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I interviewed a self-declared "biometrics expert" once. When I see "expert" on a CV I have learned to become cynical. I asked him about his expertise and he s

I interviewed a self-declared "biometrics expert" once. When I see "expert" on a CV I have learned to become cynical. I asked him about his expertise and he spoke in platitudes about it - at a sort of BBC News kind of level. I'm certainly not an expert but I know sufficient to be able to ask useful questions about it. He couldn't tell me anything at all about biometrics. I continued to probe. Turns out that by "biometrics expert" he quite unashamedly meant he had, at the request of a manager, bought a USB fingerprint reader from PC World and installed it so that his manager didn't have to use a password any more.

cookiecaper 12y ago
>When I see "expert" on a CV I have learned to become cynical. One has to play this game on marketing documents to be considered. For some reason "pretty good, definitely still learning" doesn't click with many HR people. You can't really blame candidates for trying to get hired by presenting themselves in an authoritative context. I don't consider anyone an actual expert in something unless they have hard, indisputable credentials, like a long history of commits to the core project (for expertise in specific software/languages/frameworks), etc.
- herghost 12y ago
  I completely agree that it's a sales vs. HR thing, and that the onus is on the candidate to make themselves appear as the best product on the market. But something about "expert" really grates on me. I think it's that it is a self-anointed title in nearly all cases. There are legitimately experts in lots of different areas - if you happened to invent IDS, for example, you go right ahead and call yourself an expert. If you happen to have run a bunch of Snort rules across a prod environment for a year or two, you might be "experienced", go on, stretch it to "highly experienced" for all I care, but if you stretch it to "expert" then paint me cynical.

cookiecaper 12y ago

>When I see "expert" on a CV I have learned to become cynical. One has to play this game on marketing documents to be considered. For some reason "pretty good, definitely still learning" doesn't click with many HR people. You can't really blame candidates for trying to get hired by presenting themselves in an authoritative context. I don't consider anyone an actual expert in something unless they have hard, indisputable credentials, like a long history of commits to the core project (for expertise in specific software/languages/frameworks), etc.

herghost 12y ago
I completely agree that it's a sales vs. HR thing, and that the onus is on the candidate to make themselves appear as the best product on the market. But something about "expert" really grates on me. I think it's that it is a self-anointed title in nearly all cases. There are legitimately experts in lots of different areas - if you happened to invent IDS, for example, you go right ahead and call yourself an expert. If you happen to have run a bunch of Snort rules across a prod environment for a year or two, you might be "experienced", go on, stretch it to "highly experienced" for all I care, but if you stretch it to "expert" then paint me cynical.