: How to make clear the intent of résumé status bars? On my résumé, in order to emphasize the technologies that I am skilled with I am placing a 'status bar' along with each technology indicating

@RJPawlick971

I think this is simply too much information. I get the attempt at making it more scannable but at the end of the day, developer positions typically require two things to get you through the door:


whatever tech buzzwords they are looking for are listed as text in the resume to get by the automated key-word scanners and...
You do well in the interview.


As such, I would argue that having this scale of 1-5 for each technology is pure overkill and is only making the resume feel more busy than it is clarifying.

I'd suggest a 2-scale approach. You are either a) skilled in a technology or b) familiar with it.

How you break that down is entirely up to you and is something that will be clarified in the interview stage. I don't think you have to overdo it on the resume.

I'd then break it down as simple text. For your right-column, perhaps something like this:

Technical Skills

Skilled at PHP, MySQL, VIM, Python, Linux, etc...

familiar with HTML, CSS, C#, etc...

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@Harper654

I get that you want to present this information visually, but the slang you are using to indicate your level of expertise is confusing. I don't know what "I can make problems" and "Other people ask me to make problems" means in terms of coding expertise.

If you label your states with more descriptive words, it would help.


Novice
Familiar/Casual User
Adept
Expert
Creator (As in "I created this thing")


You can also just list the things under their "score." Not as pretty, but gets the information across. Keeping it textual also has the advantage of not breaking the resume reading software used by job websites and large companies.

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@Reiling762

Personally I'm not a huge fan of these skill bars. What do they tell you?

So you're 5 blocks on PHP. Does that mean you know everything there is to know about PHP? Nobody knows everything about PHP. Does that mean you use it daily? Is 5 the max? I might assume it is but it also might not be. Bars just seem ambiguous.

How good you are technically is usually something I'd establish during the interview. If you aren't comfortable being interviewed about something, don't put it on your resume as it can only hurt you.

The bars seem frivolous.

That being said, how can we improve your bars?

As an idea, I think including the whole scale on each one might help:


This makes it easier to see where the maximum is to the skill bars.

Though it still leaves us asking what the maximum and the minimum means. You mentioned the legend and though it may bring some clarity to the bars it would only serve to clutter and distract from your resume, which is something you yourself recognize.

Maybe this isn't the answer you were looking for but I'd recommend you find a clearer way to display your skills that doesn't rely on bars.

While I was writing this up Scott linked to a similar question where people discussed the value of these bars, which is definitely worth the read.

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