Hello everyone !
Today I was thinking about an update of my resumé and I started to ask myself, as a full self-taught, what are my three strong points and my three weak points. I am curious to know if you share with me the same strengths and weaknesses :
⭐️ For those who are self-taught, what are your strong/weak points ?
⭐️ And for those who worked with self-taught, what was their strong/weak points ?
And if you are an employer, if you have two similar candidates, which one would you prefer ? The academic one or the self-taught ?
My strong points :
- Fast (and good?!) learner : I don't know if it's because I am self-taught that I learn fast but I know that helped me a lot. When I started my first job I didn't coded a lot with JS and I had to learn how to code with React JS within two months.
- Independent : Being self-taught helps you to learn to find informations, documentations, and answers to your problems by yourself.
- Being self-taught shows your motivation and curiosity : It is obvious that you are motivated and curious, otherwise you would not be here ;)
My weak points :
- Not being surrounded by a large community of developer : It is complicated (not unrealizable at all!) to find a community of developer to exchange.
- Not having the good vocabulary : Sometimes when I speak with another developers, they asked me if I know about this or that and I say "no". But when they explain me what it is, I realize I know this concept/subject but I didn't know how to name it. I think this is because when you learn by yourself you don't communicate enough about what you learned, you don't memorize correctly all the vocabulary (having few years of professional experience help to naming correctly things).
- Independent : This is also a weak point. Indeed, you are used to do everything by yourself and you forget that sometimes, asking for help it is essential to be productive and to improve your knowledge...
Top comments (2)
Hi Estelle! While reading your article I realized I have the same strengths and weaknesses as you:
-Fast learner: I exactly don't know if I'm a fast learner, I just go for what I think will make me understand and that's all. Because of that I also have poor technical language.
-Independent: I never really liked being told what to study so whenever I come across something that catches my attention I don't stop till I know everything (or at least the minimal amount to feel satisfied). The last thing I learnt was React ;)
-Motivation: This is my greatest weakness. I start very excited on any subject and I lose interest really fast.
It's not easy learning by yourself but I think it is very fulfilling C:
I'm glad you shared your experience ! I am, sometimes, feeling alone in this world because I am junior and also because I only know "academics" developers.
I also agree with you about motivation. I can lose it very fast and when you have to learn a large subject by yourself it can help to have a teacher to motivate you when you are not anymore :)