
Ask HN: Describing skills and competencies in a resume? - melle
Dear HN,<p>I&#x27;m starting to look around for a new job, and need to update my resume.
In my current resume I have a section called &quot;Skills &amp; Competencies&quot; which includes a mixture of languages (C#, python, Go, JS etc.), products (various DB systems, BPM suites, etc.), areas (front-end, back-end, &quot;cloud&quot;&#x2F;aws, db) but also practices&#x2F;skills (project mgmt, TDD, agile development methods, CI, etc)<p>To me this feels like a mishmash of things and it does not give a clear picture.
I&#x27;m not sure how to &quot;design&quot; this piece of my resume.<p>I guess the main point I want to bring across is that I&#x27;m an all-round developer who cares about getting things done and uses whatever means are best for the job. I&#x27;m able to learn&#x2F;understand tech quickly but this is just a means to an end. I like to focus on the team and there interaction &#x2F; openness.<p>How would you solve this?
As interviewers, what would be helpful to bring this point across? 
What would trigger you to invite me for either a cup of coffee or a job interview?<p>Thanks a lot!
======
blowski
As somebody that has hired a few IT people, it's frustrating when you receive
a CV where the main focus is a list of skills. For example, I can receive 100
CVs that all say "I can do JavaScript", but skill level ranges from those who
can just about activate a jQuery plugin through to people that could probably
build jQuery from scratch. I want to see examples of how you've used those
skills, because then I can form my own opinion of your capabilities.

So talk about your achievements, and mention the skills you used as part of
that. Be specific, and focus on the most important bits instead of listing
every single item. Remember to include human skills like planning and leading.

~~~
melle
In the experience part of my resume I provide a reverse chronological list of
jobs, with bullets that explain my responsibilities and achievements.

Thanks for your suggestion on planning and leading, those are easy to forget
(as is elicitation of requirements I guess)

Wouldn't mixing tech/skills with job positions make it more confusing?

~~~
blowski
Remember that you're writing a sales brochure about yourself, not a biography
or index card. Nearly every CV that comes in will look identical. You stand
out by making your selling points easy to find, instead of forcing me to look
for them.

Examples:

* Used Angular and Rails to build an intranet application used every day at Acme Inc by over 200 people, increasing efficiency at the company by 150%. Features included uploading and sharing documents, with commenting system and email notifications.

* Optimised a Java algorithm in the backend of Foobar Corp's service to increase response time by 200%, delivering business value of $60,000 per year.

Here's my fairly up-to-date CV if you want a complete example:
[http://dblo.ws/cv](http://dblo.ws/cv) You sound like you're a better
programmer than me, so you should have plenty of good achievements.

~~~
klibertp
> increase response time by 200%

"Increase"? So now getting the response takes 2x as much time as before?
Hardly an achievement... ;-)

EDIT: Also, things like these are hard to quantify (and verify) and even
harder to come by - you can work for years without ever being in a situation
where your work "increased something by 200%". I have a feeling that many
people will read your advice as bullshitting your way through the CV-based
selection, to maximize the chance of getting an interview, where you can
explain all the details. Which, unfortunately, is not that bad a tactic - but
I don't think it's what you had in mind.

~~~
blowski
You're absolutely right! That's another thing - always get someone to
proofread for you.

> bullshitting your way through the CV-based selection ... I don't think it's
> what you had in mind.

That's _exactly_ what I had in mind, though I might phrase it as "honing your
sales pitch". On something like a CV, you should always be happy to lose a
little accuracy and completeness to gain some clarity. That doesn't mean you
can make stuff up, but you do need to phrase yourself carefully to highlight
your strong points.

You'd be surprised at what you can quantify. See "How to Measure Anything
([https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles-
Bu...](https://www.amazon.co.uk/How-Measure-Anything-Intangibles-
Business/dp/1118539273/\)") for some ideas. Measurables are the language of
those who hire you (and decide your salary) so learning how to show this kind
of stuff is essential.

* What was the conversion rate on that page you made before and after?

* How long did it take staff in your company to complete that process before and after you rebuilt it? How many hours have you saved the company?

* How many bugs were reported per day for that module before you fixed it, and how much did it cost the business to process them?

------
aaronbrethorst
I've started writing my resume in a more prosaic form, and dropping the
stilted language of resumes past. I talk about not just what I bring to the
table, but also what I'm _not_ looking for in an employer. Check it out if
you'd like to get a better sense of what I mean.

(It's also worth noting that I have ~12.5 years of experience in the software
industry, Seattle—the city where I live—has a hot tech market, and I have
focused mainly on iOS software development for the past six years. Relatedly,
I never apply for jobs through websites, only through people, meaning that I
manage to skip buzzword-skimming front-line recruiters. So YMMV.)

[https://www.dropbox.com/s/0tntyr8isf2l47k/Aaron%20Brethorst%...](https://www.dropbox.com/s/0tntyr8isf2l47k/Aaron%20Brethorst%20Resume%20-%20SC.pdf?dl=0)

Coming at this from the other side of the table, my first reaction to reading
most resumes is "so what?" Tell me why I should care that you increased
Flibbet production by 22%, or that you decreased bug volume by 19%. What does
that translate into in terms that someone who doesn't work at that company
would care about?

~~~
paulcole
Some initial criticisms:

1\. Avoid saying things that apply to everyone. Example, "I love building
products that delight my users." Who wouldn't say that when applying for a
job? This, "help create positive social change" is more interesting and should
be the focus of your intro.

2\. Avoid useless phrases. Example, "This has manifested itself in many ways
during my career." Boring filler.

Overall, you could cut the length of this by 30-50% just by removing cliches
and filler phrases. It would immediately become much more readable and
emphasize your technical skills.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
Thanks for the feedback. I do disagree on the 'delighting users' thing though.
This is not something that occurs to many engineers.

~~~
paulcole
I think you might want to consider how it reads to your audience. I think it's
one of those phrases that triggers a "well duh" reaction-- especially since it
stands alone without anything that supports it actually being true or unique.

~~~
aaronbrethorst
You make a good point. Thanks again for the feedback. I'll take another look
at it.

------
fecak
I've been recruiting software engineers for nearly 20 years and started a side
resume business (resumeraiders.com) a couple years ago when seeing how much
people were being charged for sub-par resumes. Your question is somewhat
common.

A Skills section is usually for the purposes of an ATS (automated resume
scanner) or a human that will be looking for certain buzzwords, like a
language or a framework that is most important to the job requirement.
Recruiters know they can go to a skill section and find those things quickly.

I think in your situation, listing specific examples of your accomplishments
is going to be even more important. You can tell me "I'm an all-around
developer who cares about getting things done..." all day long, but listing
specific things you've developed to illustrate that point is much more
effective. It's not unlike people who say they have excellent communication
skills - don't tell us, show us by writing something or demonstrate it in
conversation.

Recruiters and HR are looking for those buzzwords, but engineers reviewing the
resumes are looking for an interesting project that they can ask you about.
Ideally it will involve a problem the company is trying to solve.

Start with a summary to quantify your experience - this starts the reader off
with a big picture of who you are. Don't trust the reader to figure out you're
a full stack dev, because the person first reviewing your resume might not be
technical at all. They need to be told specifically what you do, and it's your
job to do that. Your summary might start "Full stack developer with n years of
experience across a mix of languages and platforms in Agile/TDD development
environments. Additional skills in Project Management..." or similar.

Next, experience section with responsibilities (the day to day) in a couple
sentences in paragraph form, then bullets for your novel accomplishments.

Skills, Education, other projects, community involvement, etc. to follow.

~~~
melle
Thanks for sharing. My current take on setting up my skills and experiences is
to put them in context of my previous positions. Would that work for an ATS?
(For a human, I'll probably highlight the words somehow)

~~~
fecak
The ATS doesn't care where the words are usually, it's just trying to find
certain words. If you're applying to smaller firms it's less likely to be an
issue. As long as you incorporate any buzzwords (usually languages, tools,
frameworks) that are likely to be listed as firm requirements by the company,
where they are included on the resume shouldn't matter much.

------
dsk139
It's helpful to list skills at the bottom of your resume for HR departments
doing basic pattern matching. However to paint a clearer picture I would:

1\. Write relevant bullet points that show what value you provided for your
previous company and BOLD languages along the way.

E.g.

\- Architected a product that does $X revenue with Y languages

\- Stabilized systems of X which allowed throughput of Y% more connections
with Z language/framework

2\. Include a summary/objective in your LinkedIn/Resume. E.g. I'm an all-
around developer that isn't afraid of X, Y, Z

~~~
melle
Focusing on the business value is great advice!

I do think that this would be especially beneficial once you've passed the
first screening. I might be wrong here, but I don't think most HR people take
business value into account as it is not in the 'official' job description.

~~~
dsk139
Depends on the company.

At smaller companies they might not have dedicated HR gate keepers or the
person reading resumes might have a combined business/HR role. And at all
companies being able to state your accomplishments in terms of business value
helps a gate keeper understand your resume better and shows your ability to
communicate effectively.

------
peteretep
[http://www.slideshare.net/perlcareers/how-to-write-a-
develop...](http://www.slideshare.net/perlcareers/how-to-write-a-developer-
cvrsum-that-will-get-you-hired)

Goes in to _great_ detail about exactly what to put in there and why,
including a template that will appeal to the recruiter, to the hiring manager,
and then to the interviewing developers.

~~~
kgtm
Excellent advice. A bit tough to keep everything in one page with this format
though.

As an aside, I wish there was a recruiter like Pete, but for Python developers
(he focuses on Perl). You should check out his site:
[https://opensource.careers/](https://opensource.careers/)

------
snarfy
The list of skills is there to catch automated keyword searches. A simple
bullet list is fine.

Right above the list of skills I have a 'Summary of Qualifications' which
explains my overall caliber.

> I guess the main point I want to bring across is that I'm an all-round
> developer who cares about getting things done and uses whatever means are
> best for the job.

This is what you put in the summary, written for a resume of course, e.g.
"Veteran developer with X years of experience using a pragmatic and goal
oriented approach to development. Focused on solving problems and shipping
software" etc.

~~~
melle
The summary of qualifications approach sounds really nice. I guess this could
also be 'tailored' to fit the job your applying for. Thanks!

------
bphogan
I recommend a Summary of Qualifications that talks about what you are able to
do. It's the "executive summary" that makes the HR screener want to read more.
I can tailor this to the job if I need to do so.

Then I recommend listing work experience focused on acheivements. Recruiters
want to see how your past experience will translate to future success so don't
list job duties. List accomplishments at the job. How much revenue did the
apps you wrote bring in? How many active users did the app you built support?
Did you mentor other people and were they successful? Did you contribute to an
open-source initiative?

"Built and maintained web applications using Ruby on Rails and React with over
200,000 active users per month."

I do list skills both in context and in a skills section.

My résumé has gotten me an interview every place I've sent it for the last 15
years. These things will never hurt you to do on yours. They will only help
you.

I've heard that objectives hurt, and I know that work experience that reads
like a job description hurts too. My wife is in HR and I've asked these
questions of her network of people and that's the general consensus. So I hope
that helps.

~~~
melle
Thanks for sharing your insights. Tailoring the executive summary for the job
opening seems like a good idea. I guess I could treat movement from cover
letter to summary to the rest of the resume as a conversion process,
convincing the reader to invite me for an interview :)

------
ninjakeyboard
My 2 cents as someone who has interviewed a fair number of people,

State your accomplishments. Technical skills can be learned. I feel that
learning technology is part of the job, not a prerequisite for the job. on
your linked-in, okay list every little thing if you want non-technical
recruiters to find you w/ keywords... But as a hiring manager, I want to see
someone who can learn and grow into the role. Having technology experience
relevant for the role is worth highlighting but not every bit of technical
experience. Otherwise highlight technologies you've used in your
accomplishments only but focus on the accomplishment itself. Focus more on the
activities - what big important features did you implement, not what
technology you used to implement the features. The positive outcome of the
work is more important than how you got there.

Eg having worked on an open source project, managing contributions from other
developers, releasing etc is more important than the project itself.

~~~
melle
That sounds like good advice. It's also how I feel about software development
in general. The tools are a means to an end. Control of the process/project is
often much more of a challenge. Thanks!

------
sjcrank
I like to have a clear title and opening purpose statement at the top, to set
the direction for the rest of the resume.

In fact you already have something to work with in this quote: "I'm an all-
round developer who cares about getting things done and uses whatever means
are best for the job. I'm able to learn/understand tech quickly but this is
just a means to an end. I like to focus on the team and there interaction /
openness." (but fix the sp of "there interaction")

If the audience sees something like "Senior Software Engineer" followed by the
above paragraph it helps them understand how you see yourself fitting into the
organization.

Next I would follow with a simple tabular format of skills
(languages/frameworks/platforms for example) that is quickly scannable and has
been pruned to remove outdated or out of favor technologies.

------
selllikesybok
Consider that your resume is a landing page for you, the product. A list of
"Skills" is, essentially, early aughts SEO... though I suppose it can also
double as a feature list.

How are you going to use this resume? Sending in applications, posted online?
Would affect my advice.

In general, two types of people will read your resume: hiring decision makers,
and their agents/gatekeepers. Ideally the resume speaks to both groups.
Gatekeepers use pretty simple filtering, though it won't all be disclosed. For
example, if you've got 5 years of experience, and the rest of the applicant
pool has 2, and they all went to Harvard and you went to University of
Phoenix, you're getting filtered out unless there's something really amazing
about you. The "top school" filter may not be disclosed in the job posting, or
even known prior to seeing the applicant pool. In some cases these
institutional biases are more or less public knowledge, in others not. Worry
about passing the obvious, stated filters. It should be clear, in under 3
seconds, that you pass or exceed them. Don't be afraid to ELI5.

For the reviewers giving more than a passing glance, tell a short story. This
is like pitching your startup idea, or selling anything, really. Quick,
punchy, hook them and let them call you for more.

The resume gets you the call. The call gets you the meet. The meet gets you
the job.

~~~
melle
Thanks for this. My approach would be to phone the company directly, and have
a chat with HR or the person responsible for the job opening. I believe
that'll give me a first advantage over others and a bigger chance to get a
foot in the door. After the phone call I'll send him/her an email which
functions as my cover letter with resume in PDF attached.

Based on your and the other comments, I think a list of skills is 'required',
but might be meaningless without context (as in, where did you apply this)

~~~
selllikesybok
Like anything else, consider the audience. If you can engage directly with a
decision maker, or even a gatekeeper, great. Not always possible, or helpful.

I would caution that, while generally a solid approach, this does not
advantage you in the final hiring, only in the initial screening stage. Not a
bad thing, but keep in mind there are multiple stages to getting hired, and
avoiding the first filter pass shouldn't be where the majority of your efforts
are focused.

Of course, if you're goal is to get into a specific company, vs "any company"
or "any of these companies", your approach will be different.

------
mdup
Recently I've tried an approach where I send two documents when asked for a
CV:

\- a "classic" CV which describes education, skills, work experience, and
"miscellaneous" projects (late night hacks mostly);

\- a second document entitled "friendly CV" but which is actually a short pdf
with slides. It is super casual and I explain my previous work with pictures
of algorithms and technical stuff. I cut down all the noise and try to speak
directly to the inner geek of my potential reader.

From my perspective, I'd say I had quite some success with it.

I think it doesn't matter if you do exactly that. The point is to wake up your
reader if you're the 50th CV they're reading this afternoon.

------
ponyous
I just recently updated my resume and was facing the similar issue.

I did few groups of skills I have:

\- Currently focusing on (skills I am interested in and best at)

\- Relevant skills (git, agile development, tdd...)

\- Also worked with (other tech I encountered during my career: DBs,
languages, frameworks...)

Hope it helps.

ps. I would love to hear some thoughts on this problem from somebody that
actually reads resumes

~~~
elliottcarlson
I pretty much follow a similar route and list my skills at the bottom of my
resume, grouped into three categories of current experience, past experience
and exposure to. In addition, I tend to add a final summary after each of my
past jobs with a comma separated list of what I actually learned or utilized
on the job during that time.

As a hiring manager, I see a lot of resumes, and I rarely see skills being
cleanly defined; so most of the time I parse the descriptions of people's past
jobs and determine what they were doing, and what questions I needed to focus
on to get the information I needed to make a decision. Additionally, I will
use key things in a resume as a reasoning to ask certain things. If someone
mentions design patterns, then I will be asking them about design patterns. If
someone said they worked on a project, I will ask them what their level of
involvement was, and how they worked with others.

Personally I think it would be great to have a clearly delineated list of
skills, grouped they way you do it. The reality is, when you look at a ton of
resumes, you eventually follow your own 5-second rule. If a resume can't grab
your attention within 5 seconds of skimming through it, then it's probably not
worth your time (and it might seem harsh, but there's plenty you can pick-up
on in that short amount of time).

~~~
Aeolun
Based on my own experience viewing CV's. 5 seconds is quite a lot. Any CV I've
gotten gives a first impression based on formatting, and I tend to dismiss
people applying for a developer position that don't realise that maybe 12
different styles and colours mixed together randomly is a bit much.

It made me realise why so many HR agencies request the person's CV only to
take the information and reformat it into the agencies style (which is
generally boring, but sensible).

Don't get me wrong. I love unique CV's, but given the choice between 'unique'
and 'useful' there's only one possible answer.

------
duggan
First, write your application for the job you're looking for, or at least
interviewing for. Also write it for the culture of the team. The language of
the job specification should have plenty of hints there, since a hiring
manager (aka, whoever will be your manager) probably wrote it. Blog posts,
too, if available. This doesn't mean parroting back their language, just try
to figure out what makes them tick.

Apply selectively. Construct a narrative about your career that shows an
inevitable trend towards the exact role you're looking to fill. Employers are
generally looking for someone to shore up a skills gap, or augment an existing
team. The job spec generally makes this an open book exam.

Really, the biggest thing is figuring out what sort of role you want, and
trying to see your career through the lens of the person hiring for that role.

------
postit
I'm currently recruiting for our startup in Berlin. We receive a pile of
applications every day and the ones whose pop in are those who took some care
to explain how they used skills on some real projects.

If you successfully can describe your current/last positions, point out how
you had used technologies and competencies, you’ll highlight yourself.

------
agentgt
I like to chime in here with my own observations since I run/own a recruiting
software company (SnapHop). We make career portals that sit on top of legacy
or existing candidate tracking software (aka ATS: applicant tracking
software).

From an apply process a resume should contain keywords and should be easy to
parse.

What I mean by parse is that we automatically extract details from the resume
and if the resume is too hard to parse this may minimize your chance to be
noticed (the ATS does this as well downstream).

So ideally you want your resume to be a small plain document. That is either
MS Word, or plain text. You do need the keywords because there are some
ranking algorithms that some ATS use and sadly it is based on simple keyword
matching. I recommend putting this at the bottom of the resume to keep the
parsing happy (ie list of technologies used). Or if your resume you think is
large perhaps at the top but a short list in case it is is truncated.

I stress small because the bigger the document the more likely systems
downstream can fail (our system can handle 100MB resumes no problem... and yes
people will upload resumes that large but downstream systems cannot).

Finally I think including links in your resume of work you have done is also
beneficial. I believe it is the future of resumes. We are seeing more folks
doing this and we already to some extraction based on this (ie github profile,
github projects, blogs, linkedin profiles, etc).

In large part the resume doesn't matter once you have made the initial
HR/Recruiter pass. So make sure you get past that.

~~~
roninb
Could you elaborate on why you suggest an MS Word document? Every suggestion
I've seen from recruiters and job placement officers (my experience is limited
to applying to entry level and junior positions) is that it should always,
absolutely be a PDF.

Is this because MS Word documents are easier to parse (by SnapHop, not
humans)?

~~~
agentgt
Actually we don't have issues parsing PDF but rather downstream some old ATS
are not very good at parsing PDF (particularly MS technology based ones that
we push to).

The other issue with PDF is that some cheap PDF conversion tools will just
turn into an image and thus characters are lost.

Most apply processes allow you do paste your resume as text and attach. I
recommend doing both.

------
MalcolmDiggs
I don't think there's a good reason to have only one resume. Tailor your
resume/cv to the position (or type of position) you're applying for. For
certain jobs (for your dream job, for example), it may be worth writing a
special resume just for them.

Each hiring manager should be able to quickly scan through your CV and check
the mental boxes in their head, so that they can move your candidacy on to the
next phase. That's really all the resume needs to do. So streamline each
resume you submit to make that process as quick and painless for the hiring
manager as possible.

Later on, when you're getting to know the company (and they're getting to know
you), that's when you can bring in your multitude of experiences that aren't
directly related to the job. But there's no reason for that initial submission
to be an exhaustive list of all your great qualities.

------
tacostakohashi
Unless you don't have any experience (fresh grad or something), I would
minimize /eliminate the skills section, and focus more on the experience -
that way, you are mentioning skills in the context of specific projects and
organizations.

Skills on their own (9 out of 10 on JavaScript) don't mean much.

~~~
davelnewton
I'd actually disagree. While it's important to put skills in context, it's
also pretty important to have an easily-scannable list of "stuff I know".

When I'm hiring it's what I look at first to see if there's _any_ alignment on
the tech stack at all. _Then_ I check to see what has been used IRL lately,
whether professionally ("day job") or not ("side projects").

It's a balancing act.

------
hacknat
I had always assumed that it was buzzword soup to get past HR/Recruiting (it's
sad to see recruiters basically admitting this on this thread). As someone who
has hired people I care far more about your experience and what you did at
your last job(s) than a list of enumerated skills.

I would say make the skill section brief. Don't list every flavor of SQL
you've ever worked with, just put SQL, etc. Or go crazy, but put it at the
end. Honestly, I never begrudged someone doing a word dump at the end of their
resume, as long as the rest of the resume was good. We all know that
recruiters have no clue and might scrap an application if a buzzword is
missing.

------
jaimebuelta
Something I do on my CV. I have a prominent section talking about my
"specialties". These are the core skills (not only tech ones) that I want to
focus on, and the ones that I am interested in a new job.

It doesn't make sense to put in the same level "bash" and "JavaScript" if you
really want to look for JavaScript jobs.

Then, in each of the previous jobs, I put the main tech that I have been
exposed to. That gives an idea of the different skills and tools, but making a
clear distinction in terms of which ones I am interested or consider that are
my core skills.

------
a_imho
Why not go with the direct method and say exactly what you mean e.g.

"I guess the main point I want to bring across is that I'm an all-round
developer who cares about getting things done and uses whatever means are best
for the job. I'm able to learn/understand tech quickly but this is just a
means to an end. I like to focus on the team and there interaction /
openness."

I usually just write working with Java stack / JVM technologies and a few
sentences what I (not the team) accomplished in my previous jobs, because I
don't think resumes all that important.

~~~
melle
That might work if you got referred to the company, of if you talk directly to
the person who you'll work for. My experience is that HR essentially treats
your resume as a checklist, like a first filter.

------
e12e
For what it's worth, I recently applied for a few jobs, and did get an offer.
On the other hand at least one of the places I applied replied with a "we're
not hiring anyone this round" \- so obviously I missed on that one. Probably
due to them using a horrible Web based application system and that I forgot to
upload attachments (grade transcript etc).

My view is that a CV/resume (non-academic) should list _relevant_ work
experience and education. Probably also certifications if relevant for the
position.

 _Perhaps_ a section on other experience
(leadership/management/responsibilities/achivements in volunteer/leisure
activities - eg: successfully guided a hiking trip through a storm, etc).

Then the cover letter should put those experiences in context for the position
you're applying for. And it probably should be no more than (half) a page for
the letter and one to two for the CV.

Maybe I'm a bit extreme, but I strongly believe in not wasting the time of
people doing the hiring (hopefully for an engineering position they're not
full time HR and have other things they'd rather be doing).

------
Taylor_OD
I work in tech recruiting but I tell people to focus their resume on what they
are most interested in doing and then list other skills/languages they work
with. If you have been working as a .net developer that should be very clear
from your resume but linking to the node and react project on your github is a
great way to show you are flexible.

------
ali_ibrahim
For some months, I have been thinking about the same problem as well. From an
employer perspective, Hiring is tough. Very tough! People list down tons of
skills and qualities they may or may not have on their resume and problem is
you need to have good interviewing skills to evaluate them and spend countless
hours to have the right candidate. To me, a good measure of someone's skills
is their feedback from their current/previous coworkers (if it can be somehow
achieved in a profile and which is not biased so it can be anonymous). This
way you are able to screen the employees. Not trying to blow my own trumpet
here, but I am trying to address this in my startup PleasantFish where you can
get feedback from your coworkers and as a user improve your skills by getting
latest content based on your skillset in your personalized skills based
newsfeed

------
nrjames
I would structure your resume to focus on your projects, giving them detailed
descriptions, in which you can describe the languages, libraries, etc... that
you used to implement them. That way, you put the technology in the context of
the solutions you were delivering. For example (making this up...):

Selected Project Experience:

Consumer Finance Protection Reporting Database (2014) - Backend Developer.
Developed the platform to support a consumer finance protection website that
allows users to put a lock on their credit account without navigating customer
service telephone lines. Built the backend with Django (Python) and Postgres
and implemented a robust API with the Django REST Framework.

Etc...

------
adrianratnapala
I think the skills-list is not for actual employers. They are more for the
first filter of HR people and recruiters who are reduced to checking off lists
because they don't have software-specific knowledge.

So try to match the list as best you truthfully can to the one in the job
description. If they put languages and skills in one big list, do the same. If
they have some other format, use that. Just don't parrot their list so exactly
that it looks like you are lying.

As for your main point: make it directly in a summary paragraph somewhere near
the top of the resume.

~~~
selllikesybok
There's a few levels to this. I'd say it's important even if you are
personally handing the CV to the decision maker.

"Architected a solution and led a team of developers to implement a custom
solution for a large merger & acquisition company" doesn't tell the HM whether
you know her stack. Depending on other strengths or weaknesses of your
application, this may cost you the call. Yes, a great engineer/dev can learn
your stack, yadda yadda, but maybe you're hiring because you're the only one
who knows it, you're already training the rest of the team, and need someone
to hit the ground running, you know?

Good to have all the checkboxes from the job spec covered. Avoid uncertainty
on their part.

~~~
adrianratnapala
You are right.

But that reinforces the practical part of my advice: don't worry if the skills
list doesn't make sense to you, as long as it conforms to whatever the job
decription is asking for.

~~~
selllikesybok
Agreed, and I meant to include that in my comment. Your practical advice is
absolutely fine.

Just wanted to clarify that it applies to all cases, not just passing
recruiter/software review filters.

------
DrNuke
MY CV - FOR CONSIDERATION TO MR HIRE McHIRING

Name: Cody McCoder E-mail: cody@mccoder.any

Profile: "I'm an all-round developer who cares about getting things done and
uses whatever means are best for the job. I'm able to learn/understand tech
quickly but this is just a means to an end. I like to focus on the team and
there interaction / openness."

Skills: "a mixture of languages, products, areas but also practices/skills"

Portfolio: ...links to your case studies with code, rationale, team
contribution and comments...

DONE

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pc86
You should not be creating a resume that you will then send to multiple jobs.
You craft individual resumes for each job posting, using that posting's own
keywords and required/recommended/nice-to-have skill set.

Resume screening is about cutting a stack of 100 down to 10, so it's all about
finding a reason to say "No." If the job calls for C# WebApi and Angular
experience and you start listing Python or Go projects, that's an easy no.

~~~
vonmoltke
I thought the industry was desperate for talent. This doesn't sound like the
kind of mechanism you would use in such a situation.

~~~
e12e
Do you really want to aim mostly for the organizations that are "desperate for
talent", or would you like to be contacted by the employers _you_ would really
like to work for? (Not that the sets need have no intersections..)

~~~
vonmoltke
I'm under the impression that _everyone_ is desperate for talent. Even the
top-tier companies, apparently:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12059056](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=12059056).
So, are all these people just blowing smoke up out collective asses? I see
conflicting statements like the one I responded to here and the one I linked
posted all the time.

------
tptacek
Don't overthink your resume.

~~~
melle
This is great advice for me in general. I'd wish overthinking was limited to
my resume :)

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imauld
A format I use that I have received compliments on is just a 2-3 column table
with headers like this:

New | Proficient | Expert

Or something along those lines. Then list your skills in there and it's super
easy for people to very quickly see your skills and how you rate yourself. The
New column is a great way to show that you are learning new things on your
own. Most recruiters I've showed to it like it.

------
robertelder
I did a big write-up for my students on the process of getting/doing technical
interviews:

[http://blog.robertelder.org/50-interviews-with-facebook-
twit...](http://blog.robertelder.org/50-interviews-with-facebook-twitter-
amazon-others/)

You may want to start at the section "How Do I Pitch Myself"

------
jhwhite
I have a section for skills (project management, leadership, etc...) and a
section for Technical Proficiencies (Python, Ruby, PostgreSQL, etc...)

I pretty much keep my work experience the same but change around my Skills and
Technical Proficiencies to match the job I'm applying for.

------
dcole2929
I lot of people have various opinions on what does and doesn't constitute a
good resume. It'd be nice if some people would post theirs so we could get a
nice visual representation of what it would/should look like

------
known
1\. Relevant experience

2\. Personal connection

