5 ms·

A new approach to the resume skills section

18 points by dekayed 16y ago

nkassis 16y ago
That still requires people to make self accessment of their skills. There's isn't much incentive to be completely honest on their resume, if they put it on their resume they should be able to 777 all those skills but that rarely happens.
- eru 16y ago
  There's some incentive to be honest. If they catch you cheating in one place, you will lose credibility on all aspects. (Also resume fraud is a crime in some places, isn't it?)
- dekayed 16y ago
  There are many job postings which say that knowing language X is a big plus. If I had non-expert familiarity with language X, I may not apply to a job where it is the primary requirement, but I would definitely put it down on my resume with the permission assignment corresponding to what I felt my level was. This would let me say, hey I sort of know it and also give the interviewer a chance to figure out if I knew it well enough for their needs.
- derwiki 16y ago
  If you claim to be an expert, it's reasonable for the interviewer to pass on you if he doesn't think you are an expert. This is a great way of saying you have some familiarity without the interviewer ever interpreting it as you think you're an expert. It could provide a lot of value in that way -- if someone only claims to have a '4' for Python, I probably won't expect them to know that you shouldn't put [] as a default value for a kwarg.
dhyasama 16y ago
I like it. Another benefit is it could help you filter out prospective employers. Most people wouldn't get it, but the ones that did would be promising.
motters 16y ago
I usually just put dates next to skills (2005-present, etc) which gives some indication. Unix file permissions are a good idiot filter, but unfortunately most recruitment agents are completely clueless and wouldn't understand it.
frou_dh 16y ago
Have people classify their relative skill distribution using a pie chart. Test them on a slice or two to calibrate. Dumb idea?
hapless 16y ago
It's not beneficial to the applicant to be very specific about skills -- the applicant would much rather you were in the dark about it, and had to interview him to get a specific idea of his skillsets. In other words, the incentives just don't line up, so this will never happen. You could FORCE applicants to fill something out, but people would still game the system just by marking everything 777 or marking everything to a pattern determined by the job posting etc.
- dekayed 16y ago
  In terms of someone gaming the system, this was sort of said in a previous comment, but having a value associated with a skill sets a level of expectation. If you say you're at 777 for a skill, then it would be valid for an interviewer to ask you a very tough question on it. It doesn't resolve the fact that you shouldn't have gotten to the interview stage, but you can be thrown out earlier in the process, like during a phone screen instead of an in-person interview.
- Goladus 16y ago
  the applicant would much rather you were in the dark about it This is most certainly not true in all cases. I don't pile my resume full of buzzwords just for the heck of it. There are only two reasons my "skills" section is not carefully organized to give an accurate impression of my level of expertise in each area. First-- sometimes it's hard to know how good at something you really are. Second-- I don't have room on the resume to differentiate between "I use django all the time and love it more than life itself and read books about it for fun on the weekends" and "I did one deep technical dive on django for 2 months, 2 years ago" and "I use django daily but mostly just make simple content and minor feature changes". You are probably already bored and I'm only on the first skill. The reality is that I have a lot of experience and have used a lot of different technologies at varying levels of skill, any of which might be relevant to an employer, but I don't have time to write a novel about my last 10 years of work experience describing every skill in the proper context. Hopefully, the summarized experience history and accomplishments will give the employer a reasonable idea about how the skillset maps to expertise and if they have any further questions, they'll make the time for an interview, phone call, or email exchange.
- 16y ago
ghurlman 16y ago
The skills section of a resume serves two masters, the HR Dept/Recruiters, and hiring managers. You need to list out every keyword ever to get through the first, yet somehow signal to the second which skills are more prominent than others. A pie chart, tag cloud, or some other visualization would probably go a long way - just don't get too obfuscated, or HR will just get confused & move on to the next guy.
- Goladus 16y ago
  This is where the work history and various other sections of the resume come in. Explain some of the most significant projects you've worked on and describe the nature of your contributions. If you describe 10 years of experience in web development environments using PHP, when you put C in your skills section it will be clear that C is not one of your core skills. You're probably trying to make the point that you can read and understand C if you have to, and if that's important to the employer they should follow up.
tptacek 16y ago
Stop. You're overthinking this. The purpose of a resume isn't to sell you as an employee; it's to sell you as an interview candidate. Two very different things. Keep your resume concise, send it as a PDF (if you're working with a system that doesn't allow PDFs, chances are you're targeting the wrong system at your prospective employer), make sure it gracefully includes the right keywords, groom your work history so that it sells your suitability for the role instead of trying to tell your life's story, and put the balance of your energy into a cover letter. Then tear the cover letter off, turn that into an email, send it to the guy who's actually going to manage the role they're hiring for, and attach your simple PDF resume to it. Done, move on to getting ready for the interview.
- mcknz 16y ago
  So this isn't satire?
  - tptacek 16y ago
    I don't know, but whether he's making a statement about how hard it is to write an effective resume or how hard it is to glean useful information out of a resume, either way, he's using them the wrong way.
jister 16y ago
The skills section of a resume tells about what "self-assessed skills" a candidate have. It's never meant to tell how good a candidate is. The efficiency, mastery and attitude of a candidate will be determined in the technical exam and personal interview not by a detailed resume or the "unix permissions" metaphor. That is exactly why we have a "hiring process" in the first place.
deleted 16y ago
[deleted]
AndyKelley 16y ago
Sometimes I think that programmers should keep two versions of their resume, one for recruiters and one for other developers. But that's a totally different topic all together. http://blog.rishavrastogi.com/?q=node/2 http://blog.rishavrastogi.com/?q=node/2

18 points by dekayed 16y ago

That still requires people to make self accessment of their skills. There's isn't much incentive to be completely honest on their resume, if they put it on their resume they should be able to 777 all those skills but that rarely happens.

eru 16y ago
There's some incentive to be honest. If they catch you cheating in one place, you will lose credibility on all aspects. (Also resume fraud is a crime in some places, isn't it?)
dekayed 16y ago
There are many job postings which say that knowing language X is a big plus. If I had non-expert familiarity with language X, I may not apply to a job where it is the primary requirement, but I would definitely put it down on my resume with the permission assignment corresponding to what I felt my level was. This would let me say, hey I sort of know it and also give the interviewer a chance to figure out if I knew it well enough for their needs.
derwiki 16y ago
If you claim to be an expert, it's reasonable for the interviewer to pass on you if he doesn't think you are an expert. This is a great way of saying you have some familiarity without the interviewer ever interpreting it as you think you're an expert. It could provide a lot of value in that way -- if someone only claims to have a '4' for Python, I probably won't expect them to know that you shouldn't put [] as a default value for a kwarg.

dhyasama 16y ago

I like it. Another benefit is it could help you filter out prospective employers. Most people wouldn't get it, but the ones that did would be promising.

motters 16y ago

I usually just put dates next to skills (2005-present, etc) which gives some indication. Unix file permissions are a good idiot filter, but unfortunately most recruitment agents are completely clueless and wouldn't understand it.

frou_dh 16y ago

Have people classify their relative skill distribution using a pie chart. Test them on a slice or two to calibrate. Dumb idea?

hapless 16y ago

It's not beneficial to the applicant to be very specific about skills -- the applicant would much rather you were in the dark about it, and had to interview him to get a specific idea of his skillsets. In other words, the incentives just don't line up, so this will never happen. You could FORCE applicants to fill something out, but people would still game the system just by marking everything 777 or marking everything to a pattern determined by the job posting etc.

dekayed 16y ago
In terms of someone gaming the system, this was sort of said in a previous comment, but having a value associated with a skill sets a level of expectation. If you say you're at 777 for a skill, then it would be valid for an interviewer to ask you a very tough question on it. It doesn't resolve the fact that you shouldn't have gotten to the interview stage, but you can be thrown out earlier in the process, like during a phone screen instead of an in-person interview.
Goladus 16y ago
the applicant would much rather you were in the dark about it This is most certainly not true in all cases. I don't pile my resume full of buzzwords just for the heck of it. There are only two reasons my "skills" section is not carefully organized to give an accurate impression of my level of expertise in each area. First-- sometimes it's hard to know how good at something you really are. Second-- I don't have room on the resume to differentiate between "I use django all the time and love it more than life itself and read books about it for fun on the weekends" and "I did one deep technical dive on django for 2 months, 2 years ago" and "I use django daily but mostly just make simple content and minor feature changes". You are probably already bored and I'm only on the first skill. The reality is that I have a lot of experience and have used a lot of different technologies at varying levels of skill, any of which might be relevant to an employer, but I don't have time to write a novel about my last 10 years of work experience describing every skill in the proper context. Hopefully, the summarized experience history and accomplishments will give the employer a reasonable idea about how the skillset maps to expertise and if they have any further questions, they'll make the time for an interview, phone call, or email exchange.
16y ago

ghurlman 16y ago

The skills section of a resume serves two masters, the HR Dept/Recruiters, and hiring managers. You need to list out every keyword ever to get through the first, yet somehow signal to the second which skills are more prominent than others. A pie chart, tag cloud, or some other visualization would probably go a long way - just don't get too obfuscated, or HR will just get confused & move on to the next guy.

Goladus 16y ago
This is where the work history and various other sections of the resume come in. Explain some of the most significant projects you've worked on and describe the nature of your contributions. If you describe 10 years of experience in web development environments using PHP, when you put C in your skills section it will be clear that C is not one of your core skills. You're probably trying to make the point that you can read and understand C if you have to, and if that's important to the employer they should follow up.

tptacek 16y ago

Stop. You're overthinking this. The purpose of a resume isn't to sell you as an employee; it's to sell you as an interview candidate. Two very different things. Keep your resume concise, send it as a PDF (if you're working with a system that doesn't allow PDFs, chances are you're targeting the wrong system at your prospective employer), make sure it gracefully includes the right keywords, groom your work history so that it sells your suitability for the role instead of trying to tell your life's story, and put the balance of your energy into a cover letter. Then tear the cover letter off, turn that into an email, send it to the guy who's actually going to manage the role they're hiring for, and attach your simple PDF resume to it. Done, move on to getting ready for the interview.

mcknz 16y ago
So this isn't satire?
- tptacek 16y ago
  I don't know, but whether he's making a statement about how hard it is to write an effective resume or how hard it is to glean useful information out of a resume, either way, he's using them the wrong way.

jister 16y ago

The skills section of a resume tells about what "self-assessed skills" a candidate have. It's never meant to tell how good a candidate is. The efficiency, mastery and attitude of a candidate will be determined in the technical exam and personal interview not by a detailed resume or the "unix permissions" metaphor. That is exactly why we have a "hiring process" in the first place.

deleted 16y ago

[deleted]

AndyKelley 16y ago

Sometimes I think that programmers should keep two versions of their resume, one for recruiters and one for other developers. But that's a totally different topic all together. http://blog.rishavrastogi.com/?q=node/2 http://blog.rishavrastogi.com/?q=node/2