6 ms·

A general question: What do you all think about this Skill representation as points out of 5 (or 7 or 10 for that matter)? These arbitrary scales always hit me

A general question: What do you all think about this Skill representation as points out of 5 (or 7 or 10 for that matter)? These arbitrary scales always hit me as kind of...useless? There is no frame of reference what a specific amount of points mean. Of course, with this kind of skill-self-description there will always be difficulties, i.e., one does not always know what one does not know etc. But it seems to me that e.g., a duration of full-time or equivalent experience with a technology would provide a better way of measuring experience than these arbitrary scales?

ghosty141 3y ago
They are arbitrary in a way but remember that the people scanning over the resumes are not technical people, for them its important that a skill is there and thats about it. Finding a job is more about social skills than technical ones.
- linusha 3y ago
  But why spent valuable estate on the CV by providing a made-up scale, when just putting the skill would be enough to satisfy your argument?
  - evilduck 3y ago
    Because resumes aren't evaluated on maximum information density (and sometimes sparser resumes even do better). I don't care for skill self-ratings as a concept either but these are placed in what would need to be negative space anyways. If you're committing to a skills list, removing the rating dots and stuffing more skills in their place probably wouldn't have a positive effect.
kulikalov 3y ago
IMO it makes more sense to simply mention the most important skills inside the position description bullet points.
clnq 3y ago
The skill bars or skill meters are completely useless because one person's 10/10 is another person's 2/10. Moreover, the more junior the engineer, the higher they score themselves in their discipline. I am an older engineer and I would rank myself 6-7/10 in most aspects of my work, even if I have architected and built some trend-setting systems in my corner of tech. I have never seen a junior score themselves so low on average. My experience is also that companies that care about these things (where hires are mainly filtered by HR and not SWEs) tend to build very mediocre teams. I am probably old enough to eschew the whole resume padding or prettifying thing all together. My last resume was written in Notepad, and it worked just fine for its purpose.
- avip 3y ago
  I wrote my last cv in markdown and named it my_name.cv Disappointedly, lots of "resume uploaders" refused to accept my file, even as .txt. Had to retreat back to pdf. Hard times we live in.
  - zyberzero 3y ago
    I do something like that, but use pandoc to get whatever format they ask for. It's not always nice looking, but it's seldom me who is initiating the contact (ie they already have an interest in me, and they need a resume "for the process").
  - rckclmbr 3y ago
    I wrote mine in markdown and convert it to pdf (well, first html then pdf). It's worked well markdown resume.md > resume.tmp.html cat template/header.html resume.tmp.html template/footer.html > resume.html cp resume.html resume.tmp.html sed -i -e 's/"normal"/"pdf"/g' resume.tmp.html xvfb-run -a -s "-screen 0 640x480x16" wkhtmltopdf resume.tmp.html resume.pdf rm resume.tmp.html*
  - jskherman 3y ago
    Similar, I wrote mine[0] with Typst (alternative to LaTeX) and YAML. It's source is still plain text but I get a nice PDF with the beautiful typesetting reminiscent of LaTeX and an easier scripting language. edit: The generated PDF from the template mostly works with OP's resume-parser[1]. There's just fields lacking like Certifications, Awards, and Skills which are parsed under the Projects Category. [0]: https://github.com/jskherman/cv.typ https://github.com/jskherman/cv.typ [1]: https://www.open-resume.com/resume-parser https://www.open-resume.com/resume-parser
sroussey 3y ago
Stack rank your skills. It’s valuable to know which you know better than others. Ranking against peers is pure folly.
- delijati 3y ago
  Exactly. That's what i'm doing. I also rank the tech that i really do not like to work with lowest ;)
alexpotato 3y ago
I used to say this (when asked about my Perl skills): "In terms of the whole world? I'm probably a 5-6 out of 10. In terms of people in finance, I'm probably a 8 out of 10." And I put it this way to show: - I'm not a Perl guru - I also know, roughly, the spectrum of Perl skills in my industry - I'm therefore closer to the upper end for my role + industry match
darau1 3y ago
I decided that I'd track my time on any project that I work on, and put those projects into categories that I want to be represented in my CV. Whenever I generate a resume, I'll aggregate the time spent on those projects, by category. So I'll get a neat little thing that says "6 months hands-on experience with Ruby on Rails", or something similar.
jcul 3y ago
I think it's useful for a junior engineer to display I have experience in x, y, and z, and this is how I rate my personal proficiency in each. I wouldn't take a 9/10 to mean I am in the top 10% world wide in this skill, rather it is where I consider myself most proficient. For more senior roles I might see it as a slight red flag to be honest.
xitang 3y ago
Agree with others' points that this skill meter is subjective, arbitrary and might not add much value. I created it initially more as a option to make the resume design to look more creative and appealing in design. I did called it out that it is an optional section, but yeah, agree that this section seems to require more thoughts. I create an issue to keep track of this: https://github.com/xitanggg/open-resume/issues/11 https://github.com/xitanggg/open-resume/issues/11
comte7092 3y ago
If you put something on your resume I assume that you’ll be able to defend it when pressed. At the end of the day that’s all that matters. If it is a skill you have just list it, don’t fluff it up.
NikolaNovak 3y ago
Depends on details. If somebody has experience in different areas (not just "Java and c++" but e. G. Project management and technical development), it may be useful to understand their relative ranking or focus or priority or direction. All data is data.
lnxg33k1 3y ago
In my experience, recruiters and hiring managers have barely any capability to read and comprehend a text, so I write my resume for them, with many buzzwords as possible hoping to make it to the stage to discuss the position with someone who has an opposable thumb and then discuss actual requirements for the position and how what I know can help, so yeah those matrix are useless, but there is a gate of id10ts at the entrance to any company and so we need to put them on the resume

ghosty141 3y ago

They are arbitrary in a way but remember that the people scanning over the resumes are not technical people, for them its important that a skill is there and thats about it. Finding a job is more about social skills than technical ones.

linusha 3y ago
But why spent valuable estate on the CV by providing a made-up scale, when just putting the skill would be enough to satisfy your argument?
- evilduck 3y ago
  Because resumes aren't evaluated on maximum information density (and sometimes sparser resumes even do better). I don't care for skill self-ratings as a concept either but these are placed in what would need to be negative space anyways. If you're committing to a skills list, removing the rating dots and stuffing more skills in their place probably wouldn't have a positive effect.

kulikalov 3y ago

IMO it makes more sense to simply mention the most important skills inside the position description bullet points.

clnq 3y ago

The skill bars or skill meters are completely useless because one person's 10/10 is another person's 2/10. Moreover, the more junior the engineer, the higher they score themselves in their discipline. I am an older engineer and I would rank myself 6-7/10 in most aspects of my work, even if I have architected and built some trend-setting systems in my corner of tech. I have never seen a junior score themselves so low on average. My experience is also that companies that care about these things (where hires are mainly filtered by HR and not SWEs) tend to build very mediocre teams. I am probably old enough to eschew the whole resume padding or prettifying thing all together. My last resume was written in Notepad, and it worked just fine for its purpose.

avip 3y ago
I wrote my last cv in markdown and named it my_name.cv Disappointedly, lots of "resume uploaders" refused to accept my file, even as .txt. Had to retreat back to pdf. Hard times we live in.
- zyberzero 3y ago
  I do something like that, but use pandoc to get whatever format they ask for. It's not always nice looking, but it's seldom me who is initiating the contact (ie they already have an interest in me, and they need a resume "for the process").
- rckclmbr 3y ago
  I wrote mine in markdown and convert it to pdf (well, first html then pdf). It's worked well markdown resume.md > resume.tmp.html cat template/header.html resume.tmp.html template/footer.html > resume.html cp resume.html resume.tmp.html sed -i -e 's/"normal"/"pdf"/g' resume.tmp.html xvfb-run -a -s "-screen 0 640x480x16" wkhtmltopdf resume.tmp.html resume.pdf rm resume.tmp.html*
- jskherman 3y ago
  Similar, I wrote mine[0] with Typst (alternative to LaTeX) and YAML. It's source is still plain text but I get a nice PDF with the beautiful typesetting reminiscent of LaTeX and an easier scripting language. edit: The generated PDF from the template mostly works with OP's resume-parser[1]. There's just fields lacking like Certifications, Awards, and Skills which are parsed under the Projects Category. [0]: https://github.com/jskherman/cv.typ https://github.com/jskherman/cv.typ [1]: https://www.open-resume.com/resume-parser https://www.open-resume.com/resume-parser

sroussey 3y ago

Stack rank your skills. It’s valuable to know which you know better than others. Ranking against peers is pure folly.

delijati 3y ago
Exactly. That's what i'm doing. I also rank the tech that i really do not like to work with lowest ;)

alexpotato 3y ago

I used to say this (when asked about my Perl skills): "In terms of the whole world? I'm probably a 5-6 out of 10. In terms of people in finance, I'm probably a 8 out of 10." And I put it this way to show: - I'm not a Perl guru - I also know, roughly, the spectrum of Perl skills in my industry - I'm therefore closer to the upper end for my role + industry match

darau1 3y ago

I decided that I'd track my time on any project that I work on, and put those projects into categories that I want to be represented in my CV. Whenever I generate a resume, I'll aggregate the time spent on those projects, by category. So I'll get a neat little thing that says "6 months hands-on experience with Ruby on Rails", or something similar.

jcul 3y ago

I think it's useful for a junior engineer to display I have experience in x, y, and z, and this is how I rate my personal proficiency in each. I wouldn't take a 9/10 to mean I am in the top 10% world wide in this skill, rather it is where I consider myself most proficient. For more senior roles I might see it as a slight red flag to be honest.

xitang 3y ago

Agree with others' points that this skill meter is subjective, arbitrary and might not add much value. I created it initially more as a option to make the resume design to look more creative and appealing in design. I did called it out that it is an optional section, but yeah, agree that this section seems to require more thoughts. I create an issue to keep track of this: https://github.com/xitanggg/open-resume/issues/11 https://github.com/xitanggg/open-resume/issues/11

comte7092 3y ago

If you put something on your resume I assume that you’ll be able to defend it when pressed. At the end of the day that’s all that matters. If it is a skill you have just list it, don’t fluff it up.

NikolaNovak 3y ago

Depends on details. If somebody has experience in different areas (not just "Java and c++" but e. G. Project management and technical development), it may be useful to understand their relative ranking or focus or priority or direction. All data is data.

lnxg33k1 3y ago

In my experience, recruiters and hiring managers have barely any capability to read and comprehend a text, so I write my resume for them, with many buzzwords as possible hoping to make it to the stage to discuss the position with someone who has an opposable thumb and then discuss actual requirements for the position and how what I know can help, so yeah those matrix are useless, but there is a gate of id10ts at the entrance to any company and so we need to put them on the resume