Ask HN: How many languages to list on resume

3 points by anonhacker 13 years ago | 7 comments

I'm updating my resume and the list of skills/languages and tools is getting super long and looks somewhat ridiculous(at least to me). Is there a way to be selective about it?

donretag 13 years ago |

As my career grew, I found myself putting less and less on the skills section of my resume. My next version might not have the section all together. The reason is that I want to be considered as a code architect and not simply a list of buzzwords. I am at the point in my career that I can be picky about who I work for and no one will pigeonhole me into buzzwords.

Of course, if you are junior, you might need to list these skills in order to pass any matching software if you are applying to big companies. In general, only list skills that you wish the explore and develop further. Do not care for PHP anymore? Do not list it. Are you rusty in some language that you used as a freshman? I would not list it as well. Do not list "common" tech skills such as HTML. If a recruiter (internal/external) does not have a buzzword match with your resume, you probably do not want to work for that company anyways.

For any skill section (language, OS, etc...) list at least 2-3 to show you have some depth. Applying to a job with Ruby as your only language is not ideal.

EDIT: I should add that the skills section is definitely a good spot to add something that you have been learning on your own. It is a great conversation starter and shows your interest to grow outside of work.

anonhacker 13 years ago | |

Thanks, i will definitely remove the "common" skills.

cwgem 13 years ago |

In general I make a resume targeted to the company I'm looking to apply for (or if it's a job site the type of position I'm most interested).

With that in mind I keep the main language that the company cares about front and center, and maybe a few supplemental languages if they are a multi-language shop. For specific positions I do research into what languages that position most requires. For sysadmin for example, I would most likely put Ruby (Chef/Puppet), perl (parsing, general scripting), and bash (general scripting).

If you really want to go into depth, there's always the interview for that.

anonhacker 13 years ago | |

My main issue is that I want to avoid needing to customize my resume to the company every time. I already spend a bunch of time writing cover letters to companies, and most of the time you never even hear back. (I'm applying to internships)

bjourne 13 years ago |

If you happen to know every pl from Clojure to assembly, why on earth wouldn't you list it? The more languages you know the better. If someone disagrees with that statement, then that's stupid people you don't want to have anything to do with anyway.

andrewstuart 13 years ago |

I wrote something on this topic a while back. http://www.supercoders.com.au/blog/theskillsmatrix.shtml

danso 13 years ago |

Is it not possible for you to sort best to worst and keep just what your best at? The other factor is to consider the demand for e language. You may not love Python the most but if your goal is to get a job almost anywhere, then prioritizing your Python experience is a good strategy.