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Ask Slashdot: Getting Hired As a Self-Taught Old Guy?
StonyCreekBare writes "How can an autodidact get past the jobs screening process? I have a long track record of success, despite limited formal education. Despite many accomplishments, published papers, and more, I cannot seem to get past the canned hiring process and actually get before a hiring manager. Traditional hiring processes seem to revolve around the education and degrees one holds, not one's track record and accomplishments. Now as an older tech-worker I seem to encounter a double barrier by being gray-haired as well. All prospective employers seem to see is a gray-haired old guy with no formal degrees. The jobs always seem to go to the younger guys with impressive degrees, despite a total lack of accomplishment. How can an accomplished, if gray-haired, self-educated techie get a foot in the door?"
business :)
Take the HR weenies hostage, and demand an audience with somebody technical.
Get your hair dyed some other natural-looking color, with eyebrows to match. You can always go back to grey once you have the job.
My truck is like a series of tubes.
This is where networking comes in. Cold-calling hiring managers (per se) is partially to weed out people who don't have any "in" to the company, already. That, and maybe die your hair. It sucks, but in a world where everything but your actual work-ethic and capability is secondary to things like youth, height, attractiveness, and diploma, you have to manipulate the game to your favor so you can get your foot in the door.
I also think there tends to be a problem where most people assume that if you're over a certain age and you are not seeking a management position, there must be something wrong with you. After all, if you have put in your years, why would you want to do anything other than manage people, right? . . . Right?
Set up a firm, start networking. If you deliver projects on time and budget then you will soon have more business than you know what to do with. Ultimately this strategy will work out better for you in the long run, but is more challenging to get going.
Generally speaking, if you have real talent, you are a sucker to work for someone else.
..don't panic
My situation is very similar to yours. I haven't been able to get an in-person job at all, just contract work, where I've been moderately successful.
I've had several third interviews for jobs, but they always wind up hiring someone less-qualified but with a degree. I've pretty much given up on the job part, and resigned myself to contract work unless one of my app projects takes off.
How do you know the people getting the jobs have no experience? I am probably not as old and not as experienced as you, but I was getting beat out for entry-level jobs by people with degrees AND experience, sometimes a ridiculous amount of experience for the position and/or pay. Fact is, there are a LOT of people looking for a job or a better job out there, and lack of a degree is an automatic disqualifier for a lot of positions right now due to the number of applicants hiring managers are seeing that have both the desired experience and degree.
Maybe your resume sucks. Maybe you're asking for too much money. Maybe you smell bad. Maybe you don't know as much as a fresh college grad. It's hard to answer this without knowing more about you. Have you ever gotten feedback from headhunters when they review your resume?
I live ze unknown. I love ze unknown. I am ze unknown.
Start a business. You'll enjoy that more than working for someone else anyway. In many states you can start an LLC for a pittance.
Barring that, you need to network. HR departments exist (these days) as a shield between hiring managers and the great unwashed masses. One criteria is that you must have [from
Caveat -- I'm an old guy with lots of experience, mostly self-taught, working in a field not studied in college. (That didn't, in fact, exist when I was in college.) Finding a new job is often an adventure because my college credits were a long time ago in a completely different area. In most cases, I've known someone who knew someone, managed to get the manager's ear, maybe over a beer after hours.
Oliver's law of assumed responsibility: If you're seen fixing it, you will be blamed for breaking it.
You'd probably have better luck with smaller shops. The kind where the owner will probably meet with you personally if you go in and ask for a job in person. Be prepared to compensate for your lack of formal credentials with examples of your work.
Probably varies from place to place, but around here, previous experience trumps education most of the time. Larger places you might need the degree to get passed the automated keyword hunter, but your references from previous employers and what you can say about what you've worked on are what sell you.
And on that note, with that long track record of success, you should also have a large collection of people who know the kind of work you do and would recommend you to others. Get in touch with them and see if they know of anyone looking for someone with your skillset.
People who can refer you to the company they work for are your absolute best bet. Your chances of getting a job are magnitudes higher when someone inside the company, who knows the role and office culture and the position, is saying "this guy is good, he's exactly what we need".
As a fellow grayhair who just recently switched jobs - sell what you got. Sell vision, dedication (You won’t be pulled away for screaming babies), experience, understanding of risk, that you've actually already done what they are trying to do (yes - research!). You are now less the doer and more the vizier. Most importantly, sell confidence, without it you're toast. Good luck
If you have done impressive things over many years, you should have contacts who are aware of your abilities. An inside experienced contact at most companies can get a resume of someone they think is valuable in front of hiring managers.
Unfortunately if you don't have a formal education and don't have anyone who can vouch for you it will be very difficult. Put yourself in the position of a hiring manger with dozens of resumes on their desk - they are looking for an efficient way to cull the resumes down to a manageable number and formal qualifications are an easy (and generally reasonable) method.
..maybe it's you. Speaking as someone with ~20 years real experience and no formal education at all (HS dropout, even), I haven't had any trouble finding a good paying gig (W2 or 1099) since putting the first behind me, let alone getting an interview. So, I say, seek within for the answers. The "young guy" is bringing something to the table you're not, right out of the gate, and it's got nothing to do with his degree or your lack thereof.
Yes, it actually is, it's just that nearly everyone doesn't follow or learn the discipline.
Frankly, I have never met some who calls themselves a software engineer that actually understood engineering.
This is there needs to be a PE equivalent for Software, and it's why it should be a crime to call yourself and engineer without said credentials.
Actual engineer is problem not what you think it is/. It involved disciple, understanding, and the ability to sign off on work and take liability.
And not, not all software gigs require a engineering level discipline, but all of them would benefit from it, in the long term.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
AC's second sentence is on the mark. Work your contacts from previous jobs and tasks, so that you have someone in charge at a new place invite you in.
Else, as has been suggested, either consult or start a business.
Dyeing hair and eyebrows is not so far-fetched. About ten years back when a friend of mine quit his job with a state agency just several years shy of fully-vested retirement to open a consulting partnership with a friend of his, he dyed hair, brows, and mustache for the first four or five years. Once their client list and reputation were built up and they had more work than they could possibly handle, he stopped and let the grey appear, with no problems.
I'm serious. I know a fellow who is not only 71 years old but a convicted felon who is still on federal supervised release and hasn't work in over ten years who recently got a job with the State of California doing some sort of IT work. The state hires older people. Hiring managers aren't blinded by the cost of older people's health insurance because it doesn't come out of their budget. I suspect it's the same with the Federal government.
It's really quite a simple choice: Life, Death, or Los Angeles.
Most of the younger developers want to work with the newer languages, and they want to create rather than maintain. Many companies struggle to find competent COBOL programers, largely for maintenance work. If you are as adept at self-learning as you imply, it should be an easy language to pick up. Check out this article currently posted on /.: http://developers.slashdot.org/story/13/06/25/1659247/join-cobols-next-generation
Good luck!
The world of achievement has always belonged to the optimist. -- J. Harold Wilkins
Put your resume online somewhere, make the page google-search-engine friendly (html5, validating, good structure, no fancy tables or javascript).
There are fewer restrictions there, because no page numbers, etc.
People scour the internet to find talent.
Be open to contract work, even 3 months contract, as these can turn into 6, 12, or full time.
My story: 2010 a recruiter found my resume through google search, called me for position, was 3 months contract, got extended 3 more, then 9 more, then full-time, and I've been full-time at the firm 15 months now.
Looking for a job is a full-time job, which includes research.
Also, if a degree is holding you back, get one online (as cheap as possible and as fast as possible). Showing on your resume that you are continuing your education toward a degree can positively influence the resume-filter guy in HR. (Put something like: Attending University XYZ, aiming for a B.S. in Information Systems.) Also, degree does not have to be absolutely related to your career; it's just needed for HR to check the box marked "4-year diploma".
Take any work you can get. You don't have to put it on your resume (there's no database of jobs people have had out there except in govt) if it's not related to your career.
To start your own business and if you don't have assets to protect, you just do work on invoice basis. File a schedule C when you do your taxes (turbotax etc, have that). Do report your income, and pay your taxes. It will be a hassle to find clients, but you can find them. Everybody has crappy computer systems that break. Establish trusted relationships with a few, and before you know it, by word of mouth, they will advertise for you. A word of warning: do not take on exploratory work. Do only what you have done in the past, successfully. It will be easier on everyone, and your reputation will be: gets the job done well and fast. Exploratory work should be considered part of your ongoing education. Any costs incurred there (books, computers, etc) can become a business cost and be deducted from your schedule C income.
I am not a lawyer, a tax professional, etc. Check local laws. etc.
"Piter, too, is dead."
unfortunately, lying on a job application is a criminal offence - tantamount to fraud.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Lie
The idea is that 4 years in school with a stamp of approval at the end of it, is a sort of pre-verification that the candidate is worth talking to. RIght now in technology you can accept every resume with a B.S. in EE or CS, and you would never run out of resumes.
Of course, I must be lying since we have this massive tech labor shortage.
There is a software engineer PE:
http://ncees.org/about-ncees/news/ncees-introduces-pe-exam-for-software-engineering/
Are you good? how do you know? Have you self-taught yourself actual experience? Be somebody's apprentice and work on contracts for a bit, you need some experience to go with that knowledge.
As a former headhunter, here is my best advice:
1. Avoid headhunters. All they'll do is attach a commission handicap toward hiring you.
2. Find out where there are places nearby where you'd like to work and are qualified.
3. Prepare a killer resume that describes your accomplishments in the terms of the job you could do for those employers.
4. Find out who the hiring managers are, and what positions, if any, are open.
5. Have three copies of your resume available. Walk in the front door cold, and tell the person at the front desk your name and who you are there to see about the job.
6. If the front desk person asks for a resume, give it to them.
Generally, this will get you in front of the hiring authority. While you're talking with that person, aside from telling them all about the great things you can do, ASK FOR THE JOB! "This sounds great! I can start on Monday, would that be too soon?" etc.
Good luck.
Yes, politicians are tantamount to fraud.
Kid-proof tablet..
I was in the exact same position a few years ago. I was 37, balding, and going grey fast with 3 years of a computer science degree from the early 90s. I know what I did was rare, and it sure as hell wasn't easy, but I went back and got a degree in finance. It wasn't my original intent, but it's where I ended up. I was hired by a tier 1 mobile carrier as a project manager in January, and I graduated this May Cum Laude. The reason I was hired was my 20 years of experience in IT. The degree got me in the door. Give yourself some credit. Being old(er) is a good thing when it compares to a lot of kids coming out today. I know...easier said than done.
Seriously. Write some code, publish it on Github. Spin up a single serving web page, does one interesting thing as soon as you arrive. Remember, everyone else with resumes could be pretending, you're actually doing stuff.
For work experience, sign up on freelancing sites like odesk. Take jobs just to do them. Nobody knows how old you are, there. Even if all you can do is sysadmin -- well, admin some cloud services!
No, you're lying because it's common knowledge that, at the end of the day, what really matters is KNOWLEDGE. So, ditch college, learn everything by hacking and you are bound to get the highest spot in a company. Because everyone in college is a rich spoiled kid.
Slashdot people don't waste their precious time with such nonsense as "grades", "exams" or "degrees". And certainly not "certifications". Those are for idiots with a lot of money in their hands. No sir, follow the example of great hackers, hack a bank and go through their front door proving their security is SHIT and everyone there is a complete IDIOT. The bank owner himself will give you the CEO position from where you will be able to order every desktop in the company converted to Linux and open source their business process.
Thankfully in the spanish-speaking world the word Ingeniero (engineer) means a completely different thing. It's a degree, just like Doctor. You can't just call yourself an engineer, nor a company can name you a "doctor". Same thing with "architect".
Best you can call yourself if you don't have a real university degree is a "technician".
Lie, lie, lie. No one checks references. And even if you 1 out of 10 do check, you'll end up getting rejected because they checked only from that one place.
Any guest worker system is indistinguishable from indentured servitude.
I am in much the same boat. My branch of the industry went from garage shops to IPOs to conglomerates. The hiring process went from people-in-the-know to armies-of-PHBs-working by the book. The number of potential employers went from hundreds to a handful. The workforce went from top-notch locals to armies of adequate, semi-adequate, or inadequate H1Bs.
I had been a pioneer and well recognized by other actual techies - even those that had gone on into management or entrepreneurship. But after catching a layoff when the conglomerate deemphasized its new acquisition's function, I went from highly-paid pan-expert to 17 months unemployed due to the same HR-is-a-brick-wall for non-commodity heads effect.
I finally ended up contracting at a long-running garage shop in a niche market, a position found through a contact who had just watched them have a project almost fail for lack of a person with my particular skill set.
Meanwhile I'm finishing the degree via "distance learning" through an accredited institution. By the time the contract runs out I hope to have that checkbox checked. (College is a LOT easier when you don't have the draft board trying to send you to Vietnam and you can do the classes online when you're free and alert, rather than at 8 AM when you're a night person.)
Bantam Dominique roosters crow a four-note song. Once you've heard it as "Happy BIRTHday" you can't NOT hear it that way
"Law and finance can't be offshored."
Law is probably the second least secure field jobwise in the U.S. after architecture, and a lot of legal jobs have been offshored in the past few years.
If you're grey haired, experienced and accomplished, you should also have a friendly network of ex-colleagues and customers who will help you get a job.
Your first job or two you should apply for though normal channels. After you've made some friends in the industry, every other job you should either be getting shortlisted though mates referrals, or headhunted - it's that easy. Employers are screaming out for good employees and the internal referals count heavily compared to unknown randoms.
If you lie in an interview, you know you are working for a fool who hires liars. Who knows who lied even more than you to work there?
You won't find out until there' s real work to be done well and nobody has any idea how to do it.
I'm surprised. First guess is that you've misdiagnosed it being about formal education.
You might have something horribly wrong on the resume. Maybe have a friend look at it and figure out why no one should ever hire that awful person. Then remove the part about how you made the Nazi Party's website 100x faster, or whatever it is. ;-)
Other idea is that people are seeing it and thinking "this guy wants a real job, not our job; there's no way we can afford him." You have to address that in the cover letter, hopefully without throwing away too much money. Think about whom you're approaching. They shouldn't all necessarily get the same spiel.
Good luck, buddy.
As copyright owner of this comment, I authorize everyone to defeat any technological measure which limits access to it.
You have not captured the Zen of the situation. Your fate is to hire and not to be hired. Simply come out with a brilliant and easy to implement plan and get others to do the work. Walking without leaving a trace on the rice paper is not required.
I had to teach myself cause I couldn't find a course on being and old guy.
they don't send H1-B applicant's home after their visas expire. So while there's only suppose to be about 60,000 here there's more like 3 times that. And they want to bump the minimum to 300,000. Try to imagine close to 1 million new tech workers hitting the job market in 3 years...
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Having worked my way up from a Wafer Probe Operator (Semiconductor Industry) to just under a Staff Scientist without a degree I can agree it is getting harder these days. For the most part, as a programmer, not having a degree hasn't held me back too much but there are certain cultures where if you don't have your piece of paper they won't even talk to you. When I was first promoted to be an Engineer my boss said "We all have 98.6 degrees, show me what you can do". I wonder what use a degree I would have received in 1979 would be today. Other than a check on a form.
Read "How to win friends and influence people". The book is older than you and has been studied by many great men. This is a "manual" on human interaction, something us "geeks" can use, to present ourselves in the best light. Are you applying for suitable "high level" jobs? If you are a certified "grey beard", but are applying for entry level positions, then forget it. By definition you are the wrong person. You need to put yourself in the position of the hiring manager and see how your 6-digit salary will actually save them money. Second, most of my auto-didactic friends are consultants who have found a niche: cobol, mainframes, pdp-11/vax, as-400, etc. All based on resume, reputation (i.e. recommendations), and word-of-mouth. Old computing niches aren't sexy, but they are desperately needed and pay the bills. Once you get your first gig, if you present yourself well (see book above), then others follow. I don't know your niche ... but there are hundreds of business out there that are willing to pay thousands of dollars for you to fix their problem.
Not always correct, but if you have no experience at all, then yes.
A degree is useful for getting into entry level jobs. After that, it is mostly networking that does the job for you. I know a few people who don't even have a degree that have senior technical positions. Experience trumps education every time, unless you are talking about academia or research. No one wants a Ph.D. for mere development work. Too expensive. Even a Master's Degree is something of overkill except maybe for certain architect or management roles.
Ageism may play a role, but his real problem is just getting his foot in the door. If all else fails, he may want to get a job where he can transfer himself into an IT role. A non-profit may need help for peanuts in pay, or perhaps a public school system needs a tech. It may not completely fill his needs for salary, but it gives him something very valuable: in-field experience.
Really what he needs is a line item on his resume that says he was a coder/sysadmin/IT person for a couple of years. After that, he can probably secure a contractor gig or two. Once he has that, he's in the business.
At this point, however, I hope he loves this work, because IT is no longer a get-rich quick scheme.
I've found that professional societies are very useful for making contacts, bypassing HR.
I went to my local Linux UG a few times and they were always trading jobs.
The professional society depends on your skill set. You go there and start talking tech.
One of the broadest organizations would be IEEE. What's another one?
I don't know. Maybe other people have different experiences.
Have other people used professional societies to network and get jobs?
No, you're lying because it's common knowledge that, at the end of the day, what really matters is KNOWLEDGE. So, ditch college, learn everything by hacking and you are bound to get the highest spot in a company. Because everyone in college is a rich spoiled kid. Slashdot people don't waste their precious time with such nonsense as "grades", "exams" or "degrees". And certainly not "certifications". Those are for idiots with a lot of money in their hands. No sir, follow the example of great hackers, hack a bank and go through their front door proving their security is SHIT and everyone there is a complete IDIOT. The bank owner himself will give you the CEO position from where you will be able to order every desktop in the company converted to Linux and open source their business process.
I didn't realize that this was sarcasm until I was 3/4 of the way through this, and then looked up to see the "Funny" moderation. Perhaps it's supposed to be both truth and humor?
Sig: I stole this sig.
Emphasize stability if you can, this can make age a plus. Not that age
guarantees stability or youth means not responsible but you are more
likely to be considered in a place looking for stability.
County government,especially smaller counties. They typically run on shoestrings but they
can really appreciate someone who can keep systems running well. Likewise midsize
towns and cities.
If you have some oddball skills, that can be a plus. In fact if you know INGRES, are willing
to live in Seattle and are stable: Drop me a line!
Medical computing often wants someone a little older. Banking will often hire someone older.
Midsized organizations 100-500 can be an especially rich vein, places that have been around
awhile so gray hair isn't unusual and small enough not to automate the initial job search. They
also often have enough work to keep a small team busy.
Surprisingly, these can be research departments at
Universities (yes, they sometimes happily hire people without degrees. Who
better knows a degrees worth for day to day computing? Arguing with the person
with an MS who wants to convert everything to Python is not fun.).
I think it a fair bet there are security companies watching the news
that are going to be more accepting of someone older than they were
a month ago.
Dear smart, grumpy engineers of Slashdot who live elsewhere in the US: here in Silicon Valley it's hard to hire good people.
I am very much trying to hire excellent engineers with experience in search infrastructure/Lucene, recommendation systems, as well as great mobile app developers with experience developing top-tier iOS or Android apps. I will pay well for good talent, offer fair benefits and excellent option package in an early stage startup founded by a guy who has built several successful businesses, including a multi-hundred million dollar company backed by top tier venture firms.
If you can prove to me that you are smart and capable and have relevant experience, I don't care if you have a degree from a top college or not (a degree will affect my baseline expectations, but if you seem smart and competent, I'll give you the opportunity for a phone call to show me how good you are).
If you are a Slashdot regular, that is worth bonus points too (the fewer digits in your UID, the better).
Seriously. If you meet any of the parameters above and think you are a great programmer and would like to come out to the Palo Alto area and work with other top tier people building a product that pushes boundaries in the social space and helps people get more out of their mobile devices, send a resume and cover letter to resumes@delvv.com.
Oh, PS. You "self-taught" morons might think you're so much better because you've contributed to open source, put your free time into researching various libraries frameworks and APIs, but in College, we "learned how to learn". Obviously you people haven't learned how to learn cause you never went to college; the only place you can do that. I learned that in college so it must be true and exclusive to college.
What's that? You maintain an open-source project and help maintain the BSD/Linux kernels and support IT professionals (like me) on online support forums for free? Think that makes you special? HAHA! You don't even have a degree!