Tip #10: You’re not getting hired for your expertise
Transform your job search with 20 Job Search Tips in 20 Days
This email is part of a series “20 Job Search Tips in 20 Days”. Every day in December, you’ll receive a job search tip for career changers.
Job Search Tip #10: You’re not getting hired for your expertise
This is probably not news. For anyone with 0-3 years of work experience in tech, you’re not getting hired because you are an expert. You are getting hired precisely because of your soft skills such as your ability to learn, communicate well, and collaborate with others.
Often you are hired because you have the baseline knowledge to pass a technical test, plus multiple people in the company advocate for you, during the hiring process. So you don’t have to be smarter or nicer than other people, people who get job offers are the right fit for the role, company, and team. This combination is unique for every person and for every job!
One of my most popular posts on Linkedin is on this topic:
Let’s dive a little deeper to discuss exactly what hiring managers are looking for when they are hiring early career talent who have 0-3 years direct experience in tech.
Ability to learn
Communicate well
Collaborate with others
Prior work experience in a specific industry
Ability to Learn
Remember, your ability to learn is what got you to the job search in the first place. You committed to learn new skills, did a bootcamp, completed projects. This is all proof of your ability to learn.
When you are job searching, you want to approach the job search with the same curiosity that you came to learning a new tech skill.
The more curious you are, the more creative and open you will be in the interviews - which will also help you feel more confident overall!
Communicate
Your ability to communicate will also tie into your ability to learn. When you are curious and open, you tend to be a better communicator because you ask better questions and feel open to sharing your opinion in discussions. Communication is the KEY to showcasing your technical skills, so work on using those communication skills to really get to know someone during interviews. Express interest in the person, not only the company or role.
Collaborate
Collaboration is another skilled, tied into communication, yet is a standalone skill. How well you work with others, how you handle conflict, how you contribute in a team. Most interview questions are asking you about a combination of how you use your technical skills when working in a team setting. Focus on times in your past when you worked on a team or talk about how you navigated creating projects with your bootcamp teammates. Don’t forget on talking about any setbacks or failures, those are important too!
Your experience in a prior industry can help you stand out when interviewing with companies that are creating tech products for someone who that industry (ex. fintech, legaltech).
Prior Work Experience
Your prior work experience can be a selling point for companies. Tech companies want to hire people who understand the tech product they are building. If you’re a Financial Analyst turned SWE who is interviewing with a fintech company, your background in finance will stand out because you have the industry knowledge other candidates might not.
Use your prior industry knowledge to your advantage by identifying companies in industries that will value your experience more than other companies.
Just because you’re moving into the “tech” industry, doesn’t mean your previous industry knowledge goes out the door. Focus on your strengths.
It’s not that your technical skills don’t matter, they do. However your technical skills are sometimes not the focus when you’re looking to break into tech.
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To everyone job searching during the holidays… you got this, keep going 🌟
If you missed them, here are a few tips from last week: