07-06-2026, 08:35 PM
Had a conversation with someone doing technical hiring and asked them directly: what do you actually look at when you see side projects on a CV?
Answer was roughly:
What they do not care about as much as you would think: star count, how polished the README is, whether it uses the right stack.
Take this as one data point. Curious what others have heard.
Answer was roughly:
- Is it real? A project with actual users, even 10, beats a perfect todo app every time. Evidence it shipped matters more than evidence it was technically impressive.
- Can you talk about the hard part? Does not matter what the project is - they want to hear what broke, what you had to figure out, what you would do differently.
- Is it maintained? A repo with commits from 3 years ago and zero activity reads as abandoned. A smaller project with recent commits reads as someone who actually builds things.
- Does it match what they are hiring for? Not that much. A well-described systems project on an application for a frontend role still shows you can build things end to end.
What they do not care about as much as you would think: star count, how polished the README is, whether it uses the right stack.
Take this as one data point. Curious what others have heard.