> listing side projects on your resume isn’t as advantageous as expected
I am surprised by this "finding". Why would side projects not be advantageous? Don't side projects establish that the candidate is actively keeping up to date on technologies and is so passionate about it that he/she works on it even outside office hours?
Here’s what ends up happening. To game the system, applicants start linking to virtually empty GitHub accounts that are full of forked repos where they, at best, fixed some silly whitespace issue. [...] Outside of that, there’s the fact that not all side projects are created equal. [...] While awesome side projects are a HUGE indicator of competence, if the people reading resumes can’t (either because of lack of domain-specific knowledge or because of time considerations) tell the difference between awesome and underwhelming, the signal gets lost in the noise.
It looks like genuinely interesting side projects are a good indicator, but enough people list trivial repos on their resume that just having bullet points on the piece of paper on its own isn't a significant indicator of quality anymore. The only thing she was counting for her analysis is whether or not side projects were listed on the resume, she wasn't taking quality into effect.
Don't side projects establish that the candidate is actively keeping up to date on technologies and is so passionate about it that he/she works on it even outside office hours?
Side projects demonstrate that a candidate has other irons in the fire, which is a negative indicator for dependencies on the potential hiring firm. Plus, developers are rarely hourly positions with a well-defined "outside of office hours", outside work may be viewed as a distraction from what they could be doing for the employer.
Side projects are probably much more advantageous if you get to talk about them in an actual interview. I suspect they don't matter to much on resumes because of the issues others have brought up here
I disagree with the author too. Interviewers are very excited to talk to me about my side projects. I'm a pretty cynical person but I don't think they are doing it to trick me.
The quote was specifically about the value on resumes. The article was written from the perspective of choosing who to interview in the first place. It may be that your resume was selected because the interviewers were excited to talk about your side projects, but that assumes the interviewers were the ones selecting candidates for interviews.
Comments
I am surprised by this "finding". Why would side projects not be advantageous? Don't side projects establish that the candidate is actively keeping up to date on technologies and is so passionate about it that he/she works on it even outside office hours?
From the article:
It looks like genuinely interesting side projects are a good indicator, but enough people list trivial repos on their resume that just having bullet points on the piece of paper on its own isn't a significant indicator of quality anymore. The only thing she was counting for her analysis is whether or not side projects were listed on the resume, she wasn't taking quality into effect.
That forking behavior is exactly why I hate the idea of companies expecting people to use Github to showcase their side projects.
And I really support the idea of side projects, preferably on something other than a default Github page though.
Side projects demonstrate that a candidate has other irons in the fire, which is a negative indicator for dependencies on the potential hiring firm. Plus, developers are rarely hourly positions with a well-defined "outside of office hours", outside work may be viewed as a distraction from what they could be doing for the employer.
Side projects are probably much more advantageous if you get to talk about them in an actual interview. I suspect they don't matter to much on resumes because of the issues others have brought up here
I think that's the main reason why you'd have them. To incite discussion in your interview, and discuss what and why you like to build stuff.
I think that's the main reason why you'd have them. To incite discussion in your interview, and discuss what and why you like to build stuff.
I disagree with the author too. Interviewers are very excited to talk to me about my side projects. I'm a pretty cynical person but I don't think they are doing it to trick me.
The quote was specifically about the value on resumes. The article was written from the perspective of choosing who to interview in the first place. It may be that your resume was selected because the interviewers were excited to talk about your side projects, but that assumes the interviewers were the ones selecting candidates for interviews.