Jobs and The Resume
Jobs
A couple of days ago, I found a post by Molly Holleschalage(sp) regarding the way companies write their job adverts. I’ve been thinking about this as well. Who in the company writes those listings? Do they know what ASP, JSP, PHP, Perl, XSL, and the lot really are? And do they really expect web developers to have all of these skills coming into the job?
Take the case where you see a job listing and the list of requirements is overwhelming. When do you say, "Yes, I’m going to apply", and when do you stop and think that maybe you shouldn’t even bother? I stop and think a lot.
I’ve got the HTML and CSS skills. I can write some Javascript. I know PHP pretty well. Heck, I even took a Java class at a junior college and excelled at it. But do I know about JavaBeans? No. J2EE? No, but it has something to do with Java. JSP? If it’s like PHP then I may have a chance.
What about experience? I have seen listings call for good experience, strong experience, 2+ years of hands-on experience, 3+ years experience, or 5+ years experience. Then there are the must-haves. And don't forget knowing a certain skill can be “a plus”.
The Resume
A couple of years ago I listed my experience in years: 9 years of HTML, 3 years of CSS, 2 years of PHP, …. But what do years really tell you about a person’s knowledge of a particular technology? I could have used CSS for 3 years without ever putting together a stylesheet for a complex design that would end up needing further alterations to work with Internet Explorer. Could I even say I have one year of Perl experience because there was a period of time when I used formmail.pl for form submissions? I’m not sure experience in years can really measure a person’s skills.
Once, during an interview, I was asked to rate my skills on a scale from one to ten. That was tough. “HTML? Uh, 8? No! 9?” I didn’t know how low was too low before looking bad too. I think I gave Javascript a 4 because I don’t do any crazy programming with it. I use it for DOM scripting. If I don’t know something, I look it up in a reference book. Maybe I should have given Javascript a 5 or 6?
Now I’ve updated the way I list my summary of skills. I use three different categories: Experienced, Intermediate, and Basic Knowledge. I snatched the idea from Eric Meyer’s résumé. Thanks, Eric.
But when can we official say we have basic knowledge of something? I just read the book, IBM Smalltalk: The Language, this past week. I now have basic knowledge of Smalltalk’s methodologies, yet I have programmed nothing in Smalltalk. Does this count as basic knowledge? What if I were to read another programming book, typed out the examples as I went along, and completed the exercises at the end of each chapter? Does this count? I took a Java programming class in junior college and a Java/C programming class at a university. Does this count?
One more thing I would like to mention is skills, just to have skills. I’ve used Flash. I was good at tweening and some basic ActionScript in Flash 4. Then Flash 5 came out and I didn’t like the interface changes so I stopped using it for awhile. When MX came out, I got back into it for a project or two, which involved ActionScript-ing. But I found myself getting frustrated. While my code seemed to be written logically, things would not work as expected. I gave up on Flash and I would honestly be happy if I never had to touch it again. But I have the skills; I know Flash and I can do some ActionScript. So I put those words into my resume. Well, 90% of the calls I received, from submitting my resume to a job search site, were looking for someone to fill a Flash position. Now I am removing Flash and ActionScript from my resume because I now know that it’s not always a good idea to include skills, just to beef up the resume. If, during an interview, I was asked about having Flash skills, I could tell them yes but explain where I stand about doing it.
Conclusion
I only touched upon skills this time through. Work experience, what your role was at Company X, and the portfolio of sites which you’ve assisted in completing are some other important parts of the resume.
What’s in your resume? How do you rate your skills? What do you purposely exclude from the resume? And don’t forget about those lovely job listings on all those job boards!
