> So here's a question: How do you make yourself sound like a god without
> sounding like you're just wildly exaggerating the truth?
>

Be positive about what you know and can do, but don't overdo it.  A wise 
man once said: "experience is like strawberry jam, the less you have the 
more you try to spread it!"  Overstating some of your experience or 
knowledge might bamboozle the HR girl who is only looking for buzzwords 
in the cv to see if you're an IMS/CICS host programmer, a web designer 
or a Windows admin, but the hiring manager should be able to see if you 
are BSing.

> I mean let's face it, I *am* kinda special. I have no formal
> mathematical training, and yet I can hold a conversation about
> polynomial functions, complex arithmetic, vector and matrix algebra,
> differential and integral calculus, statistics, group theory, knot
> theory, graph theory, and so forth.
>
> I have no formal training in computer science. (Don't let the title of
> my degree fool you - it's IT, not CS.) And in spite of that, I can
> happily chatter on about Turing machines, the lambda calculus, sorting
> and searching algorithms, complexity classes, parallel and concurrent
> processing, and on to more pointy things like artificial intelligence,
> digital signal processing, data compression, cryptology ( = cryptography
> + cryptanalysis), digital circuit design, 3D computer graphics, and so
> forth.
>

Use expressions like "self-taught", and "on-the-job training".  DO NOT 
say "no formal training".

> I started programming computers when I was just 9 years old. Since then
> I have written *working* programs in BASIC, assembly language, machine
> code (!), C, Pascal, Java, JavaScript, C++, Eiffel, Smalltalk, Prolog,
> Haskell, Tcl and more, not even counting things like PostScript, SQL,
> XSLT, SVG, TeX, Makefiles and things that veer off into not being
> "programming languages". (Note also how we've got wildly different
> categories of language in there - machine-oriented, structured,
> object-oriented, imperative, functional, logical, relational...)
>

You can list all the languages you know at the end of your CV, and say 
"I have X years of programming experience in a variety of procedural and 
functional languages" or something like that.  DO NOT say you started at 
9, as most people under 30 will have grown up with computers at home and 
employers will know that the nerdy-types were all modding their NESes to 
run Linux by age 12.

> Working programs I've written have included all sorts of graphical
> things like fractal generators, mesh renderers, ray tracers and various
> function plotters. I've built sound synthesizers and particle
> simulations. I've written programs that implement data structures,
> compression algorithms and ciphers. I've built demonstrations for these,
> sometimes using the most unlikely techniques. (Interactive data
> compression using Huffman encoding implemented with JavaScript and DOM
> manipulations of XHTML, anyone?)

Try to list work-related projets first, as those tend to impress 
employers more than hobbies - unless you are the mainainer of a 
very-well known open-source project, on your spare time.  Give one or 
two big examples. If all you did was automated patch-distribution 
scripts for the office network, then say that you wrote tools to help 
streamline various processes pertaining to task X or Y.

>
> OK, so there's 4 thick, chunky paragraphs explaining just what a bad-ass
> I am. Are prospective employers going to care? Not really, no.
>
> Hmm, writing applications is hard. >_<
>


-- 
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/*   gmail.com     */}camera{orthographic location<6,1.25,-6>look_at a }

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