Ask Slashdot: Getting Hired As a Self-Taught Old Guy? 472
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?"
Start your own (Score:5, Insightful)
business :)
Networking. (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Personal experience (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Go into business for yourself (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Insufficient Data (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:You have to contract / set up a firm (Score:5, Insightful)
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:for the grey hair part... (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
References (Score:4, Insightful)
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.. (Score:4, Insightful)
Re:Start your own (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:What is your point? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Insufficient Data (Score:2, Insightful)
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.
Bullshit.
When I worked at Lockheed Martin, 2 years ago, they had a policy strict hiring/promotion policies about education.
I.E. you could only get so high with an associate degree, a little higher/more stability with a bachelors, and only those with masters degrees were allowed to be architects. It was education over ability. There was one architects in particular that ran around saying stupid shit like, "some objects are data objects, and other objects are function objects but never both". But he had a degree and so he got promoted.
Wasn't all bad though. There was plenty of work to clean up after the architects.
Re:Start your own (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Lie (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Start your own (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
CONTACTS! I second that. (Score:5, Insightful)
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? (Score:5, Insightful)
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.
Re:Start your own (Score:3, Insightful)
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 (Score:2, Insightful)
There are plenty of old conservatives with the same attitude as him. Somehow they didn't get fixed.
Does demeaning worldviews other than your own in off-topic threads improve your own convictions or make you feel better? It might be good for you to take some time to consider why "old conservatives" are so secure in their worldview, even without the need to constantly denegrate other sides.
Re:Start your own (Score:4, Insightful)
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.
Forget commoditized (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Start your own (Score:5, Insightful)
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:Forget commoditized (Score:2, Insightful)
Brother, you just gave me the chills. I'm a 16-year industry vet in the Seattle area who can't find a decent job that lasts longer than a year: And this is after leaving a 7-year FTE position at MS because I didn't want to go to India to train the replacements for my direct reports who were going to be laid off.
Looking at the names on the doors at ALL the big companies will tell you exactly which way the wind is blowing. Tragic.
Re:Start your own (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:2, Insightful)
Also, this fantasy that tech workers make so much more than average is bullshit.
The median household income in the united states is around $50k. That's household income, not personal income.
Tech workers do make much more than average.
Re:Start your own (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Start your own (Score:4, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
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 (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Start your own (Score:4, Insightful)
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.