A common line put on resumes used to be “fast learner”. It’s not something I’ve ever used. I’ve read some negative opinions about it from resume advice articles and it’s easy to imagine that for many industries, suggesting you don’t know the subject at hand but are ready to learn, is not a positive quality.
However for tech jobs, and the nature of what we discuss here, I wonder if communicating that you can adopt new technologies quickly is useful or necessary. As I see front-end development, I believe strongly it is only going to become painfully dynamic more and more through the years. It seems every several months a new pre-processor language is introduced to address small issues of efficiency or a new framework comes around that is adopted by a certain percentage of businesses. It doesn’t seem practical (or possible) to specialize in all the variations. With that in mind I wonder about the “faster learner” sentiment and how it can be communicated without sounding insincere.
Any opinions or perspective on this? Do you think companies are sympathetic to the dynamic nature of web/front-end development lately?
I agree that’s a very important quality. In fact I think you should do better than merely claiming you’re a fast learner. Anyone can claim that, even if it’s less true than they think. Instead try to work in a real life example where you learned quickly and delivered successfully. Show, don’t tell.
Over the last three decades, I have probably interviewed well over a thousand technical candidates for various roles. Resumes have changed over the years and my perception these days is that the resume is not written for me or another human to read in many cases. Rather, the resumes are written to snag the search engines.
Regardless of whether the term is “fast learner” or “faster learner,”, terms such as these invite deeper probing during the interview and even as early as the initial phone screen. If I saw either of those terms, one of the first things I would ask the candidate would be to give me an example of a time when he or she learned something quickly and to articulate what added value it had to the business.
The key point here is to be prepared to give examples to anything that is listed on a resume. I’ve tripped many a candidate asking about things which they could not substantiate.
Great insight. Thanks for offering your opinion on that. It’s good to know that backing up those claims in an interview is acceptable for some employers. I just wasn’t sure if it was too much of a cliched claim.
I’ve recently been looking at what makes a great CV and cover letter for my blog and the show, don’t tell sentiment I think is very important.
If you are going to put ‘fast learner’ just speak about the times when a new standard or language came in and how you got to grips with it quickly and what benefit that was to where you were working.
Learnt something quickly and then showed other people how to get up to speed?
“I recently led a training session on a new database application and received significant praise for my ability to relay complex information to a non-tech-oriented audience.” - Career Builder
I think there is a lot of conflicting advise with CV writing and such, everyone has their own ideas and preferences.