To be honest, there are no real different experiences with self-taught engineers compared to university grads- It's difficult to say what makes a good engineer

To be honest, there are no real different experiences with self-taught engineers compared to university grads- It's difficult to say what makes a good engineer, but in my opinion it's more the tinkering and curiosity kind of stuff that really matters. Some may call that soft skills, so odds are it's equally likely to find those characteristics in both autodidacts and grads. Maybe that's the reason why Facebook is on PHP: They they: We need a personality kind of guy as developer no matter what he has learnt or not, so we take PHP as we can teach him that very quickly. One thing which is more common in self-taught people is humbleness and modesty. So, what you should do is display it prominently: Being a self-taught guy highlights the curiosity you need for being an engineer at most, in my believs hth