How to Choose Projects to Get Your First Developer Job

Vanessa Flores -

Confused about what types of projects will help you get your first developer job? Some hiring teams like to look at personal projects. Others check if you’ve contributed to open source. If you’re running dry on ideas for projects, volunteering might be an option. Everyone has their opinion and preferences about what they like to see coming from devs looking for their first tech jobs. What it really comes down to is which are you most comfortable with and excited about because at the end of the day consistency is what will help get you the job.

I’ll go over some of the pros and cons that come along with choosing personal projects vs open source vs volunteer work. I’ll also throw in a little bit about my experience with each when I was looking for my first iOS engineer role.

Open Source Contributions

When I was looking for my first dev job I questioned which type of work would look better on my resume. Some people think highly of open source contributions because it gives you an idea of what it’s like to work with the code of other developers. Open source work seemed a bit daunting to me.

Pros

  • Learn an unfamiliar codebase
  • Learn from other developers’ code
  • Contributing to a codebase with multiple contributors

Cons

  • Can feel daunting when you’re first starting out
  • Not knowing how to contribute significantly

Instead I did a combination of half-assed personal projects because I would get new ideas and never finish my other ones, and some volunteer work. I’ve learned lessons from both.

Volunteer Work

I jumped at a volunteer opportunity because the description said iOS developer. Turns out the project wen the route of a hybrid app using Ionic. It wasn’t the experience I was looking for, but I stayed on because it would give me the collaboration experience I needed. However, it took time away from practicing native iOS.

Pros

  • Working with an actual business
  • Possibly working with a team
  • Shows you have other interests & value giving back

Cons

  • Don’t get to pick direction of the project
  • The project may not come to fruition because other teammates may not be as dedicated

Personal Projects

Lessons were learned from my half-assed personal projects as well.

Pros

  • Get to pick the project and tech stack
  • Have more enthusiasm to keep working on it

Cons

  • Don’t get to work with other developers
  • You are a 1 person team for design as well

Stick to one that you’d be interested in putting on the App Store one day (if you’re an iOS developer). A finished or more robust project that you’ve been working on consistently shows you can follow through and it’ll allow you to showcase different features in the same project. Make sure to include a link to your GitHub repo and include a descriptive readme.

Conclusion

Each of these types of projects have their pros and cons. Which most excites you?