Student projects: do they influence employment prospects?

Question

I am a BSc student who is going to start the last year of my degree and I am wondering how relevant my final year project choice is going to be when looking for a job next year - and how it will affect what jobs will be open/closed to me when searching for my first programming/developer job.

I presently have a couple of options for my final year project/ dissertation:

• Robotics/pattern recognition: one of my second year professors does research in Robotics/visual pattern recognition and has invited me to work with him during my final year project. It would be in Python as it has good APIs/libraries in this field.

• A document repository system: with a database and some networked elements (client/server), probably using apache jackrabbit and java on the server and C#/WPF/.Net stack to develop the client. C# because bezier curves in WPF is a snap and I have a particular type of GUI in mind for the client component. This is my own idea/project.

The first one sounds the most fun and in all likelihood will be the one time that I am involved in real research (I am 35 and have a family). The second one sounds closer to what real-world development is. My past work experience did not involve programming, or IT.

All thoughts/comments are appreciated! Thanks, Luis

Answer 1

My thoughts:

The robotics project will probably help you out if you specifically want to work in robotics after graduation.

The document repository system will help you get a position just about everywhere else since it's using a combination of all the most popular current technologies (Java, C#, WPF).

Now if only you could figure out a way to write a C#/WPF UI to interact with the robotics project then you'd be golden :).

Answer 2

I am heavily involved in hiring at our work, so I can give my point of view. When we hire people who have no previous work experience, we are looking at only their programming acumen. Any student projects in relevant technologies (for our companies) do, however, serve as a little bonus (if they can answer questions on the technology).

I think you should do both if you can. One for your dissertation, and another one as a self project on the side (maybe with reduced scope) and include that on your resume as well.

Answer 3

As someone who hires regularly (and our last two hires had just graduated), I'll say this: If it's a group project, it doesn't help because it's too hard to figure out who did what. If it's a singleton project and you can answer deep questions about it, it's certainly a plus.

In fact, anything that shows initiative is a plus -- school projects, side projects, even extra-curricular stuff that has nothing to do with programming.

Answer 4

The specifics of the project would not be as relevant as how you present the project - an interviewer wouldn't know if you had a choice or what the other choices were.

In an interview I would look for someone who can talk about the project enthusiastically and make it clear that they enjoyed the challenge and solving the problems rather than that they simply put something together in the quickest way possible.

Answer 5

I can honestly say my BSc project has had no relevance in my employment history, save for the effect it had on my final degree classification. The project itself got a relatively high mark, but in terms of functional code, there was actually very little. I wrote a good report, and developed a solid foundation for further progress, but that was about it. I'd suggest you pick the area you'll enjoy the most and simply have fun with it - I actually wish I'd done that myself.

Answer 6

When I finished my fourth year university project, I took a job with the external company which had been supervising the project. I think more than anything else, that's because I chose a project which I was interesting in, and hence I stayed motivated throughout it, meaning the supervisors saw me in a good light.

I would worry more about picking a project which will keep your interest, and which you can do well rather than some 'employability' factor in the project.

Answer 7

If it sounds interesting (like AI) your interviewer might want to grill you about it out of curiosity. Cue 10 minutes of answering softball questions that you likely know the answer to rather than technical questions you might get caught up on.

Answer 8

As a student my self, take this with some salt.

Heck Yah!!

My school does large, industry sponsored senior projects. Students regularly get jobs directly from them. Several of the sponsors have said up front "This program is good for your job prospects at my company"

Answer 9

You have to make yourself (and your family) happy. So be comfortable with your choice

I base these sorts of choices with what do I want to be doing in 2 and 5 years time. What will choices will help me, what choices will not...

Good luck!

Answer 10

The student project can help you if any of these are true:

• You can answer deep questions about it
• It shows that you have expertise in technologies that matter to the group doing the hiring
• You create good collateral (papers which get cited, for example) as a result of the project
• You can use it to demonstrate that you can be productive, enthusiastic, and communicative

Otherwise, it won't make any difference.

Answer 11

When interviewing programmers newly out of school, I am most impressed by completed projects, especially those completed at least partly outside of school. In my experience, there's a close correlation between the ability to see a personal project through to completion, and the ability to get work done independently on a large project.

So to answer your question, for resume purposes I'd advise the pattern recognition project only if you're confident that the result will be something solid that you can show.

That said, you should work on the project that's most interesting to you, no question.

Answer 12

GSOC is not a bad way to get some "resuméable" experience. Involvement in OS projects works well too. Anything where there's a community that can vouch for your (good) work. Another trick is to start answering technical questions on user groups, Stack Overflow, etc. It will take some time to build up an online rep, but once you have a history of taking initiative, helping others, etc., it will be a nice little boost when the reviewer performs the inevitable Google search. ... of course this does require a fairly unique name.

Answer 13

Short answer to your title question: yes, but not always in the ways you might expect.

Longer answer (which is strongly focused on my priorities - your mileage may vary with other people when they are on the other side of the table):

I spent all of yesterday giving interviews and had plenty of time to think about my interviewing style and priorities.

My interest areas have definitely expanded beyond a tiny set of technical buzzwords and "what code can you type for me and how quickly?" These days, I'm very interested in the person that you'll be one, two and three-plus years from now. As a result, I'm less interested in ensuring that you are buzzword-compliant with the work that we're doing today and much more interested in things like:

1. Are you interesting to talk to?
2. Have you done any work that is interesting to you? Can you make me interested in this work?
3. Can we have a disagreement about the approach that you used? Can you convince me that your approach was the right one?
4. Are you a quick thinker? Can you understand my explanation about our work and get to the point where we can have a discussion?

So, getting back to your question, if we were having an interview, I wouldn't really care which particular technology you used on a project. I would care about whether you could explain the strengths and weaknesses of that technology, how it lead to the success or failure of the project and what you learned from the whole exercise.