I’ve run a couple of companies and worked for a fair few more and in my experience it’s the personal projects that sell people to me. They show me that the passion is beyond work boundaries and demonstrate what that person can do on their own or associating with a small group.

As for how to get going on a project, it’s important to have a goal and a guide. A goal means that you are creating the project for someone. That person can be you but if it is, the project should solve a real ‘need’ that you have.

You can make the goal up but it means creating that ‘need’. For instance, you might create a website for people who want to track which companies they have sent CV’s to and when? You could create a website that helps people suggest projects to you!? You could create a website that helps collect advice about what students should do to get a job.

Alternatively you could create a content website that indexes your local pubs, including microformat addresses, google maps, etc. etc. If anyone in your family has a charity or group, help them create a website/application.

The important thing is to make sure you have a direction for the project that you can articulate to someone else and then follow through with it.

As for a guide, I would highly recommend contacting someone you admire (not necessarily an infamous web developer or software developer, just someone whose work you think is great) and ask them if they would be willing to help you review your project as it develops and point you in the right direction. Make sure you point out that you’ll only send one email a month and only expect a quick reply to say “yep, looking good” or “perhaps you should look at developing in HTML5 instead of XHTML” .. the goal of this isn’t for the guide to teach you anything new (although it might happen) it’s to ensure you don’t end up travelling down a completely pointless path, developing an application/website that will be more embarrassing than inspiring. You could ask someone from a local company to help you out (contact individuals in the company though, don’t send it to ‘admin@’ or ‘info@’). Send out a few of these guide requests and I’m sure you will find someone who can help a little.

Whilst developing the project, you should also take part in as many online communities as possible, ask questions of other people about what you are doing, help people out when they have problems you know the answer to. This work will become your ‘social signature’, the evidence that a diligent employer will use to work out who/what you are. Don’t be afraid of asking questions in forums thinking it will show employers your lack of knowledge. It won’t, it will show employers your desire to learn!

Six months after starting a process like this you will hopefully have a project that demonstrates your skills and you will have learned a lot. Even if the project isn’t finished, employers won’t mind – they are more concerned about you demonstrating that you kept it up for six months in your spare time and that you’ve shown different aspects of your own skills.

As a word of advice, any CV that says ‘I worked on a website for BT’ is usually translated as ‘I did some validation work on a job for a micro department of BT on a project that never launched’ – i.e. it’s meaningless – this is true for most CV experience because employers can’t verify that you did any work. This is why personal projects are so much more useful for employers to assess individuals.