[poiuytrewqa]

> List fluffy soft skills like "I am a good communicator" without any backup. Results speak louder than words.

How you bring result/backup about soft skills in a CV? Is already quite hard to get an understanding of hard skill from a piece of paper let alone soft skills.

Unless you think you can condense the complexity of the experience of a person in a two page document.

Also trying to backup something like that with things such as "speaking engagement" etc is not even working. There are people who are "good communicator" for a certain audience (eg. Entry level) but quite bad for another audience (eg seasoned engineers). For example for me a bad communicator is a person that spend 30 minutes to share a concept that can be compressed in 2.

[PopeDotNinja]

The best advice I ever got about writing a CV is to avoid using adjectives. Instead of saying "good communicator", give an example of good communication. Examples could be pull requests on GitHub, conference talks, a blog post, etc. Or just demonstrate that you're a good communicator by crafting a resume people want to read.

[greenie_beans]

That's writing 101. "Show, don't tell"

[gas9S9zw3P9c]

You're right, so I'd rather not so these claims on a resume at all. But, for example, if you've managed a team for several years or given a lot of talks, it's more likely that you're good at communicating ideas, simply because you've had a lot of practice and you have probably gotten some feedback over time.

[screye]

> How you bring result/backup about soft skills in a CV

I guess organizing meetups, running clubs/committees, giving talks at conferences or having achieved something in a team game.

[poiuytrewqa]

Again, this is pretty subjective. I find people who do these things being very bad communicator because they can talk only to entry level people. Most of the speech in any conference around the world are just simple stuff that can be condensed in an hour. Usually you could do the same in a 10 minutes session if you are targeting a more skilled audience

Also I had experience on working and organizing team of people and I would really point out that is super hard to get people to work together doesn't matter what. There are people who hate each other and can't work together and some that dick head that get along well.

So what I do I just skip the soft skills section in the first place. What I find it useful is scenario base question like: last time you had a conflict in your team how did you handle that. You can understand a good communicator much better in this way than claiming to have experience at speaking on random conference (communication has much more to do with being able to empathize with the other person's point of view rather than keep pushing through your own idea with very nice pointless words)

[screye]

My experience is almost diametrically opposite on the first few things.

> Most of the speech in any conference around the world are just simple stuff that can be condensed in an hour

I have found that in majority of technical talks, an hour is thoroughly insufficient to convey everything in detail. This means, a good talk requires days of preparation, careful understanding of the critical aspects of the subject matter and building a narrative that joins all of them seamlessly.

It is incredibly difficult.

> Usually you could do the same in a 10 minutes session if you are targeting a more skilled audience

In my experience, 10 minutes is only good for elevator pitches. To take away anything of technical values, it usually takes 60 minutes or more.

> that is super hard to get people to work together doesn't matter what

That's why my mentioned running clubs/committees or being deeply involved a team sport. Those exact same dynamics manifest in the 2 scenarios and the skills obtained form there are to some degree, transferable to industry.

> What I find it useful is scenario base question like: last time you had a conflict in your team how did you handle that

I love these kinds of questions. Not because they always reveal anything important, but they play to the strengths of a good story teller.

Most people at this point, practice these questions just like leetcode. The interviewee doesn't answer your question, they fetch a meticulously crafted and appropriately fictionalized account of a past event, and the interviewer is none the wiser.

[poiuytrewqa]

I'd just not reply to everything to avoid a infinite loop but I like your last point:

> Most people at this point, practice these questions just like leetcode

This is a valid point and as you mentioned is true also for hard skills (eg. Algo prep with leet code). But at one point the question would be: would you rather hire someone that showed dedication for the job to the point that spent weeks/months to prepare leet code or possible other interview questions or someone that perhaps performed worst during the interview?

Most of the time you can always find out who is just memorizing everything by asking follow-up questions (both for technical and non technical questions) and as I guess you know (there's plenty info on the web) you can find books on how to crack any interview

[screye]

Makes sense, totally agree.