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New undergrad graduate and with not a lot of experience in the IT field. Most of the jobs I held were mostly customer service, technician, marketing jobs and I am not getting responses from my applications. I did do two big projects while in school though. We made a program for the university that managed the classrooms and requests. We also made a mobile application similar to Uber but strictly for schools.

Should I include these in my resume? If so, should it go under education or experience?

Noah
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  • Are these projects actually in use, or were they just exercises? – John Feltz Sep 18 '16 at 20:06
  • education I would think, you made them for the uni rather than for yourself in your spare time. – Kilisi Sep 18 '16 at 20:12
  • We're they done for pay or for credit? If for pay and if the tools actually got distributed and went into serious use, it's work experience. If not, it should probably be considered lab work and education. – keshlam Sep 18 '16 at 20:16
  • Well the Room Management one we made is used by faculty to send requests, clean-up, etc.. – Noah Sep 18 '16 at 20:20
  • Possible duplicate of http://workplace.stackexchange.com/questions/13412/what-should-a-recent-graduate-list-on-a-resume-if-they-have-no-work-experience – Jane S Sep 18 '16 at 23:32

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This kind of information probably should not be included on your resume, per-se. A short bullet point in your education section would suffice.

However, a cover letter would be a fantastic place to discuss your projects - the problems you encountered, how you solved them, how you worked together with your classmates, etc.

  • I just wanted a second opinion. My universities career center is telling me to put relevant projects in my field on my resume and employers usually look at cover letters when they've already decided on candidates so they may never see what I've done while in school – Noah Sep 18 '16 at 20:30
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From the point of view of someone who recently interviewed quite a few of recent grads, I say put them on the resume as real project. Be prepared to explain in detail your role in each of them, the challenges you met, how you dealt with them, what you learnt etc. Such projects, and what they can teach you, is what distinguishes you from others who have the same academic credentials.

The cover letter is not a good place for details, but you can include the list of projects as a "teaser", so that the reader is sure to pay more attention to the resume itself.

mustaccio
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  • I love seeing projects on resumes. Definitely make it clear whether it was a school/personal project rather than a project you got paid for, but absolutely include them. I'm much more interested in what you built in class than in whatever entry level jobs you took to get through school, although you should include a couple to prove you mastered showing up on time :) – Mel Reams Oct 01 '16 at 23:49