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I know soft skills plays a critical role, but lets just focus on the technical skills itself for this question.

Let`s say a candidate had 10 projects completed, where these projects translate into the knowledge and skills that someone with 3 years of experience had, which of the 2 would an employer prefer?

Would projects make up for a candidate lack of technical experience in the workforce?

jon220
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    I'm sorry but comparing "3 years experience" against "10 projects" with no further information, is impossible. –  Oct 10 '15 at 17:48
  • what type of further information would you be looking for? – jon220 Oct 10 '15 at 17:49
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    We'd need a lot more context. For example, why do you have 10 projects rather than 3 years of experience? A small project is going to take a few months of development so 10 small projects would seem to require at least close to 3 years. Unless you are talking about very, very small "projects" or you are trying to use things that you did as part of coursework as "projects" or you are saying that you are an amazing developer that can do in a couple months what normal developers do over 3 years it's hard to figure out what you're really getting after. – Justin Cave Oct 10 '15 at 18:22
  • lets say those 10 projects are small project that were completed from the courses / track taken in online modern learning platform such as treehouse or codeschool – jon220 Oct 10 '15 at 18:28

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Most of my experience with hiring has been to work on large programs. There was a qualitative difference from working on a program that one person can understand.

We did hire project-only new graduates, but expected to have to do a lot of training. All else being equal, I would have preferred a year or so of professional work on a large program to any number of small projects.

Patricia Shanahan
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You can not quantify projects by counting them. Each project is different. A project can occupy each project member anywhere between a few person-hours and a few person-years. They can involve high technical competency and analytic skills, or just involve pushing papers or making mistakes other project members compensated for. The project result might have been a pinnacle of human ingenuity or a complete failure which accomplished nothing.

A figure of "completed 10 projects" is completely meaningless unless you know:

  • What was the scope of each of these projects?
  • What was the contribution to these projects by the candidate?
  • What skills did the candidate apply in these projects?
  • What were the results of the projects, and how much was the candidate responsible for them?

I'm not saying that holding a job for x years is a much better metric for competency. But it is at least one which is easy to measure, which explains its popularity in job descriptions. Most HR people are aware that it is not very meaningful, but it is at least some metric to communicate what skill level they are looking for. Not having the full x years of experience should not stop you from applying when you believe that you have skills which are on the same level as the average person after x years in the job.

Philipp
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Let`s say a candidate had 10 projects completed, where these projects translate into the knowledge and skills that someone with 3 years of experience had, which of the 2 would an employer prefer?

As a hiring manager, I care most about knowledge and skills, just about as much about overall depth of experience, somewhat about years of experience, and not at all about number of projects.

I would argue that 10 projects in 2 years or less may not be the same thing at all as 3 years of experience. For many folks that might amount to a few months of experience repeated 10 times. Your mileage may vary.

This doesn't mean you can't apply for jobs which require 3 years of experience - it just means you don't meet that requirement.

Joe Strazzere
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  • Thank you for your input. What would you supplement to projects so that it can somehow make up for the lack of experience? Do you value online modern platforms such as codeschool or treehouse? If so, how do you assess them compared to traditional curriculum – jon220 Oct 10 '15 at 20:39
  • thanks for your response. Hence, what would be the value of projects to you? – jon220 Oct 10 '15 at 21:00
  • It is the type of projects and the depth of what you had to do in those projects that could overcome lack of years of experience. Once very large project where what you did was complex and, very importantly, exactly the kind of thing that I need for the position I am hiring for is better than 20 projects in the same time frame that were simple and not related to what I want you to do in this position. – HLGEM Oct 12 '15 at 18:25