If you are like me, you spent some time in your twenties jumping from job to job, and then found “the job” where you decided to settle in and hang out for a while. If you have been at your current job for more than five years, this article is for you.
While this article can apply to any line of work, my experience is in IT, so that’s my focus. What I have learned is, there’s no “career counselor in the sky” who is going to help you get the skills you need to stay employed. You can’t count on your employer to pay for classes, and you can’t count on anyone to let you know what’s going to be the industry standard in the next five to ten years.
What does this mean? This means you have to actively manage your career and your skills. Aw, man! I know. It’s a pain. But if you are considering taking a break from actively managing your IT career, just remember one word: COBOL.
While this ’50s-era programming language is still used today, it symbolizes the way a seemingly omnipresent technology can be in demand one moment and out of fashion the next.
What happened to me? I worked at one company for fifteen years, and had many different roles — system administrator, webmaster, network manager, team lead. In the end, I was laid off and left with skills that were not too attractive to employers as they once were.
What should I have done? A few things. First, I should have kept track of what skills employers are looking for, and getting trained in those skills on my own time and my own dime. I thought that because I was really good at what I did, that was enough. Wrong-O. After getting over the shock of being laid off, I took out my annual reviews where I listed all the things I had done each year, and then compared that to what I saw in listings on Dice.com and Monster.com What a wake-up-call.
Next, I should have been maintaining a network of contacts outside of my employer. I did a half-hearted job of this and did not have a strong network of people who could help me find my next job when I needed it. I ended up working with recruiters and while that worked for me, it took me much longer to find the right recruiter than it would have if I had had someone to refer me to them.
Last, I should have been looking outside my company for my next job long before I started my job search. I knew things were winding down, but I still waited to try to find a job until a point about a year before I was laid off. It just so happened that the very time I started looking for jobs was the beginning of the massive waves of layoffs during the recession, so score one for my impeccable timing.
Here are some things I am doing today.
- Schedule time to keep up with industry trends
If you want to avoid being overrun by shifting technologies, you need to keep up with news. Spend some time reading about trends in your line of business, and about trends in your line of work. I subscribe to newsletters from Microsoft (since I do a lot of work on Windows) as well as Sun, EC Council, eWeek and c|net. Keeping in touch with trends in your line of business helps you know what’s coming. Compare what you read in the press with what skills are listed in current job openings.
- Lateral moves are not bad moves
If you want to stay at your current employer and there’s a way to move to another department or division, that’s a great way to get some on the job training. I used this strategy several times in my career to get out of a position that was not challenging, while getting experience that would be valuable later on. These days, I am still doing technical work, but I’m also doing project manager and team lead work.
- Bite the bullet and pay for your own training.
Unless you’re looking to move into an entirely different career (and start over from zero), avoid training yourself in something entirely new. It’s more efficient to build on what you already know — for example, if you are a data base analyst, learning java or c++ so you can code stored procedures is a great way to extend your skills. Again, look at Dice and Monster and see what skills are listed in current job openings. That’s your clue when thinking about what training to sign up for. I like to keep an eye on the offerings at the local community college — the price is right and the time investment is small. I was lucky to take a c++ class taught by one of the people who wrote the language, and now is teaching the language in her retirement.
- Spin interviews the right way.
I emphasized my participation in beta programs (Windows 7, anyone?) and the breadth of my knowledge. When someone asked me why I stayed at my last job for such a long time, I told them that the work was challenging, and because technology kept changing, it was like having a new job every year, without having to start over at a new company. I told them how I made a difference for my former employer, by saving money, eliminating outages, etc.
- Your resume is not cast in stone.
Instead of a chronological resume, try writing an experience resume. This type of resume documents the value you brought to former employers — projects completed, deadlines met, budgets managed, costs saved — rather than the particular skills you used to accomplish those goals. You can include your skills, of course; they’re part of your history in the industry. But don’t present them in such a way as to indicate they’re the reason you should be hired.
