How to list projects on a resume, with examples
Where a projects section goes, which projects earn a spot, and how to write each one so it reads like work experience.
By Kevin Tang · Updated October 2026
The short answer
List projects in their own section, with a project name, your role or the tools you used, the date, and two or three bullets that say what you built and what came of it. Students and career changers should put the section right after education and above work experience when projects are the stronger evidence; experienced candidates can place it after experience or leave it off. Pick two to four projects that are relevant to the target role, that you finished or shipped, and where you did a substantial part of the work. Write each bullet like a job bullet: an action verb, what you built and with what, and a result such as users, speed, accuracy, or a grade. For group projects, say exactly which part was yours. Include a link only if it leads somewhere worth seeing.
A projects section is where a resume shows work nobody paid you to do. For students it is often the most important part of the page. For career changers it is the bridge between the old job and the new one. And for anyone, it is the one section where you get to pick evidence that matches the role exactly, because you chose what to build.
It also matches how entry-level hiring has been moving. In NACE's Job Outlook 2026 survey, 70 percent of employers said they use skills-based hiring for entry-level roles, most often while screening and interviewing, and only 42 percent still screen by GPA. A skills-based screen asks "can this person do the work?" A well-written project is a direct answer. (NACE press release, January 2026)
Where the projects section goes
Put your strongest evidence for the target role highest on the page. If you are a student, that usually means education first, then projects, then work experience, because a relevant project says more about a software or design internship than a retail job does. If you are changing careers, projects that use the new field's skills can sit above your old job for the same reason. If you already have relevant work experience, projects go after it, and you may only need one or two.
Use a plain heading, "Projects," so both readers and applicant tracking systems know what the section is. Avoid creative labels like "Things I've built." They read fine to people and confuse parsers that sort text by section name.
Which projects earn a spot
Two to four projects is enough. To choose them, run every candidate through four questions:
- Is it relevant? It should use a skill or tool the posting asks for.
- Is it finished? Shipped, submitted, presented, or in use. A half-built idea is a conversation topic, not evidence.
- Did you do a real part of it? On a group project you need a piece you can describe on your own.
- Did anything come of it? Users, a grade, a measurable improvement, a decision someone made, a prize.
What to leave off: tutorial follow-alongs, where you rebuilt something step by step from a course, and projects you could not explain in depth if an interviewer asked "why did you build it that way?" Both tend to fall apart in the first follow-up question.
How to format a project entry
Treat each project like a job. A heading line with the project name, a short note on your role or the main tools, and a date, followed by two or three bullets. Here is what that looks like on the page:
Example project entry
Course Planner | Python, Flask, PostgreSQL | Jan 2026 to Apr 2026 github.com/yourname/course-planner - Built a web app that turns a degree audit into a four-year schedule, used by about 300 students in the first semester after launch. - Wrote a prerequisite solver that checks 1,400 course rules, cutting schedule conflicts reported by users from weekly to rare. - Ran a 20-person usability test and redesigned the onboarding flow, raising the share of new users who saved a plan from 40% to 65%.
A few details make the difference. Write the link out as text (github.com/yourname/project) rather than hiding it behind a word or an icon, because parsers and printed copies both lose hidden links. Use months, not just years, for anything recent. And keep the tools in the heading line short; the bullets are where you show you actually used them.
How to write project bullets
The formula is the same one that works for job bullets: action verb, what you built or did and with what, and a result. The result is where most project sections fall short. "Built a weather app using React" tells the reader you followed a common idea. "Built a weather app in React that 200 classmates used to plan field trips" tells them something happened. If your project has no users, use another kind of result: performance, accuracy, time saved, a grade, a judge's ranking, or what you learned that changed the next version.
| Weak | Stronger |
|---|---|
| Made a machine learning model for a class. | Trained a churn model on 50,000 customer records for a data mining course; it beat the course baseline by 9 points of accuracy. |
| Created a marketing plan for a student club. | Planned and ran an Instagram campaign for the robotics club that grew followers from 300 to 1,100 in one semester and filled 40 workshop seats. |
| Worked on a hackathon project with a team. | Built the payments flow for a group-expense app at a 36-hour hackathon; placed 2nd of 60 teams. |
Read nextThe verb, scope, and result formula in full
Group projects: claim your part, precisely
Most real work is done in teams, so group projects are fine. What is not fine is a bullet that makes the reader guess what you did. Name your piece: "Designed the database schema and wrote the reporting API for a 4-person capstone team" is honest and specific. It also prepares you for the interview, where the first question about a group project is almost always "what was your part?"
Projects for non-technical roles
Projects are not only for engineers. A marketing applicant can list a campaign they ran for a club or a small business. A finance applicant can list a stock pitch, a valuation model, or a case competition. A designer can list a redesign with before and after metrics. An operations applicant can list a process they fixed at a part-time job. The structure is the same everywhere: what you made, how, and what changed because of it.
A good projects section reads like a short record of work, not a list of interests. Pick the few that match the role, describe each like a job, and make the result the last thing the reader sees.