IT - Skills matrix

agnes

agnes

agnes

Soldato
Joined
1 Dec 2006
Posts
16,857
Location
Amsterdam, NL
Morning all,

Does anyone attach a skills matrix to their CV applications? Or even as an extra page or 2?

I feel it might be best to give employers/recruiters a good overview of the level of skills. Going from 0 to 3, 0 being unknown, 1 2 and 3 being 1st, 2nd and 3rd.

So for example I've just had a phone call from a head hunter who went through my CV and was shocked when my SCCM and Avaya knowledge were both at specialist level along with other technologies. As my CV simply put them down as skills. Anything I put down as skill I class it as something I know very well and don't need hand holding to get working on it.

However, things like Cisco switches and Unix are level 1 for me. Rarely touch them, would need to google around but no doubt could work out what needs to be done. But would take me a lot longer than someone who's level 3 on it.

Thoughts? Is it too much?
 
Seems a bit much for me. I just listed my core technical skills in a succinct summary near the top of my CV.

Also you might be shooting yourself in the foot listing a core job requirement as a 2nd/3rd when you well know given a chance you can learn it quickly and smash it out(aka blag it).
 
Back when I was contracting in the general software dev/finance world I always attached a skills matrix to the end of CVs that were going to agencies or recruiters.

It was always truthful, but I did include things I only had passing knowledge of. All about hitting those keyword searches.

I always list my core skills separately on the front page.

I would not include one on a targeted CV for a particular role.
 
I wouldn't bother, myself. It gives them more reason to filter you than to hire you.

"Well, we ideally would like someone to fit the role of X, but that's a year down the line so we didn't include it on the Job Ad. He's listed himself as a 1, so a bit flaky. We'll go to the next candidate" for example.
 
Are you going to make it clear that 3 is good and 1 is bad?

Also what is the purpose of zero? I'm sure there are any number of technologies you don't know but how is that relevant and why pick certain ones from that huge potential list?


I don't see a great need for it so long as your skills are clear form your CV, if anything I'd try to keep a CV quite terse rather than finding reasons to add extra pages
 
I reckon the only people who think a skills matrix is a good idea is a HR/Agency person who has just learnt to use table formatting. A lot of people find them unreadable, and scanning software might not be able to process tables.

Write down what you did in your jobs, include your best skills in that.

Keep it short, so someone gets the important stuff in a 5 sec scan.
 
I hate them, please don't.

Almost as bad as:

C# - 9 years
SQL Server - 8 years

9 years? Continually? Elapsed? Is length of time equivalent to skill?
 
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