While looking for a job via agencies some time ago, I kept having questions from the recuitment agents or in the application forms like:How many years of experience do you have in:OracleASP.NETJ2EE etc etc etc....At first I answered faithfully... 5yrs, 7yrs, 2 yrs, none, few months etc etc.. Then I thought; I can be doing something shallow for 7 years and not being competent at it simply because I am just doing a minor support for a legacy system running SQL2000 which requires 10 days of my time for the past 7 years. Eventualy I declined to answers such questions.I wonder why do they ask these questions anymore. Anyone who just graduated with a computer science can claim 3 to 4 years experience in anything they 'touched' in the cirriculum, which to me can be equivalent to zero or 10 years depending how you look at it.It might hold true decades ago where programmers and IT skills are of very different nature. I might be wrong but I really doubt 'time' or 'years' are a good gauge of competency or experience anymore.Any opinion/rebuttal are welcome!
How do you quantify competency in terms of time (years)?
resume;skills
I agree, this measure of competence is meaningless.  However, I am guessing that most recruiters do not know that.  They simply try to match your resume to the job description as best they can.  If the job ad says 10 years of experience with Oracle, then your resume may be rejected if it only lists 5 years, even if in those 5 years you have become an expert.  My advice is to answer these questions the way you did initially, to get past the initial resume filter.  At the same time, look carefully at the job description yourself, and try to gauge if it is really a good match for your skills. 