How to make my career path more fungible/portable [closed]

Question

I think my career path is in need of a strategic overhaul. The main lesson learned from my latest job search was that the jobs I liked better but was unable to interview for successfully required a very focused skill set in one area while my skills were more diverse without a solid background in any single domain. The biggest reason for that was that I had spend 5 years with the same employer, starting early 2000s, in order to get a green card and they sent me to two relatively unappealing gigs after luring me into the first one, which I did see as a stepping stone and a resume builder. However, I was bound to them after that and couldn't pursue my happiness freely due to immigration constraints.

So currently, the way I would like to grow is to focus on a speciality which will afford me the level of fungibility and portability between different employers and/or clients at a similar degree that plumbers and elecricians have in the field of construction. Some jobs I was in 1-2 years each were "jack of all trades", full stack developer where I had to gain a significant business domain expertise. I want to avoid that in the future by not spending time on situation-specific expertise (e.g. particular work setting specificalities) but focus on being a master of the trade that can be very easily transplanted from one job to the next with a minimal amount of selling myself.

I will also add that I am admittedly a terrible interviewer and I am almost exclusively successful if I am afforded to do coding exercises or to show directly things I have done. I am an INTP type and I am just not very skilled at human interaction. Conversely, I can do anything technical, not just software dev but I have built an entire house alone and taken cars apart and put them together. But I cannot sell anything because I am clueless at human interaction. That has made it very, very difficult for me to interview and convince the interviewer that I can do the job even for jobs that are way below my skill level. Therefore, I am looking to switch into a very specialized, standardized career which sells itself and does not require much communication (my written communication is FAR better than verbal, I am very clumsy at spontaneous interaction).

So even though I have been a developer all my life, I am noticing that every new job is more difficult to interview for due to a lack of specialty. I would not mind switching to be a UNIX admin or DBA if a career like that would afford me easy transplanting between clients. I typically don't have trouble keeping a job but I would feel more comfortable if I knew there are five other places where I could work just in case. I have also considered becoming a licensed electrician (in my area make as much $$ as software developers) but the wage is very low during apprenticeship.

Most of what I have been doing is Java with different frameworks and data intensive applications. However, unlike perhaps 10 years ago, enterprise Java is now so diverse that it is impossible to cover it all and I flunk interviews because they ask framework-specific questions.

So, I could isolate two distinct questions out of the above intro:

1. How do I pick a direction of a very easily portable IT career but also be able to build on top of what I have already and consider my limitations stated above? Are UNIX admin or DBA good choices and are there better ones that perhaps leverage my background in developmemt? I am not opposed to acquiring certifications.

2. How do I overcome my interhuman handicaps in communication and convince an interviewer to hire me into a job that focuses on a specialty which I don't have already (one of the greatest mysteries for me so far)? I am noticing a trend whereby the best development jobs go to people who are not necessarily the best technically but are good at human interaction and selling themselves.

Answer 1

Big Data is a huge growth area with not many people currently qualified for it. There are some Coursera courses you can take and successful completion of them will probably net you some job offers fairly quickly.

Business Intelligence is another one where there are lots of jobs but not really many people who are good at data. Since you have been working in data intensive applications maybe switching over to the data world would bea good fit for you.

Answer 2

I am an INTJ type here, don't let it define you. It is an interesting conversation starter but ultimately it is only slightly more accurate than an astrology reading. Your personality can and will change over time and you can make positive changes to help yourself interact better with others in your career.

I sometimes struggle with personal interaction, however having my therapist help me with understanding, patience, compassion and good listening skills have helped me tremendously in how I deal with others in both my personal and professional life. Often I find myself over analyzing situations that do not call for it. Being a software engineer my natural inclination is to dig to the lowest level for diagnosis, but that just doesn't work with people. When you start to cut at the low level problems going on with a human being then you are entering into an emotional minefield.

Train yourself to turn off your "work" mind and instead focus on listening and being in the moment. Never assume you know what somebody is really telling you. Be confident in yourself when engaging in conversation. Try to imagine if you were in their situation, what would their desires or motivations be?

What does this person want from me? Does this person genuinely like me and want to be friends with me or do they just want something specific from me? These are all questions you should ask yourself when determining if the professional relationship you are about to enter will be mutually beneficial. This is an important first step in the interview process.

Secondly, try to form a macro career wide evaluation of where you are at currently in your career, where you want to be in the next month, the next year, the next 5 years, and the next decade. At each of these milestones set a short/long term goal for yourself that makes sense with your predictions on your abilities, your personal life goals, the career path in general, and the economy as a whole. With two scoops of planning you only need to add a dash of luck.

Thirdly, drop your ego and call out yourself for your own inherent weaknesses. It sounds like you are mostly there. Then applaud your natural stengths and decide how you can put yourself in situations that challenge your weaknesses. We don't become better people by doubling down on our strengths, we become better people by constantly challenging ourselves by willfully engaging in activities and challenges we would struggle with.

• Go to the company Christmas party and start talking to people you don't know. Initiating a conversation is easy when you ask questions and at the very least feign interest.
• Find people who are important or well connected at social functions and just start talking to them. Talk to them as if you are equals and be confident and they will remember your name.
• Send a message every once in a while to old colleagues on LinkedIn, ask them where they are working, what they are doing, how they like it. If you know you are going to be in town during lunch on a weekday then ask if they want to grab lunch to catch up. The next thing you know they are telling you that they are really happy at their current job and they really need a good developer like you.
• Look if your home town has any conferences or technical events being sponsored and if there is a local tech center then attempt to sign up. Not only does it look good on a resume, it allows you to interact with other professionals, meet CTO's and at the very least you can learn new things at some interesting lectures or presentations.

This kind of networking can sometimes lead you to some really awesome backup plans. I reconnected with an old boss at a free local event about Challenges in Agile and have an open invitation to come back. I also have two other backup plans with old LinkedIn colleagues after going out to lunch or grabbing drinks when they were downtown.

Finally, recruiters should be a last resort, because only boring, desperate or abusive sweat shops resort primarily to recruiters for their hiring needs. Word of mouth and networking is a far superior way to land an amazing job.

Answer 3

Specialist vs Generalist career path is always a tough call to make; its often linked to the size of companies that you like working for, as well as the location.

Smaller companies tend to need more generalist skills, by and large, and have less drivers in terms of work types/loads to allow for or encourage specialisation. They can also allow for less career progression.

On the other hand smaller companies can often be more flexible regarding working arangements and different social/communication styles, rather than trying to "box" people into the corporate culture.

Where I am (New Zealand) we have a small number of large comapanies, and a very large number of small ones. As a result, generalists have portable careers, and specialists do not. In places that have a richer company ecosystem, specialists will have more choices than generalists.

So, I'd suggest thinking about the types of companies you prefer to work in, and/or the location(s) where you would like to be as at least part of your process, as these things can have a major impact on how happy you are.

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Communication style is an important consideration for me when hiring, especially developers. My focus is on the productivity of the team as a whole, and so I have learned to take that into account along side hard-core technical expertise.

I run a small team, with an Agile/Scrum framework; one of the key principals of Agile is "individuals and interactions over processes and tools." When my team is in conflict (even in a passive/aggressive sense) they are not productive.

For me, the key things are that anyone I hire into more senior role is:

• aware of their own communication style
• understands the limitations of their style when under stress
• knows what makes them stressed, and how to manage their stress effectively
• understand the communication styles of others
• can adapt their communication style, when needed
• has the ability to learn and grow
• doesn't just want a job, but wants to work with my team

So - while it is excellent that you know your MBTI-type as a starting point, I'd suggest that expanding your knowledge of your own communication strengths/weaknesses as well as that of others is essential.

I've interviewed some people who just "hide" behind their MBTI-type as a shield or badge, and expect the world to adapt to them, which isn't what I'm looking for.

It is also worth looking at some other models - I found the Process Communication Model (PCM) much more useful, as it deals with communication in the workplace, how this fails when people are stressed, and how our stressed communications can move us further from our goals.

Finally, I'll always chose to hire someone who has spent time and energy investigating my company, products, clients and market, than someone who has not.

Answer 4

1. I'd be tempted to consider what are the areas you enjoy working and see how you can find a way into a company that could really use that skill set. If you love analyzing data, then possibly becoming a data analyst is an idea. The key here is that it is quite likely for tools to shift as new technologies come around but knowing what kind of work suits you well is going to be the big deal. I could imagine you being the person that finds various statistical pieces within a pile of data. Play to your strengths would be another way to word this.

2. As for human interaction, I'd probably suggest reading books like "How to Win Friends and Influence People" by Dale Carnegie and take that studious analytical mind you have and put it to work in studying people. There may also be something to be said for consulting doctors to see if there are medical conditions you have that make some social interactions harder than others. The key for getting a job where it is in something you don't know is that the employer is often told of how this will be handled. If someone can quickly pick up a new technology and deliver awesome results, that is usually good enough to at least get a probationary period. The key then becomes delivering on the next part.