For this week I choose to talk about the concrete skills pattern. I want to start it with a question that made an impression in me when I was reading it. The concrete skills you possess are your answer to the question: “If we hire you today, what can you do on Monday morning that will benefit us?” The point is that you will often require hiring managers to take a leap of faith in choosing you. Concrete skills (which are ideally discrete enough that you can bring toy implementations to an interview) allow you to meet them halfway.
Having knowledge is not the same as having the skill and practical ability to apply that knowledge. I believe that because I feel the pressure of it in the software class that I’m right now. Me and my classmates are working in a project that require from us to learn some new tools that we need to use. In the first month of it most of time I have read a lot about these tools and how they work but I cannot compare it with the knowledge that I will learn when I start to apply it. I always tell myself that practicing makes you perfect. That’s how you earn a concrete skill.
If you are not sure what concrete skills, you need in the book there is a suggestion for it. Collect the CVs of people whose skills you respect. You can either ask them for a copy or download the CVs from their websites. For each person, identify five discrete skills noted on the CV, and determine which of these skills would be immediately useful on the kind of team you want to join. Put together a plan and a toy project that will demonstrate that you have acquired these skills. Implement the plan. It is a good advice.
The last thing that I want to add is that is important to not get lost in the sea of knowledge. I speak from my experience. I have done that and is not the way to learn a skill. Focus on one thing at the time. It is easy to want to know everything, but you would end up not learning anything.
References: https://www.oreilly.com/library/view/apprenticeship-patterns/9780596806842/ch01.html, Concrete Skills
From the blog CS@Worcester – Tech, Guaranteed by mshkurti and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.