How Many Projects Should You Show on Your Portfolio?

More projects does not mean more proof. It often means more confusion.

The instinct is understandable. You want to look experienced, so you list everything you have ever built: class projects, hackathon prototypes, tutorials you followed, half-finished side projects. The result is a portfolio with 8 or 10 entries where only 2 or 3 are genuinely strong. A recruiter scanning your page cannot tell which ones matter. They either sample randomly and hit a weak project, or get overwhelmed and move on.

The number of projects on your portfolio is a design decision, not a completeness exercise. Get it right and your strongest work shines. Get it wrong and your best projects drown in noise.

Background: Portfolios Are Judged Like Products

Your portfolio is a product, and recruiters are the users. Product design teaches us that more features do not mean a better product. Focused products with fewer, well-executed features outperform bloated ones every time.

University of Michigan's career center advises selecting only your most relevant experiences and presenting them concisely. The same principle applies to portfolios: relevance and clarity beat volume. When a recruiter lands on your portfolio, they are making a snap judgment about your taste and judgment. A curated portfolio with three polished projects signals taste. A long list of miscellaneous builds signals that you cannot prioritize.

Think of your portfolio as a storefront window. You do not display every item in the store. You display the three or four items that will make people walk in. Your projects work the same way.

1) The 3-Project Rule

Three projects is the right number for most entry-level and early-career portfolios. Here is why.

Three projects is enough to demonstrate range without diluting attention. With three projects, a recruiter can view all of them in under two minutes — well within the attention window you realistically have. Each project gets genuine consideration instead of competing with seven others for a few seconds of scanning time.

Three projects forces you to curate. When you only have three slots, you are forced to choose your best, most relevant, most polished work. That selection process itself is a skill employers value: the ability to prioritize.

Three projects creates a clear narrative. If each project demonstrates a different skill or domain area, the three together tell a cohesive story about what you can do.

When to use 4 or 5: If you have 3-5 years of experience and your work spans genuinely different domains (for example, a backend system and a mobile app and a data pipeline), expanding to 4-5 projects is appropriate. But only if each project is strong enough to justify the space.

When to use fewer than 3: One extremely strong, deeply documented project is better than three mediocre ones. If you only have one project that represents real quality work, lead with it and invest in building a second rather than padding with weak entries.

The rule is simple: never show a project you are not confident about. If it would not impress you, it will not impress a recruiter.

2) What Makes a Project Portfolio-Worthy

Not every project belongs on your portfolio. Here is the filter:

Outcomes exist. The project produced a measurable result: users served, performance improved, time saved, a working prototype, a shipped feature. Projects without outcomes are exercises, not evidence.

Scope is real. The project involved genuine decisions and constraints, not just following a tutorial step by step. If someone could reproduce your project by watching the same YouTube video, it does not demonstrate your independent thinking.

Relevance matches. The project relates to the type of role you are applying for. A beautiful frontend project does not help if you are applying for data engineering roles. A machine learning model does not help if you are targeting product management positions.

Quality is high. The code is clean (or the design is polished, or the analysis is rigorous). If a recruiter clicks into a GitHub repo and sees messy, uncommented code, the project hurts you more than it helps.

Cornell Career Services recommends highlighting experiences that demonstrate competencies directly relevant to the target role. Every project on your portfolio should pass this test: "Does this prove I can do the job I am applying for?"

If a project fails any of these criteria, cut it. You can always keep it in your GitHub profile or a separate archive for reference.

3) Picking Projects by Role

Your role determines what kind of projects matter most. Here is how to think about project selection for three common career paths:

Software Engineering (SWE): Lead with a project that shows system thinking — something with a backend, a frontend, or both. Include at least one project where you dealt with real constraints: performance, scale, security, or a complex API integration. A third project can demonstrate breadth: a CLI tool, a mobile app, or an open-source contribution. Recruiters want to see that you can build things that work in production-like conditions, not just hello-world apps.

Data Analyst / Data Scientist: Lead with an analysis that starts from a clear question and ends with a clear answer. Include one project that demonstrates data cleaning and pipeline work — the unglamorous part that proves you can handle real-world data. A third project can show visualization or communication skills: a dashboard, a report, or a presentation deck that translates technical findings for a non-technical audience.

Product Manager: Lead with a product teardown or case study that shows strategic thinking. Include a project where you conducted user research or defined requirements — even informally. A third project can be a prototype you built or managed: it proves you can go from idea to artifact. PM portfolios are about reasoning and communication, not code. Show how you think about trade-offs, prioritization, and user value.

For all roles, order projects by relevance to your current target. The first project a recruiter sees should be your strongest match for the job you want most.

4) Archive vs. Highlight

Cutting projects from your portfolio does not mean deleting them. It means moving them out of the spotlight.

Keep an "Other Work" section at the bottom of your portfolio or link to your GitHub profile where the full list lives. The distinction is between highlighted work (the 3 projects that earn interviews) and archived work (everything else that proves volume and consistency).

This approach gives you depth without clutter. A recruiter who wants to dig deeper can find more. A recruiter who is scanning quickly sees only your best.

My Tip: Project Scoring Rubric

When you cannot decide which projects to feature, score them on four criteria, 1-5 each:

• Relevance to your target role (5 = perfect match)
• Outcome strength (5 = clear, quantified results)
• Technical depth (5 = real decisions, not just tutorials)
• Presentation quality (5 = clean code, good README, screenshots)

Add the scores. Feature your top 3. If two projects are tied, pick the one that fills a gap in your story — the one that shows a skill or domain the other projects do not cover.

Workflow with MyJobTracker

Your top 3 projects should match the roles you apply to most. If you are applying to both frontend and full-stack roles, you might need different portfolio versions with different featured projects.

Use MyJobTracker to see which roles you apply to most frequently. If 70% of your applications are for frontend roles, your top 3 projects should be frontend-focused. If you start pivoting toward full-stack roles, update your featured projects accordingly. Let your application patterns drive your curation decisions.

Curate your top projects on LinkSpaghetti. Use MyJobTracker to see which roles you apply to most and keep your top projects aligned.