooting and supporting production systems
- Development of documentation and training materials to ensure full understanding and use of the Transition and Transformation Management Process for the business users
- Participate in team meetings, engage with peers and team members to obtain knowledge to complete projects and maintain accurate documentation and records on all projects assigned
- Perform other duties and responsibilities as required or assigned by supervisor
- Full time students pursuing BS, MS degree
- Proficient with MS Office applications
- Ability to manage multiple products simultaneously able to adjust priorities accordingly
- Must have cumulative 3.0 GPA or higher
- Ability to participate for a minimum of 10 consecutive weeks
- Solid analytical skills and good sequential thinker
How To List Projects
List your projects wherever theyre most relevant, Goodfellow says. For recent grads, this often means your education section. If the project was part of a past job, freelance work, or volunteer work, it likely belongs under that specific entry in your experience section. If youre thinking of a personal or side project or you have multiple projects that you want to include on your resume, you might consider adding a dedicated Related Projects or similarly titled section.
Regardless of where you list your project, you should follow these general tips:
What does this all look like in practice? Here are a few examples based on where youre listing a project.
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Tip #1 Know For Whom You Are Writing A Project Description
To be able to write proper project descriptions, you need to know for whom you are writing them. Making potential clients profiles will help you define the tone and voice youll be using when writing a project description.
First, lets cover the tone.
The tone of your project copy adjusts to the clients you would like to partner up with. For example, if you are looking to partner up with one of the prestigious American colleges, to design a college website, or trying to get a job at The Hartford Courant , you probably wont be writing a project description something along the line It was an interesting gig, I enjoyed hustling with these guys. No slang allowed!
Now, the voice.
The voice of your project descriptions is more about the technical part of writing. For example, when writing them, youll try to provide as much useful information about the project as you can. Just make sure you dont bore recruiters with a 3,000-word text. Your writing style should be informative, and the text should be perfectly clear, and grammatically correct.
How Far Back Should Your Resume Work Experience Go
Your resume work experience should contain every piece of information that is relevant to you securing the role. This will dictate the amount of work experience in a CV that you might include.
If you have a 30-year career, you might choose simply to list the employers for the first 10-15 years and use your precious resume space to describe the most recent resume experiences. However, if your career is 15 years or less, you should definitely include resume work experience about everything.
In terms of the amount of work experience on your resume, try to give more information on the more recent roles. Make use of bullet points and solid text after your have listed the employer and date details – as you can see in our many resume samples.
Should I put seminars on my CV? Typically, a one or two-day seminar would not be included on work experience in a CV. If the training or educational event has a certain prestige or lasts more than a week, then you might consider including it in the education section, but as anyone can attend a seminar, it will not give a huge indication as to your individual level of suitability for the role. You will certainly have more important information to share.
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How Can I Talk About A Confidential Project On A Resume
When you are using a confidential project on your resume to land a new job, caution is advisable.
Its one thing to list a project on your resume when it has already gone public, but mentioning a confidential project is a good way to wreck your chances of getting the job.
Keep in mind that no employer wants an employee who would be willing to share a confidential project on a document that any stranger could potentially see.
You might think that you would be safe if you leave out most of the information.
However, the truth is that the recruiter may feel like it would be right to call your former employer and tell them that you are leaking confidential information.
Your week would probably not improve from there on, especially if you have a confidentiality agreement signed in the past.
So, all in all, you should focus on your public projects and accomplishments. Doing so will make your life much less complicated.
The Importance Of Showing Industry Expertise
Obviously, a Construction Project Manager and an IT Project Manager have different professional backgrounds.
A Construction Project Manager might have specific skills in carpentry, welding, architecture, or roofing, while an IT Project Manager would want to include programming languages, user interface design knowledge, and/or hardware maintenance skills.
Theres an endless number of project management specialties. Jennifer makes it clear her are of expertise is in IT with her work experience on the Alexa voice assistant project and her targeted skills.
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