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I fully agree with this post and this is exactly what I keep telling people that do things for their resume. The one notion that always irks me though is talen

I fully agree with this post and this is exactly what I keep telling people that do things for their resume. The one notion that always irks me though is talent. It seems to measure some combination of confidence and the amount of praise a person happens to have received in their life (i.e. how often someone told them they're talented) and is for the most part not well-defined. Yet, this article uses talent just like another credential. I don't think talent is a thing that you either have or don't have. There's certainly some people that I'd like to hire that wouldn't with certainty say that they have talent. Vetting for confidence is a bit more interesting, but I also know plenty of confident people (i.e. that think they're talented) that can't get the job done. The best way I've come up with to characterize what we're all looking for is people who can solve our problems/get the job done. That makes it mostly about what the applicant thinks they can do and less about the amount of praise they've received previously in live. This reminds me of how Kyle Neath posted yesterday that he thought he was not a great coder or designer but he could get the job done. When he was twenty, perhaps he didn't consider himself talented but I'm pretty sure nobody would have regretted hiring him.

incision 14y ago
Talent is one of those words with a thousand pet definitions. Personally, I see the word used most often a kind of negative rationalization. A way to disregard success as lacking in effort, to say it's inborn, incidental. I'd generally prefer to be described and to describe people as passionate, dedicated, capable or plain smart rather than talented. I think those traits, often in combination with a lot of thought/practice, but not necessarily direct experience are the things that add up to what's often described as talent.

incision 14y ago

Talent is one of those words with a thousand pet definitions. Personally, I see the word used most often a kind of negative rationalization. A way to disregard success as lacking in effort, to say it's inborn, incidental. I'd generally prefer to be described and to describe people as passionate, dedicated, capable or plain smart rather than talented. I think those traits, often in combination with a lot of thought/practice, but not necessarily direct experience are the things that add up to what's often described as talent.