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A lot of answers on here suggest linking to your Stack Overflow account on your CV. I only have 300 some points over on Stack Overflow, so I don't think I'll be mentioning it just yet.

Still, I'm curious to know how much reputation I should get before "boasting" about it on my CV.

gnat
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Shawn
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3 Answers3

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Seeing as you can get +1000 rep by simply suggesting edits (which get accepted), I would say that the actual rep is not as important as the quality of your questions and answers.

Simply post that you participate in SO/Programmers with a link to your profiles and let these speak for themselves. The fact that you participate in the community is more important than rep.

If you have anything that you are particularly proud of, link to that.

Oded
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In some post on careers.SE Joel pointed out (edit: See @Atul's answer), that actual rep is not so much what matters. What you should do, is to add links to answers (or questions) that you think really show your knowledge and skill.

In fact, rep has two major problems:

  • it follows some weird group dynamics. There's a lot of uneven amplification effects, that distort it even as a measure for the "absolute" value of an answer.
  • using it as a measure for a whole person basically dumbs it down to measuring something very individual and complex on a linear scale.

However your profile as a whole tells a story. One can see, whether you're a specialist, or a generalist. One can quickly see your top answers and questions, to see what you master and what intrigues you. Your style of writing reflects on your personality and so on.

I guess the point where you should use your SE profile as part of your CV is the point when you like the story it tells.

back2dos
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Careers 2.0: It’s About Reputation, Not “Rep” Take a look at this SO Blog posting.

As Joel Spolsky says in the blog post (I boldfaced that last line to highlight it):

But more importantly, sheer reputation scores are not how Careers 2.0 works, and it’s not what Careers 2.0 hiring managers are looking for. What they want to see is a sample of your work. They don’t need to see your answers to 7000 questions—they want to see five really good ones.

So, (as also suggested by others) it's the quality not quantity that matters.

Atul Goyal
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