Any advice applying for roles that don't seem to care about technical skills? (gov)

[Old Greg]

Thanks some very helpful replies. I'm just not accustomed to selling soft skills as a contractor even for the most senior of technical roles I've applied to.

I will do some research and figure out a better way to present my work experience in terms of collaboration and achievement rather than technical finesse.

Do both. Have a CV / LinkedIn section for achievements and another on skills.

[FIERCE TANK BATTLE]

Thanks some very helpful replies. I'm just not accustomed to selling soft skills as a contractor even for the most senior of technical roles I've applied to.

I will do some research and figure out a better way to present my work experience in terms of collaboration and achievement rather than technical finesse.

[SimonMac]

There is your answer, very senior roles are less about technical skills and more about soft skills

There could also be the factor that technical skills are easier to demonstrate in an interview

[SimonMac]

In my quest to get another job I found an FTC working for the gov for a very senior technical role.
.......

There is your answer, very senior roles are less about technical skills and more about soft skills

[ladymuck]

Worked with a multi-disciplinary group located across four countries to deliver a xyz solution that did something fabulous

Brokered agreements between stakeholder groups to ensure the success of abc project to implement a widget

blah blah blah

First half of the sentence is HR waffle, the second is the techical. It's not that hard if you think about it.

[Old Greg]

don't waste your time or theirs then.
If you don't know what to write to sell yourself then it's not a role for you.

You are probably correct. But it's a good idea to start adding in some value statements into CVs even for purely technical roles.

[Lance]

Soft skills just seems more and more bollocks the more technical you get so I'm not really sure how to do it. I can list HTML as a skill and give an example of a HTML project I worked on, but how do I put 'being enthusiastic about technology' without sounding like an idiot? Serious question, perhaps that's what I'm supposed to put?

Seems a bit dodge if I'm putting it for contract jobs though cos I just did any contract I was technically qualified to do...

don't waste your time or theirs then.
If you don't know what to write to sell yourself then it's not a role for you.

[Old Greg]

Soft skills just seems more and more bollocks the more technical you get so I'm not really sure how to do it. I can list HTML as a skill and give an example of a HTML project I worked on, but how do I put 'being enthusiastic about technology' without sounding like an idiot? Serious question, perhaps that's what I'm supposed to put?

Seems a bit dodge if I'm putting it for contract jobs though cos I just did any contract I was technically qualified to do...

Have you ever delivered any value to a client or employer? If so, quantify it - ideally in economic terms - and describe how you delivered that value through a combination of your technical work and however it is you ensured that it was going to deliver value to the client / employer.

[CheeseSlice]

Not much to go on without a job title, but any very senior tech role is probably looking for strategy/direction setting or management or both. Tech skills are important but mainly for decoration because you won't be doing any of the actual work. You'll either be leading teams or vendors delivering it, and working with senior stakeholders, etc.

[courtg9000]

In my quest to get another job I found an FTC working for the gov for a very senior technical role.

However it lists literally 0 about any technologies or infrastructure or applications or specific projects.

Instead, the entire job description is just HR generated perm-speak. "Thrive and work collaboratively with teams. Foster communications between departments. Enthusiasm and passion for technology". Just pages of that.

My CV is 100% technical. It lists all my technical skills, my job history, and the descriptions are very technical explaining what projects I did and what skills I used.

The question is, for applying for this kind of role, should I be stuffing my CV full of flowery crap and binning off most of the technical stuff? Eg rather than putting something like "I developed RESTful webservices deploy to AWS" should I be putting "I synergised with a team of 6 developers to leverage and deploy data into the cloud" or some crap like that?

Not really sure what they're looking for in an application!

Reading this I am reminded of an "interview" for a contract at the House of Commons about 8 years ago.
Only about 5% of the interview were technical the rest all were political correctness and flowery HR crapola.

Stuff like:

"picking the low hanging fruit"
"syngergistic diarising"
"leveraging deffered successes"
"collaborating and thriving with a swivel chair"
"left handed inclusion of a wheelchair in a pizza"

"Tell me of an occasion you simultaneously picked the low hanging fruit and synergistically diariased a lobotomy in a Brixton multi-storey car park?" is a question example for you.

Yes I made some of these up but you get the gist.

diversity and inclusion popped up in every question

Very little about my skills in recovering a completely shagged AD

When I asked them questions they avoided answering anything near technical.
What I should have asked is "what's the coffee machine like?"
Like you back then I had 100% tech CV. Whereas I now have 3 CV's and some other supporting documents.

[FIERCE TANK BATTLE]

Why is your CV 100% technical? Surely you can combine technical and soft skills in one CV?

Soft skills just seems more and more bollocks the more technical you get so I'm not really sure how to do it. I can list HTML as a skill and give an example of a HTML project I worked on, but how do I put 'being enthusiastic about technology' without sounding like an idiot? Serious question, perhaps that's what I'm supposed to put?

Seems a bit dodge if I'm putting it for contract jobs though cos I just did any contract I was technically qualified to do...

[edison]

In my quest to get another job I found an FTC working for the gov for a very senior technical role.

However it lists literally 0 about any technologies or infrastructure or applications or specific projects.

Instead, the entire job description is just HR generated perm-speak. "Thrive and work collaboratively with teams. Foster communications between departments. Enthusiasm and passion for technology". Just pages of that.

My CV is 100% technical. It lists all my technical skills, my job history, and the descriptions are very technical explaining what projects I did and what skills I used.

The question is, for applying for this kind of role, should I be stuffing my CV full of flowery crap and binning off most of the technical stuff? Eg rather than putting something like "I developed RESTful webservices deploy to AWS" should I be putting "I synergised with a team of 6 developers to leverage and deploy data into the cloud" or some crap like that?

Not really sure what they're looking for in an application!

Why is your CV 100% technical? Surely you can combine technical and soft skills in one CV?

[FIERCE TANK BATTLE]

In my quest to get another job I found an FTC working for the gov for a very senior technical role.

However it lists literally 0 about any technologies or infrastructure or applications or specific projects.

Instead, the entire job description is just HR generated perm-speak. "Thrive and work collaboratively with teams. Foster communications between departments. Enthusiasm and passion for technology". Just pages of that.

My CV is 100% technical. It lists all my technical skills, my job history, and the descriptions are very technical explaining what projects I did and what skills I used.

The question is, for applying for this kind of role, should I be stuffing my CV full of flowery crap and binning off most of the technical stuff? Eg rather than putting something like "I developed RESTful webservices deploy to AWS" should I be putting "I synergised with a team of 6 developers to leverage and deploy data into the cloud" or some crap like that?

Not really sure what they're looking for in an application!