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I really like the skills section http://nukaco.la/skills.html http://nukaco.la/skills.html I wish this was standard practice for resumes, even though it's subj

I really like the skills section http://nukaco.la/skills.html http://nukaco.la/skills.html I wish this was standard practice for resumes, even though it's subjective assessment it's really easy to compare relative strengths and weaknesses, for example it's very easy to see "dabbled in haskell, very proficient in garage band" just by glancing

famousactress 14y ago
Came here to say the same thing. I think it's an incredibly effective visualization.
oacgnol 14y ago
I typically just list things I've worked with, no matter the experience level. I like to do so because then the interviewer has to ask about them in an interview, where I'd then get a chance to (subtly) showcase my knowledge and enthusiasm. From my own anecdote: I had an interviewer ask me about something I had listed in my resume (but not related to the job position). It made for good conversation and allowed them insight that they otherwise wouldn't have seen with a straight technical question. Edit: Hopefully I didn't go off topic with my comment, but I also think the graphic indicator was a clever and very straightforward way of expressing experience level. It just doesn't seem very space efficient if on a paper resume.
nwienert 14y ago
I like it, but in 3 months she got 2/5 in rails, 2/5 in javascript and 2/5 in git? I doubt thats even possible... I've been working with each of those for ~6 years and I'd still only put myself at a 4 and if I was being generous. It's funny the longer you work with something the more you realize how little you understand it. I probably would have put myself at a 2/5 in those categories 5 years ago, but looking back, I'd rate myself at 1/5 instead.
- xxpor 14y ago
  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
  - moe 14y ago
    I didn't sense any Dunning Kruger in her self assessment. Indicators for that state of mind are actually fairly easy to spot, e.g. when you see someone quoting it without any further justification.
    - xxpor 14y ago
      Not her's, but the parent comment.
      - aliz 14y ago
        "I’m no doctor, but I’m afraid you be exhibiting symptoms of illin’." :)
- arockwell 14y ago
  I think you should look at 1-5 or 1-10 scales logarithmically. It doesn't take a whole lot of work to become basically competent in a git or Rails (2/5), but to become an expert (4/5) takes exponentially more work.
- aliz 14y ago
  Well, I didn't know there was a standard... for me it just felt "I know more Javascript than Haskell etc" so I put one more black square. So maybe I should change it to 2 out of 7 or whatever. :/
  - ascendant 14y ago
    Don't let pedantic nerds get you down. It's fine. Full disclosure: I too am a pedantic nerd.
    - nwienert 14y ago
      Wasn't trying to be pedantic, just giving feedback. In fact I totally respect the relativity of the scale, I would just say if it was for a job interview you'd want to maybe do as you said and adjust on a larger scale. My point was 2 months in JS != 40% knowledge of JS. If that came across as pedantic, I apologize.
      - michaelochurch 14y ago
        It might be a weighted 40%. As in, she knows 40% of what she needs to know or will encounter in real-world JS... or she's 40% as productive as she'd be with maximal fluency. There's probably a Zipf's Law over programming idioms where you can pick up the first half in a few months, the next quarter takes a year or so, and the last quarter takes more than a decade to encounter, comprehend, and be able to use masterfully. Using a frequency-weighted metric, I would say that I'm 70-95% fluent (unknown unknowns make it hard to get confidence in a number) in my best languages, but I'm not an expert in any of them (and I'd only rate myself 3-3.5 on a 5-point scale, because percentage fluency on first-order concepts isn't the only important thing). I don't think it's hard to get to that point. Getting those last few percentage points is much harder.
  - nwienert 14y ago
    Aliz, I guess I was responding to the OP comment about resume's more than anything and didn't mean to offend. I really like your use of a scale, and your project is very impressive!
- moolcool 14y ago
  You have to be reasonable about the scale. A 4/5 in English by your standards would also imply a deep understanding of root languages, old English, literature etc...
  - law 14y ago
    Becoming "fluent" in a programming language is vastly different from becoming "fluent" in a natural language. I hate when people make that comparison. How often does one ask for the etymology of the "if" statement and to what extent is such an understanding required for programming language mastery?
    - tikhonj 14y ago
      Actually, I think knowing the history and theory behind a language (as appropriate) is very helpful. Particularly, if you're using a language like Haskell or Ocaml, it helps to have at least a vague idea of what a functor actually is and where the idea comes from. (I actually only realized that functors were actually similar ideas in both languages a couple days back.) On the other hand, if you're using a language like JavaScript, understanding the history (especially the languages that influenced it) makes understanding some of the "quirks" much simpler. When you see the influence of Scheme, the scoping suddenly makes much more sense, for example. So, over all, I think understanding the background of a language really helps for complete mastery.
      - law 14y ago
        > Particularly, if you're using a language like Haskell or Ocaml, it helps to have at least a vague idea of what a functor actually is and where the idea comes from. (I actually only realized that functors were actually similar ideas in both languages a couple days back.) I could not agree more! Understanding the significance of particular keywords is quite important when failing to do so will affect your ability to successfully use the language. I distinguish that from my argument, which I premised on such knowledge not affecting one's ability to successfully use the language.
    - moolcool 14y ago
- Hominem 14y ago
  I had an interview that asked me to rate various skills on a 1-5 scale. I think I gave myself a 1 in t-SQL and a 2 in C# even though I had been programming professionally in C# since the .NET beta SDK. I was worried they would pull out some crazy trivia questions and and try to trip me up if I rated myself too high. After I rated myself so low they almost didn't want to continue the interview. I think most places are not like google where if you say 4 it means you invented the language.
  - wwarneck 14y ago
    I do a lot of interviewing and I almost always ask people to rate themselves on a scale of 1-10 in their primary language with a note that I recognize I don't expect our scales to match. After they answer I ask what they learned last to raise their knowledge along their scale, what they're learning now to try to grow further (if anything, sometimes you're just executing not learning,) and if the candidate is applying for Senior Software Engineer or higher what "gotchas" they typically look for in a junior coworker/employee that would be rated lower on their scale (during a code review, for example.) I usually get really thoughtful answers and gather a lot of insight about the candidates mastery of the language, mentoring and overall thought process.
- tedmiston 14y ago
  As if rating one's skills in a particular subject with a 1-5 rating under no context bears much meaning... it's so arbitrary as to be insignificant (but it could be a cool concept if not abused). It also depends on one's motivation for representing their skill level; for example, jobseekers probably overestimate their skill levels. It would be great to have a standardized rating system based on a few different tiers wrt a language/framework/etc.: 1 - Wrote some really basic code in the language ... 5 - Wrote some really, really advanced code in the language
  - Aftershock21 14y ago
    I mean how advanced can you be in a scripting language ? There is no memory management, no low level systems knowledge required. Can you give me an example of writing really really advanced code in Ruby or Python ?
    - hythloday 14y ago
      People downvoting: this guy is admitting to his ignorance and actively and constructively asking to be challenged on it. I don't think that's the kind of comment we want to downvote here, even if the tone makes you bristle.
    - noonespecial 14y ago
      Managing memory and using low-level system functions is only advanced when the problem at hand requires it. Otherwise its yak-shaving. It would be like digging a pool with a spoon because you're too bad-ass for shovels.
      - Aftershock21 14y ago
        I totally agree. I would not write web services in C++ unless I have only one computer and million users.
    - ismarc 14y ago
      You've been downvoted a decent amount, and I can see why, but I believe it is unfair because it's only due to your perspective. At one job I ended up having a lot of work writing language bindings from C to what is commonly considered a "scripting language" (TCL), so it's easy to have to deal with memory management and low level systems knowledge in relation to a scripting language (knowing the semantics of memory management within a language drastically changes how you have to write the bindings). However, the idea is to rate your skill with that particular language. No matter what the most advanced state is of a language, a 5/5 (or whatever the scale is) means that you can accomplish the most advanced task possible in the language. That doesn't mean that someone who is, say, 5/5 in Perl, will have the same skillset and capabilities as someone who is a 5/5 in AT&T syntax assembler. However, there are a list of base assumptions of skills they do have that may align with what we need as a developer when looking at resumes.
- ptbello 14y ago
  --the longer you work with something the more you realize how little you understand it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition
dyselon 14y ago
She's clearly a World of Darkness fan.
pooriaazimi 14y ago
I like it too. One thing though: I think it should've been OSes, rather than OSs: http://english.stackexchange.com/q/3348/21816 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/3348/21816
FuzzyDunlop 14y ago
I disagree, because of the subjectivity. For some things, it's fine, but for others, I don't think it's an accurate reflection. For example, what actually quantifies 1/5 of Ruby? And does a 5/5 rating mean you know absolutely everything about it? Is 1/5 of Ruby the same as 1/5 of Python, or soldering, or speaking Icelandic? There's also no improvement from 5/5, but even a master of their craft will know there is always room for improvement and greater mastery. That demo has a lot of javascript going on, and she rates that 2/5. I don't think that demo is trivial to implement, and on relative terms I can assume that she's more than just dabbled in Haskell and Python. We know she's German, so she puts 5/5 in German language, as it's her native tongue. If that was the base, does that mean she's as fluent with Garageband and Logic as she is speaking? I don't think skills are so easily quantifiable, and I'd much prefer to see a qualitative analysis of those skills. Otherwise, I'm just looking at a meaningless pattern of shaded boxes on a page.
- tikhonj 14y ago
  Another approach could be to normalize everything against your best skill. So rather than saying "I'm this good at X", you're saying "I'm about half as good at X as I am at Y." I think the tricky bit would be making your intentions obvious. I actually took a similar approach on my résumé: I broke my skills up into categories relative to each other rather than vying for some absolute quantification.
- mikeryan 14y ago
  From an interviewer's perspective though these kinds of ratings are still useful. They just need to be calibrated. If I were hiring this person it would take less then 10 questions about one language to figure out where her competency is according to my scale and now (assuming she didn't fudge too much) about her competencies with others (some of which I may not know).
ikwm 14y ago
It is actually standard on German resumés. Not in the sense that everyone does it, but a self-assessment is often recommended. I think it’s especially useful in showing off relative skills. It doesn’t make sense to compare across categories (or – even crazier – people), it does make sense to compare within categories. It doesn’t have to be super-precise, but it makes it easy to see where someone sees their core-competency and with what they at least played around with (and are likely to learn quickly). How good they are actually at their core-competency has to be determined in the interview process (if there is no other objective way to do it) but that is going to be the case either way. The self-assessment is just a little hint for whoever reads your resumé to help them judge your skills better. Sometimes it’s probably better to be more descriptive, especially when it comes to foreign language skills, but it always also depends on the job. The way I do it, the self-assessment also changes depending on the job. When I put myself down as “very good” with SPSS then I’m only talking about SPSS-knowledge that is actually important for the job I’m applying to. It doesn’t mean that I know every feature of SPSS, it does mean that I know every feature that is relevant for the job. (It’s probably always best if you can substantiate your subjective assessment with objective facts. I put myself down as “very good” in my English-language skills and I have the A in the Cambridge Certificate in Advanced English to prove it.) I don’t really understand all the incomprehension at the scales. Putting yourself down at five points obviously doesn’t mean that you know everything or there is no more to learn. That would be non-sensical. Don’t even try to compare that self-assessment to other people, if you do, pick a random group of people with similar qualifications. Someone who puts themselves down at five points would see themselves as quite some ways above average in that group.
joelhaasnoot 14y ago
I found it hard to figure how my resume could summarize the breadth of my knowledge. I ended up putting a table up with "Good knowledge of", "Some knowledge" and "Worked with" in my resume, listing each skill under one of the three headings. Gives a pretty general idea. Then again, during interviews for the job I'll be starting soon no one asked me a single technical question.
- powatom 14y ago
  If it's a technical job and nobody asked you a technical question - you're probably better steering clear!
  - joelhaasnoot 14y ago
    My reasoning of that is that it's a two year "traineeship" (widely used term in the Netherlands, seems less so abroad), which is more of a dive into the company, with extra coaching and mentoring at two different positions within the company. Most interview questions were of the sort "how do you work in teams" and "where do you see yourself in 5 years" - much harder to answer than technical questions :)
goblin89 14y ago
It looks neat, but I'm not sure it would help her find work, if that was the purpose of it. People seem to be more likely to find and hire you when you're easily classifiable—say, “JavaScript front-end developer”, or “Mixing engineer”. I'm sure many people are good (or could be good) at many unrelated activities. I had an idea of personal portfolio that would encompass all of my interests and work, too. But in the end I chose to market myself as “just” a programmer. Knowing about my proficiency in Logic or InDesign or playing piano won't help anyone looking for a programmer, and if by chance I rate my Python skill lower than InDesign or, say, OS X skill, I'm pretty sure it will turn away many paying clients. I decided to go with discrete “brands” for various activities. Failing at that currently, though (hard to manage).
- tomkin 14y ago
  > It looks neat, but I'm not sure it would help her find work, if that was the purpose of it. If this is true, we live in a truly depressing world. I don't understand the point of an interview any more. I sit down, lie to you for an hour, you Google the shit out of me, stalk me on Facebook. But if I tell you who I am honestly? Trash bin.
  - goblin89 14y ago
    I don't think it's that bad. Why would you lie about yourself on an interview? An interested employer is unlikely to drop you because you are also proficient in, say, Final Cut. The question is, how do you get to the interview? It's simple: if a potential employer or client needs a Java programmer, they are likely to look for a “Java programmer”. Therefore, if you have a website that says “John Doe, Java programmer”, you seem more likely to get that job than if you only have a website about some John Doe that has Java listed somewhere among his multitude of skills. Your website is probably made for other people. In that case, optimize it for other people. It seems easier for them when they can “classify” you. People who could appreciate your complex personality are your friends (and maybe family), but are they probably are outside the target audience of your website.

famousactress 14y ago

Came here to say the same thing. I think it's an incredibly effective visualization.

oacgnol 14y ago

I typically just list things I've worked with, no matter the experience level. I like to do so because then the interviewer has to ask about them in an interview, where I'd then get a chance to (subtly) showcase my knowledge and enthusiasm. From my own anecdote: I had an interviewer ask me about something I had listed in my resume (but not related to the job position). It made for good conversation and allowed them insight that they otherwise wouldn't have seen with a straight technical question. Edit: Hopefully I didn't go off topic with my comment, but I also think the graphic indicator was a clever and very straightforward way of expressing experience level. It just doesn't seem very space efficient if on a paper resume.

nwienert 14y ago

I like it, but in 3 months she got 2/5 in rails, 2/5 in javascript and 2/5 in git? I doubt thats even possible... I've been working with each of those for ~6 years and I'd still only put myself at a 4 and if I was being generous. It's funny the longer you work with something the more you realize how little you understand it. I probably would have put myself at a 2/5 in those categories 5 years ago, but looking back, I'd rate myself at 1/5 instead.

xxpor 14y ago
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dunning%E2%80%93Kruger_effect
- moe 14y ago
  I didn't sense any Dunning Kruger in her self assessment. Indicators for that state of mind are actually fairly easy to spot, e.g. when you see someone quoting it without any further justification.
  - xxpor 14y ago
    Not her's, but the parent comment.
    - aliz 14y ago
      "I’m no doctor, but I’m afraid you be exhibiting symptoms of illin’." :)
arockwell 14y ago
I think you should look at 1-5 or 1-10 scales logarithmically. It doesn't take a whole lot of work to become basically competent in a git or Rails (2/5), but to become an expert (4/5) takes exponentially more work.
aliz 14y ago
Well, I didn't know there was a standard... for me it just felt "I know more Javascript than Haskell etc" so I put one more black square. So maybe I should change it to 2 out of 7 or whatever. :/
- ascendant 14y ago
  Don't let pedantic nerds get you down. It's fine. Full disclosure: I too am a pedantic nerd.
  - nwienert 14y ago
    Wasn't trying to be pedantic, just giving feedback. In fact I totally respect the relativity of the scale, I would just say if it was for a job interview you'd want to maybe do as you said and adjust on a larger scale. My point was 2 months in JS != 40% knowledge of JS. If that came across as pedantic, I apologize.
    - michaelochurch 14y ago
      It might be a weighted 40%. As in, she knows 40% of what she needs to know or will encounter in real-world JS... or she's 40% as productive as she'd be with maximal fluency. There's probably a Zipf's Law over programming idioms where you can pick up the first half in a few months, the next quarter takes a year or so, and the last quarter takes more than a decade to encounter, comprehend, and be able to use masterfully. Using a frequency-weighted metric, I would say that I'm 70-95% fluent (unknown unknowns make it hard to get confidence in a number) in my best languages, but I'm not an expert in any of them (and I'd only rate myself 3-3.5 on a 5-point scale, because percentage fluency on first-order concepts isn't the only important thing). I don't think it's hard to get to that point. Getting those last few percentage points is much harder.
- nwienert 14y ago
  Aliz, I guess I was responding to the OP comment about resume's more than anything and didn't mean to offend. I really like your use of a scale, and your project is very impressive!
moolcool 14y ago
You have to be reasonable about the scale. A 4/5 in English by your standards would also imply a deep understanding of root languages, old English, literature etc...
- law 14y ago
  Becoming "fluent" in a programming language is vastly different from becoming "fluent" in a natural language. I hate when people make that comparison. How often does one ask for the etymology of the "if" statement and to what extent is such an understanding required for programming language mastery?
  - tikhonj 14y ago
    Actually, I think knowing the history and theory behind a language (as appropriate) is very helpful. Particularly, if you're using a language like Haskell or Ocaml, it helps to have at least a vague idea of what a functor actually is and where the idea comes from. (I actually only realized that functors were actually similar ideas in both languages a couple days back.) On the other hand, if you're using a language like JavaScript, understanding the history (especially the languages that influenced it) makes understanding some of the "quirks" much simpler. When you see the influence of Scheme, the scoping suddenly makes much more sense, for example. So, over all, I think understanding the background of a language really helps for complete mastery.
    - law 14y ago
      > Particularly, if you're using a language like Haskell or Ocaml, it helps to have at least a vague idea of what a functor actually is and where the idea comes from. (I actually only realized that functors were actually similar ideas in both languages a couple days back.) I could not agree more! Understanding the significance of particular keywords is quite important when failing to do so will affect your ability to successfully use the language. I distinguish that from my argument, which I premised on such knowledge not affecting one's ability to successfully use the language.
  - moolcool 14y ago
Hominem 14y ago
I had an interview that asked me to rate various skills on a 1-5 scale. I think I gave myself a 1 in t-SQL and a 2 in C# even though I had been programming professionally in C# since the .NET beta SDK. I was worried they would pull out some crazy trivia questions and and try to trip me up if I rated myself too high. After I rated myself so low they almost didn't want to continue the interview. I think most places are not like google where if you say 4 it means you invented the language.
- wwarneck 14y ago
  I do a lot of interviewing and I almost always ask people to rate themselves on a scale of 1-10 in their primary language with a note that I recognize I don't expect our scales to match. After they answer I ask what they learned last to raise their knowledge along their scale, what they're learning now to try to grow further (if anything, sometimes you're just executing not learning,) and if the candidate is applying for Senior Software Engineer or higher what "gotchas" they typically look for in a junior coworker/employee that would be rated lower on their scale (during a code review, for example.) I usually get really thoughtful answers and gather a lot of insight about the candidates mastery of the language, mentoring and overall thought process.
tedmiston 14y ago
As if rating one's skills in a particular subject with a 1-5 rating under no context bears much meaning... it's so arbitrary as to be insignificant (but it could be a cool concept if not abused). It also depends on one's motivation for representing their skill level; for example, jobseekers probably overestimate their skill levels. It would be great to have a standardized rating system based on a few different tiers wrt a language/framework/etc.: 1 - Wrote some really basic code in the language ... 5 - Wrote some really, really advanced code in the language
- Aftershock21 14y ago
  I mean how advanced can you be in a scripting language ? There is no memory management, no low level systems knowledge required. Can you give me an example of writing really really advanced code in Ruby or Python ?
  - hythloday 14y ago
    People downvoting: this guy is admitting to his ignorance and actively and constructively asking to be challenged on it. I don't think that's the kind of comment we want to downvote here, even if the tone makes you bristle.
  - noonespecial 14y ago
    Managing memory and using low-level system functions is only advanced when the problem at hand requires it. Otherwise its yak-shaving. It would be like digging a pool with a spoon because you're too bad-ass for shovels.
    - Aftershock21 14y ago
      I totally agree. I would not write web services in C++ unless I have only one computer and million users.
  - ismarc 14y ago
    You've been downvoted a decent amount, and I can see why, but I believe it is unfair because it's only due to your perspective. At one job I ended up having a lot of work writing language bindings from C to what is commonly considered a "scripting language" (TCL), so it's easy to have to deal with memory management and low level systems knowledge in relation to a scripting language (knowing the semantics of memory management within a language drastically changes how you have to write the bindings). However, the idea is to rate your skill with that particular language. No matter what the most advanced state is of a language, a 5/5 (or whatever the scale is) means that you can accomplish the most advanced task possible in the language. That doesn't mean that someone who is, say, 5/5 in Perl, will have the same skillset and capabilities as someone who is a 5/5 in AT&T syntax assembler. However, there are a list of base assumptions of skills they do have that may align with what we need as a developer when looking at resumes.
ptbello 14y ago
--the longer you work with something the more you realize how little you understand it http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Metacognition

dyselon 14y ago

She's clearly a World of Darkness fan.

pooriaazimi 14y ago

I like it too. One thing though: I think it should've been OSes, rather than OSs: http://english.stackexchange.com/q/3348/21816 http://english.stackexchange.com/q/3348/21816

FuzzyDunlop 14y ago

I disagree, because of the subjectivity. For some things, it's fine, but for others, I don't think it's an accurate reflection. For example, what actually quantifies 1/5 of Ruby? And does a 5/5 rating mean you know absolutely everything about it? Is 1/5 of Ruby the same as 1/5 of Python, or soldering, or speaking Icelandic? There's also no improvement from 5/5, but even a master of their craft will know there is always room for improvement and greater mastery. That demo has a lot of javascript going on, and she rates that 2/5. I don't think that demo is trivial to implement, and on relative terms I can assume that she's more than just dabbled in Haskell and Python. We know she's German, so she puts 5/5 in German language, as it's her native tongue. If that was the base, does that mean she's as fluent with Garageband and Logic as she is speaking? I don't think skills are so easily quantifiable, and I'd much prefer to see a qualitative analysis of those skills. Otherwise, I'm just looking at a meaningless pattern of shaded boxes on a page.

tikhonj 14y ago
Another approach could be to normalize everything against your best skill. So rather than saying "I'm this good at X", you're saying "I'm about half as good at X as I am at Y." I think the tricky bit would be making your intentions obvious. I actually took a similar approach on my résumé: I broke my skills up into categories relative to each other rather than vying for some absolute quantification.
mikeryan 14y ago
From an interviewer's perspective though these kinds of ratings are still useful. They just need to be calibrated. If I were hiring this person it would take less then 10 questions about one language to figure out where her competency is according to my scale and now (assuming she didn't fudge too much) about her competencies with others (some of which I may not know).

ikwm 14y ago

It is actually standard on German resumés. Not in the sense that everyone does it, but a self-assessment is often recommended. I think it’s especially useful in showing off relative skills. It doesn’t make sense to compare across categories (or – even crazier – people), it does make sense to compare within categories. It doesn’t have to be super-precise, but it makes it easy to see where someone sees their core-competency and with what they at least played around with (and are likely to learn quickly). How good they are actually at their core-competency has to be determined in the interview process (if there is no other objective way to do it) but that is going to be the case either way. The self-assessment is just a little hint for whoever reads your resumé to help them judge your skills better. Sometimes it’s probably better to be more descriptive, especially when it comes to foreign language skills, but it always also depends on the job. The way I do it, the self-assessment also changes depending on the job. When I put myself down as “very good” with SPSS then I’m only talking about SPSS-knowledge that is actually important for the job I’m applying to. It doesn’t mean that I know every feature of SPSS, it does mean that I know every feature that is relevant for the job. (It’s probably always best if you can substantiate your subjective assessment with objective facts. I put myself down as “very good” in my English-language skills and I have the A in the Cambridge Certificate in Advanced English to prove it.) I don’t really understand all the incomprehension at the scales. Putting yourself down at five points obviously doesn’t mean that you know everything or there is no more to learn. That would be non-sensical. Don’t even try to compare that self-assessment to other people, if you do, pick a random group of people with similar qualifications. Someone who puts themselves down at five points would see themselves as quite some ways above average in that group.

joelhaasnoot 14y ago

I found it hard to figure how my resume could summarize the breadth of my knowledge. I ended up putting a table up with "Good knowledge of", "Some knowledge" and "Worked with" in my resume, listing each skill under one of the three headings. Gives a pretty general idea. Then again, during interviews for the job I'll be starting soon no one asked me a single technical question.

powatom 14y ago
If it's a technical job and nobody asked you a technical question - you're probably better steering clear!
- joelhaasnoot 14y ago
  My reasoning of that is that it's a two year "traineeship" (widely used term in the Netherlands, seems less so abroad), which is more of a dive into the company, with extra coaching and mentoring at two different positions within the company. Most interview questions were of the sort "how do you work in teams" and "where do you see yourself in 5 years" - much harder to answer than technical questions :)

goblin89 14y ago

It looks neat, but I'm not sure it would help her find work, if that was the purpose of it. People seem to be more likely to find and hire you when you're easily classifiable—say, “JavaScript front-end developer”, or “Mixing engineer”. I'm sure many people are good (or could be good) at many unrelated activities. I had an idea of personal portfolio that would encompass all of my interests and work, too. But in the end I chose to market myself as “just” a programmer. Knowing about my proficiency in Logic or InDesign or playing piano won't help anyone looking for a programmer, and if by chance I rate my Python skill lower than InDesign or, say, OS X skill, I'm pretty sure it will turn away many paying clients. I decided to go with discrete “brands” for various activities. Failing at that currently, though (hard to manage).

tomkin 14y ago
> It looks neat, but I'm not sure it would help her find work, if that was the purpose of it. If this is true, we live in a truly depressing world. I don't understand the point of an interview any more. I sit down, lie to you for an hour, you Google the shit out of me, stalk me on Facebook. But if I tell you who I am honestly? Trash bin.
- goblin89 14y ago
  I don't think it's that bad. Why would you lie about yourself on an interview? An interested employer is unlikely to drop you because you are also proficient in, say, Final Cut. The question is, how do you get to the interview? It's simple: if a potential employer or client needs a Java programmer, they are likely to look for a “Java programmer”. Therefore, if you have a website that says “John Doe, Java programmer”, you seem more likely to get that job than if you only have a website about some John Doe that has Java listed somewhere among his multitude of skills. Your website is probably made for other people. In that case, optimize it for other people. It seems easier for them when they can “classify” you. People who could appreciate your complex personality are your friends (and maybe family), but are they probably are outside the target audience of your website.