Putting Cross Validated stats on resume

Question

This question has been asked on other SE forums, but has anyone on Cross Validated added their profile information (either putting their handle, rep, or both) on their resume or curriculum vitae?

There are, of course, numerous other factors that influence applicability for a job; & acquiring rep/presence on a SE site is particular to just this community, making it rather arbitrary to an outsider. However, the question below & its subsequent answers got me thinking that the nature of the CV forum in particular as it relates to working in the field of statistics:
Unanswered questions as percentage of total – why does CV stand out?

In the organizations I have worked or interviewed – largely requiring an applied statistics background – researching, understanding to the best extent possible, & then communicating technical concepts from statistics is critical. Oftentimes the client/asker doesn't know specifically what they want to see beyond a broad conceptual outcome. And of course there may be multiple approaches to any problem given the background of the expert/client, as well as organizational constraints (available time, technology, etc.). The nature of the questions & answers on CV, which frequently require deeper research & are more specific or nuanced than other SE sites, seems reflective of what I & others have encountered in the workforce. As Glen_b summarizes this well:

In the course of answering questions over a few days, I often find myself doing algebra I've never quite attempted before, running simulations I've never run before (and writing and debugging code to do them!), suggesting novel or tweaked test statistics and exploring their properties, comparing the properties of several approaches to a problem, coming up with slightly novel way to visualize some data, reading papers to follow the history of some little technique, reading more papers to even figure out what a person is asking about ... and so on. That is, a lot of questions here take actual research effort. Sometimes hours of it.

Glen_b's summary seems to be exactly the kind of mindset required for many stats positions. So having a quality presence on CV in particular may serve as a plausible representation of one's aptitude in solving statistical problems in general. This is different from SO for example, where questions are expected to be very specific w/ reproducible code, solutions don't necessarily need to be as nuanced, potential number of solutions are more limited, & the community/pool of knowledge is generally larger.

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Similar SE questions:

• At what point do you put your SO reputation in your resume?
• I was recently asked for my Stack Overflow reputation score in a job interview. Is that appropriate?

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^{NOTE: I'm asking this as a general question. I definitely would not classify my current presence on CV as "quality".}

Answer 1

As an independent consultant I am open to opportunities of any sort, including working full time for a (worthy) organization. I therefore maintain different resumes according to the type of position: consulting, academic, and industrial. The academic and industrial ones mention SE, but it is just one short entry out of many under "professional activities." It is there as a strategic element, intended to provide an opening for further discussion in an interview. Given such a chance, I would make a case similar to Glen B's, but I would not emphasize this in any application materials.

Others, elsewhere, have pointed to a significant problem with CV (and SE in general): a high reputation is not necessarily associated with knowledge, quality of exposition, or even a tendency to be correct. Moreover, a very high rate of participation could be a negative in some employers' views ("why would she spend so much time at that and would that activity distract from her job?"), so you should be prepared to provide a good explanation if you are in that category.

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That has begged the question of what I might say during that hypothetical interview. Some points I think would be worth making about CV in particular are:

• Active participation--even if it is primarily reading, editing, and commenting--exposes us to far more statistical consulting problems than anyone ever has seen in their lifetime before. It can thereby serve as excellent preparation for consulting and to demonstrate one's fitness to serve as a statistician in almost any environment or organization.

• Actively answering, especially with the care described by Glen B, will teach anyone who is sufficiently thoughtful and humble to improve their communications skills as well as their statistical expertise.

• The site is useful as a "sandbox" in which to test ideas that might be turned into more formal resources such as a blog, a textbook, or (in a few cases) published papers.

• Involvement in as many topics as possible exposes one to a wider range of solutions and thereby, over time, can considerably augment one's skills and tools.

Answer 2

My effort here is not on my resume, nor do I envision any very likely situation in which I would include it. It's possible that I might in the right circumstance, but it would require a situation (or a potential employer) that doesn't presently apply.

The basic issue is that I don't anticipate that an organization I would be likely to work for would be likely to care very much about it ... but perhaps one might come up at some point.

I think some of my activities here have added (at least a bit) to particular aspects of my communication skills, such as they are, and I've certainly learned some things I wouldn't have learned otherwise - those things are positives an employer would care about. But those would be skills which if I really had them, I could demonstrate in other ways.

If in an interview, we came to a discussion of my hobbies, I might mention my activities here among them; I don't list my hobbies on my resume, though.

If (as in one of your links) that mention somehow led to a question about what my reputation was, that would make me concerned about their priorities (what would that indicate, on its own? It's easy to accumulate fake internet points reputation without being particularly insightful - there are many better statisticians here with lower reputation than I have).

On the other hand, if they asked about say reputation per answer, that would say more (though it's at least somewhat confounded with/distorted by several other things). If they asked me to show them three of my answers I thought were good, that might provide something to go on -- but even then I think it would only be particularly relevant to certain kinds of jobs.

Imagine (so I don't have to talk about myself) I were someone with whuber's reputation. Would I show that reputation score to an employer? Probably not. But if I were someone with some of his answers? Yes, it's certainly possible I'd show some of those in the right situation - many of them are wonderful. The quality of those sort of activities might say a lot. [But I doubt whuber needs to, since he has so many other achievements he could point to in their stead. Similar comments would apply to many of the other high reputation users - they have some wonderful answers that might be worth a mention in the right situation, but probably don't need to.]

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You quote me talking about doing research in my activities here - one problem I'd note is that a lot of the research I do to answer questions doesn't end up anywhere but in my head. I spent a couple of hours researching an answer in the last day ... but by the time I was confident I could provide a good answer backed up with a suitable reference, someone had already written one. There was (as is often the case) nothing to do but upvote it and move on. Where's the evidence I did that research and learned something worthwhile? Nowhere.

[I might read an article, do some algebra and perform a simulation study. Where does all that go if there's already a decent answer in the meantime with all the essentials? Nowhere. Even when I do give an answer, a lot of that effort may end up as a parenthetical comment in a single sentence, or if I am lucky, appear as a single image. On the other hand, some of that learning definitely shows up - if less directly - in the course of my work. I know a few more things, and am more practiced at explaining them concisely. I am aware of references I otherwise wouldn't be. Stuff like that.]

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I'd agree with whuber that active participation exposes one to many varied problems, and that serves as excellent preparation for consulting - but I spent years doing consulting already, both in an academic capacity (consulting to research students in a variety of areas) and in several different application areas (in 'industry' as they say). I don't even include all my actual paid consulting on my resume.

I'd also agree with him that involvement in as many topics as possible "exposes one to a wider range of solutions and thereby, over time, can considerably augment one's skills and tools". Indeed, that's one of the major attractions of the site to me.

Answer 3

I have. I'm a psychologist in the early stages of my career though. I have a lot more space on my curriculum vitae and LinkedIn profile than some of these other guys, fewer other ways to demonstrate my statistical skills, such as they are ^{_{(@Glen_b is overly modest when he refers to his readily evident communication skills with this phrase, but my stats skills are still largely untested outside this forum)}}, and fewer things to mention in cover letters and interviews, especially since I also fall into @whuber's category of very high rate-of-participation users. I've been overdoing it on edits and votes all year! I've been mostly unemployed post-PhD too ^{_{(vacation attributable to post-reinforcement pause, heavy remedial study of stats for analysis overhaul prior to dissertation publication, moving out, brutal job market for teachers, etc.)}}, so my activity here has probably been my most valuable and demonstrable professional activity since grad school. Since abandoning teaching applications, I've even been making a tentative (and temporary) career shift toward statistical consulting. I've had two private clients since graduating – one referred by a friend, and another who found me here! This inspired me to just list myself as a freelance statistical consultant on my CV, LinkedIn, etc., which resulted in a hiring company contacting me (I didn't have the software knowledge necessary though). Clearly it's a better entry than nothing to account for my time since graduating...but I'm fairly atypical.

Moreover, I've just been hired for a psychology postdoc with heavy stats demands. I got this far in part by studying longitudinal SEM, and I owe much of my confidence with these methods to my experience here, since I've had limited chances to apply them otherwise. In applying, I described my activity since graduating as statistical consulting – mostly volunteer – and mentioned my experience here on CV briefly in both my cover letter and during the interview. Both were received well. I don't think the mention of CV in my cover letter mattered much, but I noticed a little bit of surprised enthusiasm when I described over the phone how I've been sticking my nose in people's statistical problems from all over the world and all sorts of careers for the past 8 months. I don't want to overplay the effect – I have a lot of other strengths and lucky compatibilities going for me in this case – but mentioning my work here (briefly, as others have advised; it wouldn't have been enough in isolation) sure didn't hurt my chances. See also this related question: Does being on StackExchange help get consulting jobs?

Hope my self-indulgent autobio doesn't seem too tangential. I prefer to tell the story than advocate my choices, as my only support for them is in their results so far. My relevant curriculum vitae entries:

Professional Experience

• Statistical consultant, various clients and projects, 2013–2014
• [One other unrelated entry here – president of a departmental grad student association]

Professional Memberships

• Cross Validated, Cognitive Sciences, and ResearchGate, 2013–2014 [hyperlinks included!]
• [Four other unrelated entries here – psychology associations with conferences I presented at]

These are just one line apiece in fields I wanted to include anyway – nothing too obtrusive or emphatic. FWIW, on LinkedIn, Cross Validated is somewhat more prominent on my profile. I list three websites, one of which is my profile here. I list myself as a "personality & social psychologist and statistical consultant". I describe my experience as, "Statistical analysis, review, reporting, editing, and consultation," which largely refers to my activity here. Last, there is a field for volunteer work – Cross Validated is my only entry there, and though it may not amount to a hill of beans on the job market, I'm very proud of it.

Oh, and my alibi for my (hyper)activity here, should it be called into question: I've been striving to build connections and contribute to the staying power of one of the best professional resources I know of, and now that I've got this job, I'll probably be transitioning away from editing/reviewing/answering and toward asking! Bounties forthcoming as necessary – I can certainly afford a few now. Thanks CV!

Answer 4

Not on my resume but I have it on my website. That way, it can be a link.

Answer 5

My background: 5 years job experience in non-academia, working in software development and ML "research".

My overall (sad ?) impression based on this and based on reading career advices for programmers is, that what you have done and how it contributed to the business is way more important (and explainable) in job interviews then how strong your theoretic background is.

Made up example: Suppose you have created a sophisticated spam-filter and email-sorting system, which had to deal with only a small amount of labeled data (semi-supervised learning), could be improved efficiently by each user (active learning) and worked only well by doing more than the bag-of-words-approach (natural language processing).

When the interviewer understands all this, one can explain this in detail. Otherwise, it is more advised to focus on how much this improved the overall workflow.

The same goes for stats.SE. While I would put the activity here on the CV as hobby, I'd rather use the limited space to focus on my biggest practical accomplishments which are easy to understand even for HR drones.

Personally, I have improved a lot by participating on stats.SE (and got a lot of ideas), but this only mattered and become visible at the very moment I have solved a business problem using that knowledge. Then none cared WHY I was able to do it, just that I did it.

Last point: While I agree with whuber that active participation on stats.SE should matter for an employer, it is hard to explain that shortly in a CV (may be even in a job interview if this point has not been raised by the interviewer). As another example, I have a hobby which is social, requires self-organization and keeps my creativity alive, but is not known (and understood) that widely that I'd put in in the CV.

Answer 6

I put SE stats on my resume and I am pretty sure it helped me ! Of course this is just one factor and the context is important.

Context

• Switch of career from a business oriented job (management consulting) to a more technical area (data analytics)
• I spent 8 months up skilling in statistics, data science, programming - using university lectures (we can attend those for free in France), MOOC, books and SE
• My posts on SE are mostly additions to existing answers, more detailed proofs, or intuitive interpretations.. but I went from 0 to 3.8k points in less than a year

What I wrote on my CV

Since my CV was light on the datascience / statistics side I added these bullet points

Statistics:

Bias-variance tradeoff and stability: Simulations and literature review contrasting recent research results with widely held views on "Leave One Out Cross Validation"

Active contributor in the online community: top 1% this quarter

I also added a link to my SE profile, together with links to LinkedIn and my blog

My point of view as a hiring manager

I am now the hiring manager for the analyst / senior analyst role and my personal view (which is somewhat biased) is that SE stats on their own will not land you a job. The stats are just one part of the story you are trying to convey to the recruiter.

But given two similar candidates, with a story and context that make sense, then SE stats will definitely make you stand out. Even though having a lot of points on SE does not guarantee that a person is knowledgeable, it does convey strong written communication skills. Being able to explain a technical concept to a wider audience is crucial for analyst and data scientists.

Answer 7

I guess, it depends on the match between the requirements of the job you are applying for and your activity profile (I emphasize profile, not only rating) on CV. Persons applying for a teaching statistics position could, in my opinion, profit by placing their CV profile in their applications if they have provided many good answers on CV and less so if they have asked many good questions. If you are a researcher or an independent consultant you apply with the projects/studies you have carried out, and less with the exchange of ideas in the course of carrying out your projects. And if you have the CV profile of whuber or Peter Flom you can only profit from it, no matter what position you are applying for and whether you put it on your website or on your curriculum vitae - there just aren't that many of these profiles.

Answer 8

What type of job do you want?

What type of job do you expect with a resume?

When I hire people for something, I care more about what the person has done or seems like they are capable of doing, I do use more than just looking at StackExchange, but it's one of the more impressive variables to me because it signifies they were willing to go in and get their intellectual ego circumcised in order to learn or are actually at that caliber.

Some advice I'd give is if people left contact information in their profile if they are seeking or open to potentially intriguing things/ideas. That, communication skills, like trying to put yourself in their shoes or really listen and think about what you don't know.

At the same time, I've found high scores have a tendency to correlate with a difficulty to work with at times though. But only a slight tendency. Many, many, especially if they've been praised a ton, published somewhere, hold some position, have "the most points" intelligent people at the top of their field unfortunately suffer from egotistical bias. That even happens to me.

Their egos can block them from curiosity, intrigue, teamwork, respect, "degeneracy" (heh) and are therefore difficult to communicate with as they may not realize they don't understand the context even when they say they do and sometimes are unwilling to do anything that requires them to admit a misunderstanding...or to change their means of thought...to listen...

If I saw a high rep user here asking questions that would be significant to me....that would be probably the ultimate sign of wisdom to me honestly.

But, I mean, it's every action that the site records. And a score discards so much more information...it's unwise to just look at that.

I do know that what I need help with needs to be a challenge that intrigues them - but at the same time its hard to pin them down even if they are intrigued. Many users here are geniuses and come for fun...not to make money. I find those that I respect on these websites to be quite elusive and already have jobs/a means of making income, but it depends.

The original question is 4 years old, and I'm trying to give a modern perspective. If you're making a resume, it's to try to get a job I presume; and if you approach a company with a resume you've already lost by the way anyway - you have to be "the outlier." And if they don't recognize your stats on stack-exchange, do you want to work for them anyway? If they hire you based on your resume, you've also lost imo as it's likely going to lack "fit."

If you find someone whom has looked at you as you rather than the "meta-you" and then approaches you, you may want to consider that highly significant...and that they are hiding things too...but testing you.

I view finding someone to work with likely the most important decision to make - because it WILL make or break things. I will even see how they respond to various actions I take or things I say....it's potentially thousands of variables - but SE gives a depth a resume cannot.