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I'm working on Project Euler problems for coding practice as I learn Haskell. I'm having fun, and making decent progress, and I'm wondering if this could ever be a resume item.

Under what circumstances would you mention such problems on a Resume? How many ought to be solved, for what sort of job might this make sense?

Understand that resume fodder isn't my goal, just a potential side benefit.

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Could give the impression you have little real-world experience - but then, if you're looking for your first job, that's standard anyway. I don't think I'd mention my Euler progress, though - I did one problem, put a lot of effort into fast prime factorization to get the answer in the suggested time even in C++, and then discovered that a good solution is trivial when I posted the answer. For time reasons I didn't do any more after that, though I can't deny that feeling like an idiot is also an issue. – Steve314 Dec 31 '10 at 14:23
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Feeling like an idiot is an invaluable experience when solving these problems. Especially when you spend considerable amount of time to design a sophisticated algorithm only to discover the problem can be solved with a simple formula. – Mchl Dec 31 '10 at 14:33
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solutions to ProjectEuler are widely available and/or easily obtainable in any language. If you can weave this fact into a general discussion during an interview, then go for it. – Job Dec 31 '10 at 20:25
"Could give the impression you have little real-world experience": Solving problems on Project Euler helps you develop your abstraction skills, which are very useful for solving real-world problems. But maybe potential employer would not see it this way. – Giorgio Mar 1 at 8:20

closed as off topic by MichaelT, Glenn Nelson, Kilian Foth, Dynamic, GlenH7 Mar 1 at 14:27

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11 Answers

up vote 15 down vote

Feels more like interview discussion material more than resume content.

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+1 It would be a great answer to the "What are your hobbies?" question. – JohnFx Dec 31 '10 at 17:47
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+1, even if the prospective employer isn't very familiar with it. – greyfade Dec 31 '10 at 19:52
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Yes and no. If you're trying to convey after-hours interest/passion and you're not the type to blog or contribute to OS works then it might make sense to put it on your resume, but it is by no means a focal point. – Steve Evers Dec 31 '10 at 21:10
up vote 9 down vote

I don't think it is worth to be mentioned in CV. This might be a good thing to show to your classmates or a professor, but I don't think it will make much difference for an employer. It's almost like mentioning in your CV all the "tough" courses you've taken during your studies.

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+1 This is like putting his SO score on his resume. – chrisaycock Dec 31 '10 at 17:46
up vote 5 down vote

If Project Euler is a bona fide hobby of yours, then it could deserve mention in the hobbies section of your resume, but it's not what I'd personally consider as experience in the common sense of the term.

If I were to put it on my resume, it'd likely go near or in the same section that mentions my development blog.

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You shouldn't put hobbies on your resume. In no way whatsoever does a hobby convince someone to give you an interview, and that's the only thing a resume is for -- to get that interview. – Bryan Oakley Jul 28 '12 at 14:31
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As some one who does lots of resume sorting and interviewing, I prefer to see hobbies if they are relevant and tell me about the candidate. Especially with inexperienced candidates, its tough to determine which of the 300 resumes for candidates who graduated this year from the local tech college with the same GPA and coursework to invite in for interview. A hobby section with something like "In my spare time I design and build submersible robots with specific interest on improving computer vision and classification algorithms for identifying fish species" makes me want to interview them. – bdk Jul 28 '12 at 19:07
up vote 3 down vote

Having code you can show to an employer seems like a good idea to me (*), as does demonstrating mathematical skill.

I wouldn't make a big deal about it on my CV, but I think it's worth a mention, if you've put a significant amount of work into Project Euler.

(I would put it on my CV, if I had invested time solving Project Euler problems.)

(*) I suspect that my code submissions to my current employers had a strong positive impact in their decision to hire me. Having said that, Project Euler problems might not be large enough to show off your design skills. But solving problems there would show how you solve problems, which is great.

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I think it is a good idea to have a github repository with good code samples. Project Euler can be one of them, but it does not need to stand out too much. – Job Dec 31 '10 at 20:27
If "solving Project Euler problems" is the most impressive thing you can present to a future employer, you may be underqualified for the job. – user1249 Jul 28 '12 at 15:08
@Thorbjørn Indeed, and I don't believe that I suggested otherwise. However, being good at PE problems shows skills in number theory, which might well be relevant to a job. – Frank Shearar Jul 29 '12 at 19:10
up vote 3 down vote

Uh, no, since there's no way of verifying how you solved these problems. It's too easy to cheat.

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Many resume items are hard/impossible to verify. – Eric Wilson Dec 31 '10 at 17:40
@FarmBoy: uh, i'm not sure I would even want to invite to an interview a candidate with many "hard/impossible to verify" items on their CV. (In this context, by "hard/impossible" i basically mean that I have to trust whatever the candidate says, i.e., that it's not verifiable even by hiring external help to interview on topics i'm not an expert on, or by calling their former employers.) – zvrba Jan 1 '11 at 7:33
In another words, I make a difference between "i know how to verify this, but have no resources [time,money]" and "i have to trust the candidate's word". Another possibility is "i don't know how to verify some of his claims", but that is (relatively) easily solved. – zvrba Jan 1 '11 at 7:35
That's fine, but if I point to my github account, and you can see my code, with revisions and additions over several years, it's reasonably verified. (Even though this could be done fraudulently.) – Eric Wilson Jan 6 '11 at 17:39
I have seen people come into interviews with lots of projects on their CV, but clearly not involved in those projects in any non-trivial manner. As with other things, verification is just a matter of asking questions about the items in the CV during the interview. OTOH, if the interviewer himself is unfamiliar with/unable to solve Project Euler problems (which is not unusual), mentioning Project Euler doesn't add any value. It might make the interviewer suspicious of a person spending time on something whose value he doesn't understand. It's not about verifiability IMHO. – MAK Apr 3 '11 at 12:04
up vote 2 down vote

I think if you put in the personal info section (as a hobby or something) it would be completely reasonable.

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up vote 1 down vote

You might talk about skills you learned while solving a specific problem. But that doesn't mean you should necessarily mention project Euler. Maybe something more like

  • Implemented X algorithm using Y technologies to solve Z problem.
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up vote 1 down vote

No. The only purpose a resume serves is to get you an interview.

Based on my experience from having given many interviews over the year, if it's not coursework, job experience, or an open source project that can be verified, it doesn't impact my decision in the slightest as to whether or not I want to interview you.

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up vote 0 down vote

The progress on Project Euler can be easily faked. I am currently working too on some of those problems and I'm afraid that, if I google them, I would find the answer among the first results and it will ruin the whole experience.

It's not something to insist on in your resume (it actually makes you look desperate if you do). What I would suggest to do is, keep all the solutions to all the problems that you solve. This is particularly easy if you solved them using code, instead of doing it on paper. Bring a flash drive with those solutions to the interview. If the interviewer asks about it, then you can just ask him to pick one of the problems and you can just show him your solution and explain how you did it. This way, you prove to him 3 things:

  • you didn't just google the answer(s).
  • you have problem solving abilities
  • you're passionate and you always like to challenge yourself and learn new things
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up vote -1 down vote

If you're being interviewed for a job at a university (especially in computer science or mathematics depts) it might be a good idea to put this in your resume. Otherwise not really.

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up vote -1 down vote

You could just add the badge that ProjectEuler provides to your own website/blog along with stackoverflow badges etc.
Just put your website url in your resume

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