I disagree, because of the subjectivity. For some things, it's fine, but for others, I don't think it's an accurate reflection.
For example, what actually quantifies 1/5 of Ruby? And does a 5/5 rating mean you know absolutely everything about it? Is 1/5 of Ruby the same as 1/5 of Python, or soldering, or speaking Icelandic?
There's also no improvement from 5/5, but even a master of their craft will know there is always room for improvement and greater mastery.
That demo has a lot of javascript going on, and she rates that 2/5. I don't think that demo is trivial to implement, and on relative terms I can assume that she's more than just dabbled in Haskell and Python.
We know she's German, so she puts 5/5 in German language, as it's her native tongue. If that was the base, does that mean she's as fluent with Garageband and Logic as she is speaking?
I don't think skills are so easily quantifiable, and I'd much prefer to see a qualitative analysis of those skills. Otherwise, I'm just looking at a meaningless pattern of shaded boxes on a page.
From an interviewer's perspective though these kinds of ratings are still useful. They just need to be calibrated.
If I were hiring this person it would take less then 10 questions about one language to figure out where her competency is according to my scale and now (assuming she didn't fudge too much) about her competencies with others (some of which I may not know).
Another approach could be to normalize everything against your best skill. So rather than saying "I'm this good at X", you're saying "I'm about half as good at X as I am at Y."
I think the tricky bit would be making your intentions obvious.
I actually took a similar approach on my résumé: I broke my skills up into categories relative to each other rather than vying for some absolute quantification.
For example, what actually quantifies 1/5 of Ruby? And does a 5/5 rating mean you know absolutely everything about it? Is 1/5 of Ruby the same as 1/5 of Python, or soldering, or speaking Icelandic?
There's also no improvement from 5/5, but even a master of their craft will know there is always room for improvement and greater mastery.
That demo has a lot of javascript going on, and she rates that 2/5. I don't think that demo is trivial to implement, and on relative terms I can assume that she's more than just dabbled in Haskell and Python.
We know she's German, so she puts 5/5 in German language, as it's her native tongue. If that was the base, does that mean she's as fluent with Garageband and Logic as she is speaking?
I don't think skills are so easily quantifiable, and I'd much prefer to see a qualitative analysis of those skills. Otherwise, I'm just looking at a meaningless pattern of shaded boxes on a page.