This One Thing Can 10x Your Interview Performance (Most Devs Ignore It)
Why personal projects often fall flat in interviews—and how to make yours unforgettable.
Hello friends 👋,
If you’re preparing for tech interviews (or mentoring others who are), there’s one underrated tool that gives candidates an unfair advantage — Personal Projects.
But here’s the thing:
Just building a project isn't enough.
Most developers showcase them wrong.
And most interviewers forget to ask the right questions about them.
Today, let’s fix that. As someone who’s been in the trenches — building full-stack apps, architecting solutions at startups, coding on my YouTube channel Let Us Code Together, and writing Rust blogs — I’ve seen what works and what gets ignored.
Let’s go deep. 👇
🎯 Introducing: The L.E.A.D Framework for Personal Projects
This is how you make your projects memorable in interviews.
Each letter = one pillar you must highlight when talking about a project.
🔹 L – Learnings
Don’t just say what you built.
Say what challenged you.
What new tech did you pick up? How did you debug your way through unknowns?
Example:
"I built a real-time weather app in React — but the real value was understanding WebSockets and caching API responses for low-latency updates."
That tells the interviewer you’re growth-oriented, not just task-oriented.
🔹 E – Engineering Trade-offs
Talk about the decisions you made.
Why MongoDB over PostgreSQL?
Why client-side routing instead of SSR?
Did you skip some features due to performance or complexity?
This shows you think like an engineer, not a hobbyist.
Most projects die in interviews because the candidate can't explain why they built things the way they did.
🔹 A – Architecture & Abstractions
Even small projects can demonstrate good thinking.
Did you modularize your code?
How did you handle scalability or security?
What pipeline did you use for CI/CD?
Let the interviewer visualize you working in a real production team.
🔹 D – Deployment & Demo-ability
Surprise them by saying:
"You can try it here — deployed on Vercel, with GitHub Actions and a Dockerized backend."
💡 Pro tip:
Add a README with:
Project purpose
Architecture diagram
Live demo
Key challenges & learnings
This shows you finish things, not just start them.
📚 Bonus Book Insight: “Show Your Work” by Austin Kleon
This short read isn’t a coding book — but it teaches how to talk about your creative process.
One gem: “You don't have to be a genius, you just have to be generous.”
So next time you build something:
Share it.
Reflect on it.
And frame it using L.E.A.D in your next interview.
💡 My 2 cents as a Software Architect
I’ve interviewed 100+ developers over 12 years.
The ones who stood out weren’t the ones with fancy GitHub profiles.
It was those who could articulate growth, choices, and ownership.
Even my own portfolio — from fullstack weather apps to video chat builds — exists because I wanted to test myself before being tested in interviews.
🚀 Built something recently?
Hit reply and send me your project link. I’d love to take a look and give you my honest thoughts (free!).
Or just share what you're building — I'll help you shape your L.E.A.D story ✨
⚡ Try AceInterview AI
We built AceInterview AI to help candidates practice mock interviews with real-time feedback.
🎉 Our new Live Coding Mode is now in beta.
Test your skills. Fix your gaps.
👉 Try it free today.
"An interview is not just about what you know, but how well you’ve grown." — Anonymous
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See you next week 👋
— Jeni (Aceinterview AI)