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Guide

How to present your projects to an employer

By The 3ZAK teamPublished 6 min read

To present your projects convincingly to an employer, choose a small number of your strongest, explain each with the same structure (the problem, your role, what you did, the result), and gather them behind one link that opens easily on a phone. An employer does not need to see everything you ever made; they want to be reassured that you can do what they need. This guide shows how to choose, write and arrange them.

Choose few, and choose well

Three to six projects are enough. When choosing, ask yourself:

  • Which project is closest to what the person I am addressing needs? Lead with it.
  • Which project shows a different skill from the others? Vary them rather than repeating the same thing.
  • Which project could I talk about for ten minutes in an interview? If you cannot explain it, do not show it.
  • Which project am I entitled to show? Ask the client or organisation, and hide sensitive names and figures.

And do not be shy of a small project done well; it may be more honest than a large one where your part was marginal.

A fixed structure for every project

Use the same outline for every project so the reader can compare them and you can write them more easily:

  1. One introductory line: what the project is and who it was for.
  2. The problem or goal: what was needed and why.
  3. Your role: what you in particular took on, and whether you worked in a team and how big.
  4. What you did: the key steps and decisions, and what you tried and dropped, and why.
  5. The outcome: what was achieved, shown through images, a live link, or figures if they are accurate and allowed to be published.
  6. What you learned or would do differently, in one line.
Example: a project description in this structure (illustrative)

An appointment-booking app for a small dental clinic (a demonstration project).

Problem: appointments were handled by phone and sometimes clashed.

My role: I designed the interface and wrote the front end; another developer worked with me on the server.

What I did: I began by interviewing the receptionist, then sketched three screens and tried them with three users before coding.

Outcome: a working app that prevents two bookings at the same time. (demo link)

What if you have no work projects?

Many people assume a project can only be shown if it was done for an employer. That is not true. You can present a graduation project, volunteer work for a charity, a personal project you made to learn, or a small freelance job for someone you know. What matters is that you state its nature frankly (a study project, a personal project, freelance work), that it is real, and that you explain it with the same structure. Employers value people who take initiative and finish things, and it does not hurt that the project was not for a company.

How to show the outcome

  • One good-quality image or screenshot at the top of the project page, not ten similar ones.
  • A live link if the project is online, and check that it works.
  • Before and after when the change is the story.
  • A PDF or short deck for projects that cannot be published openly, sent on request.
  • Code, a document or a repository link for developers and analysts, after removing any confidential data.

Write short alt text for images so people using a screen reader can follow them, and make sure the images do not weigh the page down on a phone.

How to talk about results honestly

The strongest statement is the precise one. "Cut report preparation from two days to half a day" beats "improved efficiency", provided the figure is real. If you do not know the measured result, describe what you do know: the number of users, how long it was used, the client’s feedback if you may quote it, or simply what the project accomplished. Do not credit yourself with a team’s result, and do not include quotes or opinions nobody actually gave you.

The order of projects on the page

Put the project closest to what the reader is looking for first, and your strongest in first or last place, since those are the most remembered. Do not sort by date alone; a strong older project should come ahead of a weak recent one. If you apply for different kinds of role, give each kind its own order or its own link.

Send one link instead of scattered files. A portfolio on your own site or an organised page on a trustworthy platform both work. Whichever you choose, check that the link opens on a phone, does not ask for a login, and does not expire after a short time. Put the link near the top of your CV.

How 3ZAK helps

If you would rather not spend weeks arranging your pages, at 3ZAK we design a portfolio on a domain in your name and write the project descriptions and your CV from scratch in Arabic and English in every package. See our portfolio service. For the difference between the two, read CV vs portfolio.

Related services

If you would rather have us do it for you, these are our services.