I can learn new things quickly. Really.

Back when, I was a Technical Support Engineer on a C library. And not too shabby at it, either. ;-)

One of the things we got used to was the lies (intentional or otherwise) that customers said on the phone:

• Sure I initialized the pointer properly...
• I'm certain that my make script has the switches you recommend...
• Of course I'm compiling in the Large Memory model...
• No really, I KNOW what I'm doing. I started programming before C was even imagined...

As a recruiter, I find that one big different between then and now is that the lies have changed. Here's one of my current favs I see on resumes all the frickin' time:

I can learn new languages and software very quickly.

Since it's Friday, I thought we'd have some fun with this and tear it up. Here goes:

• Define very.
• Define quickly.
• Define learn.
• Did you read the job description, and which of the languages that we require for this job on day 1 don't you know?

Y'all need to go into the bathroom, look at yourself in the mirror and repeat after me:

• I shall not use adverbs on my resume. (Adverbs = -ly ending. See "Lolly Lolly Lolly get your Adverbs Here")
• I shall not state that I own a skill in vague way on my resume.
• I shall always read the job description thoroughly. Twice. Only then shall I send my resume in to the recruiter/hiring manager.

Think about it this way: We work in an industry that is filled with smart people. Hiring Managers expect that the people they interview are smart. That they are quick studies. That they are creative. They also know that while most people can pick up the things that are similar between all languages, it's the nuances that will kick you and their team in the ass.

Instead of all this vague clap-trap, try something like this:

Adept at learning new programming languages. On a team of 10 developers who were told to learn and use Ruby on Rails to re-write a website, I was the first to write valid code for the project, and my code represented over 50% of the total code base at ship.

Indubitably!