

A new approach to the resume skills section - dekayed
http://salexander.posterous.com/a-new-approach-to-the-resume-skills-section

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tptacek
Stop. You're overthinking this. The purpose of a resume isn't to sell you as
an employee; it's to sell you as an interview candidate. Two very different
things.

Keep your resume concise, send it as a PDF (if you're working with a system
that doesn't allow PDFs, chances are you're targeting the wrong system at your
prospective employer), make sure it gracefully includes the right keywords,
groom your work history so that it sells your suitability for the role instead
of trying to tell your life's story, and put the balance of your energy into a
cover letter.

Then tear the cover letter off, turn that into an email, send it to the guy
who's actually going to manage the role they're hiring for, and attach your
simple PDF resume to it.

Done, move on to getting ready for the interview.

~~~
mcknz
So this isn't satire?

~~~
tptacek
I don't know, but whether he's making a statement about how hard it is to
write an effective resume or how hard it is to glean useful information out of
a resume, either way, he's using them the wrong way.

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hapless
It's not beneficial to the applicant to be very specific about skills -- the
applicant would much rather you were in the dark about it, and had to
interview him to get a specific idea of his skillsets.

In other words, the incentives just don't line up, so this will never happen.

You could FORCE applicants to fill something out, but people would still game
the system just by marking everything 777 or marking everything to a pattern
determined by the job posting etc.

~~~
csel
You need to display your skills, period. I have hired over 20 developers in
the last 6 months and received over 30 resume for every 1 good resume. I did
not have time to read everyone's work experience explanation either on the
first run. I could only spend less than a minute on a resume. So we rely a lot
of the Skills section.

\- Put it on a table. Include how many years you have been working on a
specific skill. It will be helpful to list when was the last time you used
that skill. So that is the first cut.

\- After going through the skills section, we look at the Employment history
and what you actually did with those skills that you listed. Then you get a
telephone interview and possibly invitation to an in-person interview.

You are not going to get into the interview list if the HR person does not
know what you are skilled at. Trust me, they are not going to use the
interview as a discovery session. They don't have time for that, especially
when there are other candidates who were clear in displaying their skill sets.

~~~
hapless
You rely a lot on the skills section, and you have an HR person doing the
initial filter.

Your process is exactly what causes people to fill resumes with buzzwords. "I
touched a prior version of fizzbuzz, once, at 3am" is still going to put
fizzbuzz on the resume, so your HR person doesn't chuck it in the circular
file.

This is the kind of process that guarantees a lack of clarity on the part of
the applicant.

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motters
I usually just put dates next to skills (2005-present, etc) which gives some
indication. Unix file permissions are a good idiot filter, but unfortunately
most recruitment agents are _completely_ clueless and wouldn't understand it.

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nkassis
That still requires people to make self accessment of their skills. There's
isn't much incentive to be completely honest on their resume, if they put it
on their resume they should be able to 777 all those skills but that rarely
happens.

~~~
dekayed
There are many job postings which say that knowing language X is a big plus.
If I had non-expert familiarity with language X, I may not apply to a job
where it is the primary requirement, but I would definitely put it down on my
resume with the permission assignment corresponding to what I felt my level
was. This would let me say, hey I sort of know it and also give the
interviewer a chance to figure out if I knew it well enough for their needs.

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ghurlman
The skills section of a resume serves two masters, the HR Dept/Recruiters, and
hiring managers. You need to list out every keyword ever to get through the
first, yet somehow signal to the second which skills are more prominent than
others.

A pie chart, tag cloud, or some other visualization would probably go a long
way - just don't get too obfuscated, or HR will just get confused & move on to
the next guy.

~~~
Goladus
This is where the work history and various other sections of the resume come
in. Explain some of the most significant projects you've worked on and
describe the nature of your contributions. If you describe 10 years of
experience in web development environments using PHP, when you put C in your
skills section it will be clear that C is not one of your core skills. You're
probably trying to make the point that you can read and understand C if you
have to, and if that's important to the employer they should follow up.

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dhyasama
I like it. Another benefit is it could help you filter out prospective
employers. Most people wouldn't get it, but the ones that did would be
promising.

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jister
The skills section of a resume tells about what "self-assessed skills" a
candidate have. It's never meant to tell how good a candidate is.

The efficiency, mastery and attitude of a candidate will be determined in the
technical exam and personal interview not by a detailed resume or the "unix
permissions" metaphor.

That is exactly why we have a "hiring process" in the first place.

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AndyKelley
_Sometimes I think that programmers should keep two versions of their resume,
one for recruiters and one for other developers. But that's a totally
different topic all together._ <http://blog.rishavrastogi.com/?q=node/2>

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frou_dh
Have people classify their relative skill distribution using a pie chart. Test
them on a slice or two to calibrate. Dumb idea?

