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?"

Comments

Start your own

[Anonymous Coward]

business :)

Re:Start your own

[bonehead]

If you are anything outside of the "norm" in the field, the best advice I can give you comes in two parts:

1.) Be willing to work for a little less than the going rate.

2.) Focus on smaller companies who are less likely to have automated resume screening systems. Wouldn't hurt if the owner of the company had a little gray himself.

The truth is that although it's better than 3 years ago, the job market is still a bitch. Don't give up, and hard as it may be, don't take rejections personally and let them get you down on yourself.

Re:Start your own

[bonehead]

What the fuck are you talking about?

Hate to break it to you junior, but the gray hair comes creeping in LONG before retirement age is getting anywhere near.

Re:Start your own

[Sponge Bath]

No shit. cangrejoinmortal has a simplistic moralizing view of the world that experience will fix, eventually.

Re:Start your own

[Em Adespoton]

3.) Network. You're likely to get your best paying gigs as contractor/consultant via people who know you. One of the things you tend to get along with the accomplishments and gray hairs is a long network of contacts, people you know, etc. Another benefit is that if you revisit people you worked with early in your career, you'll find that many of them are managers now, and have the power to make hiring decisions (including designing a job around your specific capabilities). It doesn't always work -- I once had a job custom designed for me, and then HR stepped in and killed it (due to interdepartmental politics), but these things often work out quite well. As an Old Guy (TM), never try the cold call, or submitting your resume as the first thing you do. Get in via contacts.

Re:Start your own

[bonehead]

That's a matter of genetics, I guess. I spotted my first gray hairs while I was still in college. (Yes, at the "traditional" age to be in college.)

Re:Start your own

[bonehead]

Also, this fantasy that tech workers make so much more than average is bullshit.

Maybe that's true in Silicon Valley for the "chosen few", but there's a lot of tech jobs all over the country that aren't paying the "big bucks". I do what I do because I love it, I enjoy it, and I actually wake up every morning looking forward to going to work. But truth be told, I'm sure there are talented plumbers in my city who make a shitload more than I do.

Tech work is RAPIDLY becoming commoditized. Too many young punks who "think" they know some stuff and are willing to work for cheap are driving salaries down. In the meantime, guys like me who actually *do* know how to do that stuff get stuck training their dumb asses.

Re:Start your own

[CohibaVancouver]

If you make good career decisions, are fiscally responsible and don't have kids, it's pretty easy to have enough money for retirement before the grey hair shows up

It also makes it pretty easy to grow old lonely and alone.

Re:Start your own

[tnk1]

Well not having kids doesn't deprive you of a woman, and doesn't deprive you of friends either.

On the other hand, there is no reason you have to be without children to make some money, and if you are actually old, chances are, any kids are out of the house or on their way out of the house already. That makes you effectively equivalent to being without kids if you are starting now.

Re:Start your own

[korgitser]

I'd go another route:
Be willing to work for a little more than the going rate.
Focus, yes, on the smaller companies, but shoot straight for senior/teamlead positions. Your track record should cover you there. Tell them, you want to gain a level in your career and that your age should help you there.

Re:Start your own

[cayenne8]

Actually, if he is at this age and point in his life, he should by now, have developed a large network of connections in the IT world.

Years of experience should have also given him years of names and people to contact when needing that next gig.

Once you're out in the work world, the next jobs come from who you know...if you're doing it right.

If nothing else, get with a contracting house...they DO value older experienced folks with heavy resume experience.

Re:Start your own

[TrekkieGod]

That's pretty selfish. What about humanity?

What about it? We're not part of an endangered species. If anything, not having kids is doing a favor for humanity. Those of us who want to make a difference do our part to lower the human population to more manageable levels by not having kids, so the species can thrive instead of over-consuming available resources and destroying itself.

Re:Start your own

[camperdave]

Tell them, you want to gain a level in your career and that your age should help you there.

Don't say age. Tell them your experience should help.

Re:Start your own

[dyingtolive]

The problem as I see it becomes that too many of the people who should be passing on their genes aren't, because not having kids enriches one's own life in the aforementioned ways, while too many people who shouldn't be "contributing" to humanity are doing it at breakneck speed.

Re:Start your own

[EricTheRed]

This isn't just in the US either, we have the same problem here in the UK.

Over the years I've seen loads of youngsters who straight out of university think they know everything until they get the sharp shock of reality.

Businesses go for them as they are cheap but it's those of us who have been around for decades that end up cleaning up the mess or attempt to train them.

There are some are so arrogant they don't want to accept they are wrong, they are the worse.

Nb: I'm self taught, didn't do university & still overworked in my mid forties!

Re:Start your own

[slim]

That is if either:

  - You're a natural at (interpersonal) networking.
  - or you took on board the importance of (interpersonal) networking when you were young, and made a special effort to do it.

If you put your head down and did a job, instead of schmoozing, you might not be so lucky.

Re:Start your own

[g253]

Look, obviously the young punks willing to work for cheap and able to write are finding better-paying jobs. So many employers are puzzled that they can never find a decent employee for less than it costs to hire and keep a decent employee. It's not rocket science : if nobody with half a brain wants the job you offer, then you're not paying enough.

Re: Start your own

[Immerman]

The arithmetic mean is certainly what is most commonly meant when referring to "the average" of a group of numbers, but "average" spans the works, including several other types of mean (harmonic, geometric, etc.) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Average

As for an "average Joe" - in pretty much every context I've heard it used it's referring to a concept most analogous to the median - half the people are doing better than him, half are doing worse. Half are more interested in X, half less, etc. Precisely the population midpoint. Certainly if you have drastic things going on in the middle of your distribution it's prone to distortion, but that's rarely the case, and it's pretty much immune to distortions at the extremes, which is where they tend to occur. If you're talking about "most people" the midpoint is far more informative than the lives of the aristocrats or beggars. The arithmetic mean will almost always be skewed upwards in any non-gaussian distribution (such as income), and often quite dramatically. And the mode is rather useless for most layman' purposes, especially since its very heavily dependent on the particular binning limits selected, which speak far more strongly to the biases of the statistician than to the data itself.

Re:Start your own

[metaforest]

Issac Newton was full-on silver-grey before he was out of his twenties, the man didn't need a powdered wig to look 'distinguished'! I was salt&pepper before I was 30. One of the young turks at a startup I signed on with (long gone now) seemed to think I was older than I was at the time and, asked me indiscreetly during a Friday Happy hour if I was going through mid-life crisis because I drove a two-seat sports car. (a decrepit RX-7 [G1], never having been married, I had no use for a 'utility vehicle')
I laughed him off and pointed out that if it was mid-life crisis, I had picked a really crappy penis extension(aka sports car). He was old enough to be embarrassed, but not experienced enough to understand why.

  The day the startup folded... almost a year later (IT market got cold feet after 9/11) the young guys made a point of individually, dropping by my cube as I, and 95% of the staff packed up our personal effects and lined up for exit interviews. They wanted to know if I was angry or disappointed, or even sad that the business had failed. By the time the last of them had dropped by... I was in tears. Not because I was upset about the business failure, but because I was gonna miss these kids. They all had degrees from big-name schools and had their whole careers ahead of them... for me this was just another gig that didn't make it out of the incubator. I think one of the reasons they afforded me that little show of respect of dropping by to say fare-well is because I had shown that, even as a 'grey-beard' I still loved what I was doing, and helping create awesome software, and hardware is a journey not a reward. It also helped that many of them had cut their teeth on the Apple //gs and I had been one of the lead test engineers on the system ROMs. One of the spare labs in the office had been set up to accommodate our various //gs systems.... and we'd basically built an Apple lab complete with one of my old Macintosh IIfx boxes acting as a file share/internet router, running AUX.... one of those little geek exercises that helps cement team bonds. Fun times.

Bring a rifle.

[Anonymous Coward]

Take the HR weenies hostage, and demand an audience with somebody technical.

Re:Bring a rifle.

[Mitchell314]

Don't forget to say the password 'shiboleet'.

for the grey hair part...

[adminstring]

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.

Re:for the grey hair part...

[hedwards]

I suspect the problem is that the application forms that the submitter has to fill out, require certain degrees and get tossed into the trash if those requirements aren't met. And probably by the lowest level HR person at the firm.

One of the things I noticed years back before I gave up on IT was that they wanted very specific requirements to even allow the application to submit. And that was before the most recent economic downturn. It's probably gotten even worse now.

Re:for the grey hair part...

[L4t3r4lu5]

I'm doing a degree now for this exact reason. I'm coming up on 15 years in IT, but I'm still stuck at the bottom of the ladder because everywhere above where I am now wants a degree. They don't even bother saying "Thanks for applying" anymore.

Networking.

[Seumas]

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?

You have to contract / set up a firm

[xtal]

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.

Re:You have to contract / set up a firm

[MozeeToby]

In this situation it's going to be all about who you know. You say you have a long history of successes? Contact the people you worked with and worked for. Someone, somewhere, is hiring and at least some of those people will be in position to push your resume at least past the first layer of defense. Lack of a formal degree will see your resume to circular filing cabinet in record time, unless the HR drone has a reason to believe otherwise.

Re:You have to contract / set up a firm

[wickedskaman]

THIS. Don't let pride get in the way of calling folks even from way back when who have been part of your professional life. Don't assume it's a waste of time.

Personal experience

[Anonymous Coward]

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 this?

[mrscorpio]

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.

Insufficient Data

[hondo77]

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?

Re:Insufficient Data

[eljefe6a]

This, plus: Take a good, hard look at yourself from the employer's viewpoint. Is your resume 10 pages long, etc? Are you networking? Do you have a good LinkedIn profile? Linkedin is how recruiting is done now. Being self-taught only makes a difference if you let it.

Re: Insufficient Data

[dcam]

This doesn't exactly paint you in a goid light. The architect was right. Welcome to functional style programming.

Go into business for yourself

[roc97007]

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.

References

[joe_frisch]

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 not them..

[bsdasym]

..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.

Re:The solution is simple.

[kermidge]

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.

Work for the government

[mendax]

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.

Choose COBOL

[BanteringCTO]

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!

Re:What is your point?

[Austerity Empowers]

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.

Headhunter's secrets

[DeathGrippe]

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.

Re:put down an degree or one on some of pages

[adolf]

Yes, politicians are tantamount to fraud.

Write code!

[Effugas]

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!

Re:What is your point?

[hjf]

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.

CONTACTS! I second that.

[Ungrounded Lightning]

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.)

Why are you applying through normal channels?

[aXis100]

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.

From one self taught old guy to another...

[3seas]

I had to teach myself cause I couldn't find a course on being and old guy.

Forget commoditized

[rsilvergun]

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...

How to win friends and influence people

[peterba]

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.