How to write a projects section on your CV
A projects section turns things you have built or led into evidence. Use a fixed format: what it was, what you did, what happened.
A projects section shows work that does not fit neatly under a job title: something you built at university, a side project, a volunteer initiative, or a self-contained piece of work you led inside a larger role. Done well, it is often the most convincing part of a CV, because it is concrete.
Who should have one
- Graduates and students: academic and personal projects are often your best evidence of practical skill.
- Career changers: projects are where you can show the new kind of work before you have a job title in it. See career change CVs.
- Developers, designers, data and research roles: employers expect to see things you have built, ideally with a link.
- Freelancers and consultants: grouping work by project is often clearer than by client. See freelance and contractor CVs.
- Experienced applicants with a major piece of work that deserves more space than a bullet: a system migration, a product launch, a turnaround.
If none of these apply and every project is already covered in your experience bullets, skip the section.
What each entry needs
Use the same structure for every project:
- Name: a short, descriptive title. “Inventory tracker for a food bank”, not “Project Phoenix”.
- Context: your role, team size, whether it was personal, academic, volunteer or paid, and the date.
- What you did: the tools, methods or approach, in a bullet or two.
- What happened: a result, user count, grade, adoption, or what you learned that the job needs.
- Link, if there is something to see: a repository, live site, portfolio piece or published report. Check that it works and that it is public.
A full entry:
Food bank inventory tracker, volunteer project, 2025 Python, Flask, SQLite; sole developer
- Replaced a paper stock sheet with a web app used by 12 volunteers across two sites.
- Added expiry alerts that cut discarded stock from roughly 40 kg to under 10 kg a month.
- github.com/example-user/pantry-tracker
Before and after
Before: Personal website: made my own website using HTML, CSS and JavaScript.
After: Personal site and blog (2024): hand-coded, accessible site with 14 technical articles; one article on CSS grid is linked from a university course page.
Before: Group project: worked with a team on a marketing plan for a local business.
After: Marketing plan for an independent café (final-year group project, 4 people): led the customer survey (180 responses) and pricing analysis; the owner adopted two of our three recommendations.
Before: Dissertation on machine learning.
After: Dissertation: Predicting bus delays from weather and timetable data. Built gradient-boosted models in Python on 2.1 million trip records; reduced mean prediction error by 18% against the operator’s existing estimate. Grade: 74%.
Each “after” names the scale and the outcome. Results do not need to be commercial: a grade, an adoption, a user count or a measurable improvement all work.
Order and number
- Order by relevance to the job, not by date. Put the closest match first.
- Three to five projects is usually enough. More than that and the reader stops reading.
- Keep each to two or three lines or bullets.
Where to put the section
| Situation | Position |
|---|---|
| Graduate | After education, before or after experience depending on which is stronger |
| Career changer | After the summary and skills, before experience |
| Developer or designer | After experience, or before it if the projects are more relevant than the jobs |
| Experienced, one major project | Usually better as bullets within the relevant role |
See section order and headings.
Honesty about your role
Group projects and team work are where CVs most often blur who did what. Use precise verbs:
- “Led”, “designed”, “built”: you did it or directed it.
- “Contributed”, “co-wrote”, “one of four developers”: you were part of it.
- Name the team size, so “led” has a scale.
An interviewer will ask what you did. Your CV should already have answered.
Projects inside a job
If a project happened at work, you have a choice: put it as a bullet under the job, or list it in a projects section with the employer named. Use the projects section only when the project needs more than one line to explain and is central to the job you are applying for. Otherwise, a strong bullet under the role is cleaner:
After: Led the move of 220 internal reports from Crystal Reports to Power BI over nine months; retired two legacy servers and cut monthly reporting time from four days to one.
Links and privacy
- Use links you control: your own repository, portfolio or a public document.
- Remove anything confidential. Employer code, client data and internal documents do not belong in a public portfolio, however proud you are of them.
- Check that links still work just before you send the CV.
Next: the skills section and writing achievement bullets.