Jeff Altman, The Big Game Hunter answers this question about whether a person will have an advantage finding a job by doing a special project while they were in school.
I have a question that someone posed on Quora that I will answer for you. "I'm about to graduate in months. Will my own project help when I'm seeking a job?" Then he or she goes on to describe the nature of the project. There are computer professional or planning on becoming 1 of after graduation , but I think the question could be applied to any field or any situation where someone is graduating and you think about whether or not to do something beyond the coursework. Will that be helpful in finding a job? Absolutely! That's true, not simply in IT but in other fields as well. The key to this isn't that you did the project, but how you talk about the project and how you explain the decisions that you have made in the course of doing this work. In the example of internships, you have some basic work experience. Great. If you need to look for job outside of that particular employer where you interned, they want to know more than just simply what were the tasks that you performed if the role, if they were little more than doing grunt work, unless you are going to be doing that same grunt work, they don't care. For you who is doing the special project that is a special situation. Again, it's not just simply that you did the project. It's the decisions that you made that delivered the outcome. So, for example, this is an IT person. Why did you choose that particular database? Why did you do this? Why did you do that? Give them an idea of what you accomplished and why in order to demonstrate that you have a thought process beyond simply the typical rookie who is there to take orders and, you may wind up taking orders if you go to work for them, but they will see that you have potential, two.
