One of the biggest pains in the butt in my recently unemployed life was constantly re-proving myself, at various levels, to potential employers. This took the form of questions like:
- “describe how the linux init process works”
- “what does chkconfig do?”
- “how would you troubleshoot if you could not get to a webserver?”
- “what is nmap for?”
- “what is the difference between name based virtual hosts and ip based virtual hosts?”
I’d love to have a card that states my geek level so I don’t have to re-prove that I know what the “ps” command does. Maybe something like the geek code, but more oriented to skills.
Of course, just being able to say it doesn’t mean you’re able to do anything, so maybe a site with some skill testing questions (similar to the above) which you complete and based on your answers it creates a code and is also sent to you laminated on a sexy ‘geek skills’ card along with an abbreviated list of your skills. IE:
- U+++ (Master of general unix work)
- L+++ (Master of Linux)
- B+ (Worked with BSD)
- A++ (Completely competent with Apache)
- IS+++ (Has run / configured / maintained an internet server for more than 5 years)
- ISS+++ (Has run / configured / maintained internet server services for more than 5 years)
- DRH (Hates redhat but can deal with it)
- DG+++ (Gentoo is my bitch)
- WS- (Not a windows server expert, but could probably deal with it)
And so on….
Prospective employers would be able to put the number into the site (or scan it with a fancy card scanner, yea!) and it would be able to then spit back the list of the users skills, and they would have the confidence that you don’t get someone who just says they have skills with webservers. Of course, there would have to be some way of making it so that there was actual credibility to it, and it didn’t turn out to be just the same as someone filling their resume with keywords.
Hmm….. anyone got any other ideas, or want to help with this? The actual web service/website would be pretty simple, it’s more the logistics of that whole “credibility” thing.
/me adds to list of “Projects TODO”