jsync | Java Staffing Specialist

Educate Yourself! Taking Control of Your Career While Working in a Limited Technical Environment

09/13/2006

by Dave Fecak

Several times per week I will speak with a job seeker who has perhaps 50 to 60% of the qualifications for many of the positions we have available at the time, which typically is not enough of the qualifications to make it worthwhile to submit the resume to the client. To see a candidate fall just short of a potential new opportunity is always disappointing, particularly when the candidate possesses the soft skills that most of our clients treasure. More often than not, the reason the candidate does not have more of the skills the client requires is that the candidate’s current employer simply does not use a wide variety of technologies in their software development efforts, so the candidate is essentially at a disadvantage due to the limitations in their own work environment.

Upon telling the candidate that he/she lacks a few of the key skills required by the client, the most common response is something like, “that shouldn’t be a problem for me to learn.” In a non-competitive market that may be good enough, but in today’s environment a hiring company expects new employees to hit the ground running, and someone with only half of the required skills probably needs a bit more support than someone with 75% of those skills. It is virtually impossible to have all of the required or desired skills that a client requests, but those candidates that have the most well rounded technical backgrounds are typically the ones that are chosen.

So you are working for one of the aforementioned companies that offers you exposure to only a very limited set of technologies, and you feel that may be hurting your career. You soon realize that although you can have success at your current company, you are limiting your future prospects for employment by working for a firm that is not using today’s most requested skills. What do you do?

Thankfully there are several options, although some are much better than others:

1 – Get an advanced degree?? This is the one that most candidates tend to think of first when they feel that their skills are stagnating, but unfortunately it may not be the right decision. Getting an advanced degree is certainly something that should be encouraged in general, but in our industry it probably won’t pay dividends for several years if at all.

Universities tend to teach technologies that are not always on the cutting-edge, and the academic experience is often not given the same weight as working in the ‘real world’. A Master’s program in Computer Science or Software Engineering often has a much more theoretical curriculum and is usually based on technologies that were popular a couple years ago. It makes perfect sense – most universities can not change their course offerings with the same agility as a small training center based on the semester system and the time it takes a professor to learn a technology well enough to teach it.

When you figure in the typical cost of an advanced degree as well as the time spent (assuming there is not 100% reimbursement), throwing your budget and work/life balance into a frenzy for a possible payout down the line is a risk that needs to be thoroughly examined.

2 – Take a course or two?? – This is probably a more likely approach for someone with a limited budget (both money and time). Often you can find a course on a specific technology that you feel will enhance your career, and you may even get your employer to pay for it. Before enrolling in any classes, be sure to ask around to find if anyone you know has had experience with that training company – there was a ‘gold rush’ to the technology training industry a few years ago and with any market segment that grows very quickly there will certainly be those of higher and lower quality.

3 – Get certified?? – Although earning a certification by passing a test is by no means an educational experience, the amount of research you may need to do to pass that test is a great tool. It is amazing how many people say that the studying done to get a certification was well worth the time spent and valuable to their career path. The parchment means little, but the time invested to get it can mean a lot.

4 – Reading and writing?? – I recently had a client tell me that he wanted to hire a candidate that ‘lived on TheServerSide.com’ – what he meant was he wanted someone who is constantly looking at new and improved ways of doing things, and interacting with the community to get information. Our clients tell us how much they love candidates who take the time outside of work to read books and web materials on new tech topics, regardless of whether or not the company currently plans on using those new technologies. Often you can find free material on the web (TSS often offers links to free chapters or entire books on their website), and you can usually find publishers that offer discounted books for user groups (Philly JUG members get 30% off O’Reilly titles!). With the amount of material in books, magazines, and on the web, there is really nothing stopping you from getting the information you need to learn.

And if you think clients like candidates that read materials on new topics, you can imagine how much clients love candidates that actually write articles and books. A good way to learn a new technology is to do some reading about it, tinker with it, and then write about your experiences with it. Post the article to perhaps a less traveled website first to see what kind of corrections or suggestions you get, then post it to one of the more popular websites once you edit your content. The amount of research required to write an article will certainly give you familiarity with the topic, and anything you write about that topic will give you some credibility in the minds of the development community (and something to put on the resume as well).

5 – Just do it?? – Without question, this is the most valuable way to learn a new technology and the most useful to your career goals of expanding your skill set. Before ‘just doing it’, you obviously will need a bit of research just to get started.

Academic experience, whether at a university or training center, will only go so far – to have hands on development experience with a tool or language (even in a non-corporate setting) is far more valuable. Choose a few technologies you want to learn, hit the books, and develop an app that you can show to potential clients or employers. Having live and working code as evidence of your knowledge is far more valuable than a piece of paper.

CONCLUSION: Don’t let your employer control your future marketability – take control of your career by expanding your skill set on your own time and reap the dividends!

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