Knowledge and Skills in CVs

Question

I'm job hunting and have been tayloring my CV for individual jobs however it tends to follow the following theme for my skills and knowledge:

• Commercial experience with Relational Database Management Systems (Postgres) including SQL, stored procedures, replication and design.

• Commercial experience in Python and PHP web scripting, XML (including a solid understanding of SAX and DOM)

• Linux system administration including knowledge of Apache, Bind and Ftpd

• Solid understanding of n-tier architectures and design patterns

• Experience in HTML and JavaScript

• Java

• C#, ASP.NET (ASP.NET MVC)

• Software installation and maintenance

• Computer Hardware and Networking

In general how good does this look? I'm not trying to fill my CV with lots of pointless acronyms however I'm not wanting to undersell myself. One area I've been thinking about is incorporating more "general" skills including my experience with eXtreme Programming and perhaps a bullet point relating to e-commerce (integrating Paypal and PaymentExpress) - what do people think?

Answer 1

I usually include a skills matrix with my CV to list all my technical skills with how many years experience I with them to give a simple, at-a-glance guide to my technical abilities. This makes it easy for recruitment agents/non-technical people to match my CV with a role they are vetting candidates for, important for getting just to the potential interview stage. Makes it easy for your CV to easily matched.

Don't be too fluffy/waffly - my impression of what you've written, is that there is no indication of your abilities with your skills. You need to concisely say how much experience you have with them, really push your strong skills and backup with where you've used those skills.

By saying "Commercial experience with....", to me makes it sound like you don't have that much experience - by the very fact that you're saying "commercial experience", which may or may not be true. You shouldn't need to be that explicit, as it should be clear from your CV, in what roles you have used those skills.

Answer 2

Regroup the stuff in clusters:

• databases

• web development

• non-programming / administration

Maybe drop "Software installation and maintenance". If you can program, you are sure capable of installing a program. -> obvious stuff

"Solid understanding of n-tier architectures and design patterns" - replace understanding with experience (of course, if you have it). Maybe drop this word at all. If I read "understanding", it sounds for me "I read about it".

ADDED: Agree with AdaTheDev: Add at the end a skills matrix, what you've really worked with along with for how long or since when. As another nice idea you can present your skill in a tag cloud making bolder and bigger what you know better.

Answer 3

Completely agree with the matrix, I've had it on my CV for years and it's quite useful.

When listing work experience, list the technologies you used for the different items.

If you haven't listed it already, make sure you point out that you can speak English well. It's amazing what a difference this made in my job hunting experience.

Answer 4

Use more powerful words than "commercial experience" or "solid understanding". Use words which describe what you did with those technologies... not how much you know. If you can demonstrate that you implemented something cool with those technologies, that will imply that you have "commercial experience".

Do you have a friend who has good grammar, reads a lot and is well spoken? Bring your resume to them... they can help you formulate what you are trying to say. Use a thesaurus also (probably one of the most useful tools for CV/resume writing).

Sadly, those acronyms are important because of the scripts which crawl the resumes/cv looking for potential matches and hence an interview.

In addition to your hard skills (ASP, C#, yada yada) make sure you express your soft skills as well. For example, most people in the tech field are fast learners. Make sure you highlight that somehow in your experience section ("Contributed to vital part of project after only a couple weeks" or something like that). Really look at other strengths you have and be sure to tie those into your experience section also.

Do you have formal education in something like comp sci? If not, that is okay... whatever education you do have, show that you have applied it to your job.

Whatever you do, DON'T lie. Good interviewers will find out how much you really know and how much you really contributed to a project.

I'll update/edit as I think of more stuff.

Answer 5

If you only have 1 year experience, a matrix which includes years of experience may not work for you. Honestly, what good would a list of skills all with "1 year" listed provide? I suggest doing what you're doing. Add everything and everything you've done but be honest and open about your true experience. Definitely highlight the areas in which you are most confident, but also be sure to highlight the areas in which you are most interested in pursuing. One last thing -- get more experience. No joke. Consider contributing to an open source project, for example. Or spin up a blog. Anything you can do to demonstrate that you’ve only got 1 year of experience but you are completely serious about your career will help you out. Best of luck.

Answer 6

Joel Spolsky emphasises here that sorting by resumés / CVs is only really appropriate to exclude candidates, not to choose them.

This implies that it's perfectly fine to tailor the "technologies" section of a CV to be in a matrix or a list so it gets through the initial screening process.

As a potential line manager, the list of technologies at the head of a CV indicates to me roughly what you've done so I know what kind of questions I can ask to get a good "feel" of whether your CV matches who you really are.

So I'd suggest you add a paragraph that summarizes what you like to do and where you feel your strengths lie. Are you a server-side developer who likes to make application servers that are thoroughly tested and fast? Then say so. Or do you prefer front-end development, making sure that users are delighted with your applications? Then use powerful descriptive words that communicate that well.

Definitely include the bullet points on integration with third-party payments providers. Understanding and successfully integrating with external APIs can be really hard, so a demonstration that you can assimilate and implement this is good to see, and actually counts in my view ahead of the PHP/JavaScript/HTML etc. that are pretty much a pre-requisite for the job.

Regarding agile development, much of the success of an agile team reflects on the cultural fit between you and the other team members. You'll want to have items elsewhere on your CV to help your manager understand if you can work with the team and they can work with you.

To me, seeing a CV of a developer looking for their second job who's done pair-programming and TDD and who can do PayPal integration is great.

Good luck!

Answer 7

Hi guys, I've reworked my Knowledge and Skills to the following:

• Relational Database Management Systems (Postgresql and MySQL) including SQL, stored procedures, replication, performance tuning and design.
• Python and PHP web scripting, XML (DTD, SAX, DOM)
• C#, ASP.NET (including the ASP.NET MVC framework)
• Java
• HTML, JavaScript, AJAX
• Integration with 3rd Party APIs including PaymentExpress, Paypal Express Checkout and Clickatell SMS Gateway for e-commerce solutions
• Integrating new software projects with existing and/or legacy databases and membership backends
• Linux system administration including Apache, Bind, Sendmail, Ftpd and Cron
• N-tier architectures and design patterns
• Agile Software Processes (eXtreme Programming)

Is this an improvement?

I'm also considering starting a blog/personal site that I can include on my CV. I'm not intending to use it to say anything overally controversial but I would like to use it to summarise my views on working in software through meeting with clients, writing code, live demonstrations (dodging Murphy's law) and anything interesting relating to the technologies I work with. From what I've been reading here this is often thought highly of?

Answer 8

In three days time, you managed to update your skills set such that it now also includes knowledge worth mentioning about Agile Software Processes ?

Blarney.