A side project is something you do besides your day job. It can be a hobby, volunteer work, freelance work or projects in areas related or not to your career, but that you do in your spare time.
Why include side projects on your resume?
Because you can demonstrate that your area of knowledge and experience is not limited to what you have learned and practiced in your formal jobs, and that you also have developed other skills in your spare time.
Side projects become more important when you are a new graduate, when you want to change career/profession, or when you want to apply for a position where you have no prior experience.
In all of these cases, the common factor is a lack of formal experience in the area you want to apply for. With side projects, you can demonstrate your competence in the area and your ability to take on the role you aspire to.
Here are some examples of side projects you can include on your resume:
- Blog or portfolio (photographers, writers, artists, graphic or web designers, among others) where your style and approach is appreciated.
- GitHub profile (software developers) where you show your work and demonstrate your programming skills.
- Volunteer, specifying the type of work you did (NGO, firefighters, etc.), what your role was and what skills you developed.
- Consultancies/assessments (apart from your work), to demonstrate that you know how to guide others in their personal or professional development, based on your experience in a specific area.
- Participation in parent associations or sports clubs, highlighting the type of work you did in it.
- Hobbies, for example, carpentry; book clubs; tournaments: chess, video games, board games, Rubik's cubes, etc. You need to highlight the skills developed by practicing the hobby.
Not every side project you have worked on will be relevant to the positions you're applying for. That is why in ATS hacker, you can save all your projects, but in the resume you only add those that are related to the position.
If your project is on the web, as in the case of portfolios, blogs, social media and GitHub, it is important that you add the web address in our system. The resume will be generated with the respective link so the recruiter can click it and see a sample of your work. That could make you stand out from other candidates and tip the balance in your favor.
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