Sometime ago, I got a chance to be involved in hiring process at my company and one thing I have noticed is that good part of applicants like to use progress bars in their CV’s to show the level of their knowledge.
My only question is how? How do you calculate the percentage of certain skill in the first place? Saying you know 80% of something usually means you know what or where 100% is. That further means you have more than 80% of that knowledge, because you know what you don’t know. Now, I don’t want to start a philosophical debate about circle of knowledge, so I’m gonna keep it short and light.
If you’ve graded your knowledge of HTML to 80% or 4/5 stars, are you really sure there isn’t some part of HTML reference, some trick or whatever, that you missed that can give or take away some of those precious points?
Other thing is that you can’t easily rate something that’s constantly changing and improving. Say you graded your CSS knowledge to 75%. CSS Working Group gave us CSS-Grid few months ago. Is your CSS grade now 50% or 71% or something else?
My advice is just don’t use it, it’s pointless to say the least.
Latest comments (66)
We missestimate almost everything. Especially the time and work we have till the next deadline. But, i like the progressbars. They are also quiet representive of the state of mind we have concerning our knowledge. If you now take also the logarithm of the given value, you also get an somehow representative value. Like 90% -> 50%, 99% -> 75%
For me, I calculate values based on certifications or skill tests. But those values are usually only at a certain time.
If skills has not been used for a long time, it must be updated
Even me while updating my resume and i see others using progress bars, i thought it's bad because they are saying that if their knowledge on specific skill was 100% already, it means they are gonna stop learning, which is also frustrating for me
Now that’s interesting. I never met someone who knows everything :)
I always thought it was silly too. Even putting years next to the language or framework I think limits your chances in job applications.
I always tell juniors, just list all of the things that you've had experience with. For example CSS, if you've worked with it before, put it in your resume. If a job application specifically asks for CSS Grid, but you have no experience with it, that doesn't mean you should remove CSS from your resume. I trust most developers, that if they've had experience with a language, that they would be able to learn new things in the language even if they are a beginner.
Well I think years are ok to put next to the skill. Experience matters because it can give you more perspective and where some tech has been and where it is going.
I agree with the second part, but there has to be a limit somewhere. I've seen some assembler code back in high school. That doesn't mean I should put it in my CV :)
It makes more sense if you use years of experience...
To be entirely honest, far too many HR systems are software driven into a schema database, actual humans may never see any of this to begin with. It really REALLY sucks because if you don't fit the exact mold of the schema, you're out an opportunity. And these text pasers are quite bad,too. Recently I had one that couldn't even find my phone number (it was right next to address, email, and name, which it got all of them right)
We're living in a "AI" / "ML" world now, where standing out has nothing to do with skill sets or accomplishments, but instead optimizing and exploiting algorithms.
I agree with you completely! I personally don't want to work for company that lets robots hire real people. I believe the future is in AI, but we're not there yet.
I don't like them, but maybe sometimes they're more an indicator of what kind of worker you are / you wish to be.
The worst thing is that most of the candidates use percentages like in example in the article. They think there is 100% of some skill and they put themselves somewhere on that scale. It maybe some indicator of their skill, but it will change almost every day.
Any scale or ordering is somehow pointless but more helpful than none. I ask candidates at the beginning to say where they know the most. Everything else is the interviewer's job.
I hate this nerdy bulls**t. :D
Sometimes the people know the least think they know the most.
Although I think self assessment is important also, at least stack rank of your best skill. When people list many programming languages, I ask what is your strongest skills stack ranked.
I agree. I mentioned it somewhere in the comments, it’s all about personality. If you’re modest, you’ll rate yourself lower and if you’re more egotistical, you’ll rate yourself higher.
Donut charts or GTFO.
I dislike any kind of self rating on any technology that is too granular. If you want to rate technology in your resume, use a some 3 level skill: novice, intermediate, advanced.
Stay away of expert claims unless this can be proven by a Google search. I.e. you wrote an acclaimed book on the subject.
You never know what you don't known. Progress bars and percentages don't make sense without an appropriate scale, and "knowledge" or "proficiency" are simply too broad, subjective, and contextual.
Totally agree! But adding another document to decipher your CV seems like an overkill :)
Cool, interesting point of view. But then how do you think it'd be better to describe one's skils?
Remy had very good suggestion which scale to use and how:
If you really want to use a scale, define the scale somewhere. I like the way Google does that during the interviews. They'll ask you to rank yourself from 0 to 10 on several skills relatives to the job (Python, TCP/IP, etc) but they will explain you the scale. While I don't remember it exactly each number basically it's something like:
Even if you don't use the scale, you can describe your skill level in relationship to others. Like:
But more than anything what matters is proofs. You want to communicate JavaScript experience? Put JavaScript experience in your job descriptions, possibly with links and references.
(Also it's forbidden to reveal the Google hiring process publicly so I guess that Google's never going to hire me, oh nooooo)
But check other comments as well.
My advice is keep it to the minimum. Show how much experience you have and what kind of projects you've worked. That should be more than enough for interviewer, unless he says he wants it differently.
I equate this to saying you know the "core" of something: Core JavaScript, Core Java expertise, skilled in Core SQL...
I take this as "I did the hello world of this thing, so I'm skilled."
Really good article and must agree. Will do new non-bar charts resume templates for fullstackjob.com/developer/profiles
Did not expect that, thank you!