Having been forced to switch careers during the downturn (2009) and finding opportunity in a very niche job type (IT Consultant) I am having a hard time finding a new job/career that can sustain an existing family as single parent, after experiencing a recent lay-off. My recent job search feedback, both form networking and from interviews, is that that my role as a consultant did not prepare me adequately for a traditional career in the IT field. My recent training, both academic and hands on was completely tailored to make me a very effective IT consultant but lacks lacking the specific extensive experience in one of the typical fields (database, network engineer, cloud etc) or achievement of an industry specific certification. My hope is to somehow leverage my vast technical experience to enter into a career that will find my experience valuable, perhaps something technical, that can provide training. Any and all input would be greatly appreciated.
Answers
Hi Lawrence and thanks for your years of service.
As an unknown entity in any corporation, your resume is your face to that company.
In my experience, most companies never care for versatility -- they want to fill a specific vacancy.
So, including your diverse background in a resume would be fruitless, in my experience.
In your case, then, I would write multiple resumes (what a pain) so that each one would target one and only one specialization that you have experience in.
Of course, I don't have to tell you to always be honest in your resume -- but it is not wrong to spin your experience so that it can be interpreted to revolve around one specialty at a time.
When I interview (I have changed jobs often) I always have with me a bag of anecdotes. When interviewers ask a question, they don't want "yes" or "no" answers -- they want STORIES. They want to hear a brief story (anecdote) about how you solved the sort of problem they suggest in their question.
In your case, you must have as many bags of anecdotes as you have specialties (what a pain) so that you can properly respond to the interview questions.
I realize this may sound simplistic -- but it works like a charm for me.
One final thing -- before I go to any interview, I always Google the company, and find out about its history, its place in the marketplace, its CEO and so on. It helps.
Best wishes in your career goals.
--Paul Trejo, MA
Have you ever considered looking into franchise opportunities as an alternative? When you hear the word "franchise", it is natural to think about retail and restaurant brands. The fact is all industries have opportunities in franchising. One of the fastest growing and most lucrative segments is in business consulting/coaching. If the idea of owning your own business, with a support team, proven marketing support and materials is attractive to you, I would suggest you look into this further. There are literally thousands of options available and it would be my honor to help you whittle that list down to the ones that align with your goals and investment budget. My services are at no cost to you. If it makes sense, feel free to message me to learn more.
Paul Trejo's advice is excellent, and I hope you are following it!
Drew,
Thanks so much for the quick response, I am very grateful for you taking your time out to take a look at my dilemma! If their is one thing I have discovered as a consultant is the value of ones time! I am delighted to find someone else even remotely in this type of role/career.
I would say we provided a mix as well. Essentially we provided complete IT infrastructure (hardware, software and networking) upgrade advice to primarily small and medium size business's (save a handful of large companies). We would then complete the upgrade and provide full ongoing IT support. We would also look at other business processes and see what could be streamlined to make their business function more efficiently. I have managed several projects now independently as well. Admittedly it is not a sustaining income as a sole proprietor at this level.
The fellow who would ultimately hire me to assist him in building an IT consulting business gleaned from several conversations over coffee that my background might make make me perfect candidate for his rather niche business concept. He was correct. He deduced that my experience having been a six sigma quality auditor at my last company and having spearheaded their endeavor at achieving ISO certification and Sarbanes Oxley compliance by setting up and maintaining their quality assurance program. In this capacity I had to observe and consult on with different employees and department heads to glean and document all of our business processes (technical and non) within the company. Find and deploy software to manage and track the various procedures developed and provided matrices to show the performance. Learning the general IT knowledge with my technical (15+ years as a component level electronics technician) background proved fairly easy with online training as well as hands on and combined with my education in Business Administration proved a perfect fit for the job. The only hitch, it turned out, is that the business model is really only sustainable if you consult and carry out very large projects for very large companies. And it would have taken years for me to develop the IT skills needed to be an expert and consult on this scale of infrastructure. At about this time our "umbrella company" which was primarily an Insurance and actuarial based consultancy determined that IT was not a fit for them would get out of IT altogether. The bulk of the clientele were handed off to me as a sole proprietor and my former boss would go on independently to complete maintain the two very large companies that he began to foster as clients himself and garner more (as far as I know).
My greatest challenge I think is my lack of large scale IT knowledge. as well as not having Certs. Having "assisted" on two or three projects at very large companies I quickly realized my lack of IT knowledge at this level. This meant I could not fully manage those clients on my own if that makes sense? I was able to, however, provide value by in observing and documenting a variety of business processes and then "assisting" in the deployment. As I mentioned, now I feel that now as I look for a job I am finding mostly standard IT buckets for which I seem not to fit if that makes sense? I feel as though my skills are of value but I cant figure out where to look and how to market them?
Sorry, i know it is quite long winded but I am finding it tougher to abbreviate when discussing myself versus a project per se.
Thanks again for your time
Lawrence: I think it is difficult to switch between functional and technical consulting in a lot of cases. When you say IT consultant ...are you referring to presales? I just moved from a wholly presales role to a mix of presales and delivery; I'd be glad to chat with you about what I found out in the process.
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