I used to only do this for townies, but when CAS stories was introduced and legalized starting with some skills the floodgate was opened. Newly created sims may start with up to 12 twelve skill points, with no skill higher than 4. Those skills reflect the sim's backstory and sometimes turned out useless in actual gameplay - like the ex-secretary with Writing, Charisma and Research who started the game working at my junkyard. Her best skills now are Fabrication, Gardening, Logic and still Writing, because she kept this as a hobby.