Wordpress, joomla, etc… should they go under “technical skills” or “areas of expertise” on a resume
Unless you’re applying to a job where you know you’ll be working with one of those tools, I don’t believe they should be listed anywhere on a resume. You might be able to mention them as part of the description of what you did at a previous job, but otherwise, leave them off.
Well put Dan. The tools of your trade make sense when they apply to the job you’re applying for. But if the job isn’t asking about CMS management that you managed CMS is enough. You can explain the responsibility and duties in your resume and dive into the tools if it’s asked down the road. The exception to this tends to be seriously enterprise tools and for the more IT focused.
Hi,
Personally I’d mention them explicitly (ie, list them in their own right) because they all add value to your skill set, and some have rather a steep learning curve too. Being a whizz with a certain CMS could put you months ahead of someone who is a noob, and therefore relates favourably to the bottom line.
Speaking from experience, just because an ad doesn’t mention Drupal/EE/whatever doesn’t mean the studio don’t use it or that you won’t be expected to get stuck in; it can be that the person who wrote the ad is not very technically minded thinks that asking for PHP/MySQL is the same thing. Or they might not understand that a CMS has its own rules and therefore not think of it as a ‘skill’ to ask for. Doens’t mean to say they wouldn’t be pleased to see it on your resume/CV.
Also, you never know if the company’s been turning down otherwise lucrative work because they didn’t have anyone in-house with knowledge of a certain CMS.
In these hard times I’d make it blindingly obvious exactly what skills you DO have. Don’t rely on a busy recruiter or office manager to find detail buried in the depths of a resume, make sure they can see at a glance.
good luck!
-tootle.
Its hard to answer this question without knowing what job you are actually applying for. If the job is related to these skills, or you feel that the company may use them then add them in your skills section. If the job is completely unrelated then briefly mention them in your hobbies & interests section.
I review thousands of CVs every week, and the most common mistakes that candidates make is to harp on about skills that are totally unrelated to the job in the skills section of a cv/resume. Use your common sense. For example a candidate applying for a jewellery store managers position should not list the ability to fix motorbikes in their skills section, this should be put into the hobbies/interests section (it does happen believe me).
As Tootle says, just because a company do not advertise that the candidate needs to have Word press etc, does not mean they don’t use it. They may like to use it or already use it.
Its not necessarily what you put on your CV its where you put it. Ask yourself this; will it add value directly to the employers business type? Yes, then put it in professional skills section. No; then add it to hobbies/interests.
I have had a few candidates that were asked for interview, not for the job they applied for, but because the employer felt that they could actually use them in another area of their business.
Ah… I assumed that the job in question would be web-related …maybe it wasn’t 
Interesting last point, Jewellery Jobs! Can be hard to know what to leave out, when you hear about those sort of unexpected opportunities.
With that in mind, I’d be tempted to leave it in somewhere even if I was applying for a stop-gap, boring admin job.
it’s interesting that you might consider these to be separate areas
hard to imagine that if you have technical skills in something, that it wouldn’t be listed under your areas of expertise
similarly, it’s hard to imagine that if something is within your area of expertise, that you’d have no skills in it
I would disagree with leaving them off, it is always useful to list you have skills or ability with working with a specifically coded engine such as a CMS. You would not type on a CV that you have skills in “word processing”; they would certainly want to know if you used Microsoft Word, Lotus WordPro, Corel WordPerfect, OpenOffice or something else. Having specific knowledge of a CMS, how it works and how to configure it is a very useful skill and it would be worth making a footnote under your skills (or putting in brackets besides a certain skill) the framework, CMS or individual utilities which you have a solid knowledge of.
It may also put potential clients at ease if you note that you have worked with the technology before (for example if they require a Wordpress blog) so that they will be aware you have a working knowledge to be able to use the specific product as required.