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If you were hiring for an IT position and one of your applicants included his SuperUser Reputation score in his resumè or cover letter [in addition to/definitely not in lieu of an actual resumè, of course.], would you think that was really cheesy, or would you consider a high number a legitimately valid indication that this guy knew his stuff?

I'm obviously not considering this for myself at the moment since I have a less-than-resumè-worthy score right now, but some of you guys have like 4000+ reputation, and I think that's really impressive! Maybe someday when I've been a member on SU for a while, and I have a legit score, I'll consider throwing it in if you guys don't think it's a terrible idea.

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    Depends on the field. Struggling to think of any field where reputation on Superuser would show any sort of professional experience of course
    – Ramhound
    Commented Feb 6, 2015 at 20:40
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    I think this question is interesting to discuss, but because it is not answerable in any kind of objective way, it is thus not a valid question for a Q&A site (or even the meta of a Q&A site). It also does not directly pertain to the site itself, and is therefore off-topic for SU or meta.SU. I have therefore downvoted and voted to close. Feel free to discuss this in chat, though.
    – allquixotic
    Commented Feb 6, 2015 at 20:43
  • @allquixotic: I see what you mean, but the question is tagged with discussion who's description is 'The question you're asking is designed to solicit opinions or best-practices on a particular topic, with the goal of reaching community consensus.' which is accurate. The point of MetaSU is to talk about SU, right? I can think of no better place to get answers to this question. You guys know what rep points are worth more than say, Reddit.
    – Catatonic27
    Commented Feb 6, 2015 at 21:27
  • @Ramhound: Well the field is IT. That's kind of of SU's target audience, right? Flashing your rep points would be a poor substitute for real work experience, I agree. But perhaps in addition to it?
    – Catatonic27
    Commented Feb 6, 2015 at 21:29
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    Personally I have no problem with this discussion post here.
    – slhck Mod
    Commented Feb 6, 2015 at 21:34
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    @slhck I'd tread lightly here. I don't want Meta.SU to turn into "sub-reddit".
    – James Mertz
    Commented Feb 6, 2015 at 22:29
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    There are people with tens of thousands of reputation who get hundreds of reputation points with answers that contain a single sentence, likewise people who type up answers with hundreds of words to completely and totally answer a question recieve a couple of votes. In other words with rare exceptions reputation is not sign of technical knowledge.
    – Ramhound
    Commented Feb 6, 2015 at 23:28
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    I feel this question would do equally well on The Workplace.SE
    – Robotnik
    Commented Feb 9, 2015 at 3:06

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Personally, even though I spend a lot of time on SU, I wouldn't consider "rep" to be the best thing. Why? Cause it shows how much "spare time" one person has. Lots of answers are easy enough to Google, and the field is too spread out.

For tech support? A majority of my questions came from issues I couldn't fix on my own for 2.5 years as a simple computer shop employee. Now that I'm a network administrator, I spend time on Linux/Unix.SE, ServerFault, and StackOverflow, but only post when I'm completely stumped.

Another issue is that rep can be tied to edits (great, the person has grammar powers! Let's put him/her in charge of our newsletter), asking questions (+5), and even association (+100, albeit only once). It's not a good gauge for getting a new employee.

If someone wants to add their profile to a resume, great. I'll look at it, and see the quality of answers, but it'd be more of a "in my spare time" type move, not "Should I hire this guy?". As an example, my top-voted answers are easily Google-able, with very few based on actual experience. I'm a great tech support guy, but that doesn't show my skills, it shows how I was either first to get there, or first to get the right answer.

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  • Relevant xkcd
    – James Mertz
    Commented Feb 6, 2015 at 22:31
  • As Luke points out one can get hundreds of reputation points for simply copying content from a knowlege article on Microsoft's website. Is a Superuser profile useless of course not, but it's far to broad, to be that useful and honestly I had the knowlege I had long before I had the reputation I have, infact inspite of it at times
    – Ramhound
    Commented Feb 6, 2015 at 23:31

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