HEN was the last time you revised your résumé? Here comes a personal rant. Explicitly putting in skills such as “Word” and “Photoshop”, rather than “office/authoring/WYSIWYG tools” and “graphical design/editing applications” (respectively), is just plain silly. Competence in industry is about skills that are independent of just one commercial application. Times are changing and preferred software changes in accordance. Businesses evolve. Adaptability and familiarity with diversity is where true merits lie. Common function names and icons can help the user quickly familiarise and re-orientate, so generic skills are what truly counts. Think memorisation of menus versus understanding. The paradigm and terminology, as well as menu layouts, will typically remain uniform, owing to the nature of the task at hand.

In conclusion, I would suggest omitting brand names from any curriculum vitæ. Programming languages might be the exception, yet it’s the paradigms that count (e.g. object oriented, scripting, declarative). In programming languages, it’s largely syntax that varies, much as in menus in various applications and common utilities. Avoid being assigned to a vendor, whether it is commercial or not. Failing to do so is pretty much like saying that you can drive a Corsa rather than saying that you are in possession of a drivers’s licence.

An example of a poor user interface
in The GIMP (version 1.2.3)

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This entry was posted on Saturday, July 8th, 2006 at 7:53 am and is filed under Opinion, Philosophy. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.