[Originally posted on what used to be a separate blog 'On jobs, work and careers' and later was merged into this blog.]
In the comments on the post about common resume mistakes, Paco was asking for a good example for a coherent skill list. For a good way to ’sell’ your skills, let’s look at the public resume of one of my colleagues, Sascha, available at http://www.brawer.ch/cv/.
Here is the skills section:
Programming Skills
Programming Languages — Extensive experience in Java, C, C++, Python, Perl, Prolog, Lisp, Object Pascal, Assembler (PowerPC, 680×0, 6301). Knowledge of Objective C, Forth, AppleScript, TCL, PostScript and Basic.
Operating Systems — System-level programming for MacOS, several Unices (GNU/Linux, Tru64 UNIX, HP-UX, Solaris), Win32. Some exposure to VMS and CP/M.
Libraries — Java J2SE (wrote several packages for GNU Classpath); Java MIDP; GTK+ (helped with the port to Tru64 UNIX); deeply familiar with MacOS InterfaceLib/CarbonLib; many GNU and X libraries; Windows API.
Nice things about this skill list:
- The header says “Programming Skills”, not just “Skills”. Clearly, this person is a programmer and wants to be hired as such.
- There are no irrelevant skills listed (e.g. there is no mention of ‘can use MS Office suite’ or anything like that).
- There is no mention of skills that are ‘taken for granted’, such as HTML.
- The list is not just an enumeration of terms, but also includes some details on the level of expertise. For example, ‘Operating Systems’ doesn’t just list OS names, but includes a note on ’system-level programming’.
Note, however, that this list talks about a specific type of skills. If you want to highlight other kinds of skills (e.g. organizational or leadership skills), you need to have a separate section for them. But all the points above still apply: avoid irrelevant information, include concise details to show the level of expertise.
2 comments ↓
Nice list, but Sachsa is an experienced engineer. What about an example from someone just out of college?
The points I am emphasizing here aren’t dependent on having lots of industry experience, I think.
You always need to have some experience with a technology in order to be comfortable with it and list it on your resume. If you are just of college, your experience might be from an academic project, from an internship you had, or from something you did in your spare time. But it is still experience, and you should use it whenever possible to clarify your level of expertise with the skills you list.
I tried briefly to look if any of the bloggers on blog.etsit.upm.es had a sample resume that I could use as a just-out-of-college skill list example (and maybe improve it, if I see room for improvement), but couldn’t find anything. What about you point me to your skill list and we think about how it could be improved?
Leave a Comment