job interview question: talking about school projects

[iamme]

are interviewers impressed with substantial school projects during interviews? if someone doesn't have much work experience, can you talk about class projects you've done? such as a website you've created to show you know PHP? could this possibly exemplify team skills or anything like that? or are these experience pretty much minor to interviewers?

edit: also, what about listing those in your resume that's lacking work experience...

 

[Pantoot]

I wouldn't put it in a resume. When I interview a recent grad, I will always ask about a senior project, or another team based project they worked on at school. I want to know what their role is, how the team worked, and how the project went. You can learn a lot about how someone thinks they fit into a group that way.
Be prepared to tell a story of conflict and resolution, we interviewers like hearing stories like that, because we can all relate.

 

[Drakkon]

DO Show class projects if its the only experience you have relating to the job, if you have other REAL work experience focus on that. I care more about what you can do in the real world cause what you did in school could be someone else's work anyways and I mgiht not be getting the guy that did that and theres no way to check. If you try and pass someone else's work off as your own you'll either be caught or be in for a world of hurt when they ask u to do something. All the class projects i looked at were okay but when i asked for their code examples there would be comments in like //Johnny did this...i ask where is johnny, cause the guy im interviewing is Bob.

DONT show websites that are your "personal" work if they display nudity, drug use, blog about "partys" you attended, alchoholism, etc (unless in some wierd way it relates to job i.e. porn site op, it may seem like common knowledge but i've had it happen)

If all you have as experience is class related work focus on your education in resume. I would list the project but no real specifics until the interview i.e.
Some College 00-Current
BS in Something
-Focused on This and That
-Projects dealing with something cool that interviewer would inquire about

 

[iamme]

Originally posted by: Drakkon
(unless in some wierd way it relates to job i.e. porn site op, it may seem like common knowledge but i've had it happen)

lol, i can't believe someone would share a porn related site as a reference.

 

[Drakkon]

Originally posted by: iamme

Originally posted by: Drakkon
(unless in some wierd way it relates to job i.e. porn site op, it may seem like common knowledge but i've had it happen)

lol, i can't believe someone would share a porn related site as a reference.

well considering they can handle a massive ammount of traffic, have to verify ages/CC/passwords, password stealing, large directories of photos, mass ammounts of data trasnfer, and overall design layout a lot of the time...being a porn site developer is someone i wouldn't mind having on my team.

i was more referring to the guy taht lists his own personal website as a "example" work and it ends up being a blog about his encouters at parties

 

[torpid]

It's a bit tricky. You can talk about it but you should not indicate that you are an expert in any way just because you worked on something in school, unless it was a very extensive project that ended up actually being used in the real world. It ends up hurting your image in the mind of the company interviewing you if you sound overly impressed with a project that was academic in nature, because it makes you look inexperienced and overconfident.

Stick to the facts about the project and don't try to sound too impressed with it. Your ultimate goal should be to convey that it gave you an understanding of certain aspects and fundamentals, but that this understanding is not necessarily directly applicable to what a real company does on a real project.

Definitely do not mention it in regards to your ability to lead a team, work in a team environment, collect specs/requirements, etc. It's assumed that your education involved a lot of team work. To cite a specific project as having worked in a team environment makes it sound like it was unusual to work in a team environment. Mentioning mock business processes like collecting specs from your professor sounds like a kid playing pretend fireman. Again, you want only to convey that you have some limited experience applying your knowledge.

Edit: Of course, you want to convey that you know HOW to do requirements, just not that you have "experience" doing them because you got requirements by talking to a professor.

 

[iamme]

^^