One of the recruiters I spoke with was brutally honest about my prospects. He said "Phil, you have been out of an enterprise level environment for the last 7 years. I know you have excellent experience running a company and have continued to follow technical trends but in this market, there are too many choices for companies to choose from. If a company wants an IT Manager who also has 10 years experience programming and spends his spare time shearing sheep, that's what we find them." I kind of paraphrased his comments a little there.
Where does that leave me. I have three choices. Wait for the occasional position to become available and realize that I will be competing against many others with higher level skills. Take a job at a lower skill level (this is what I had to do to make ends meet these last few months). Retrain in another field. I tried 1 & 2 over the last 9 months while adding additional technical competencies. Not enough to really stand out from the crowd. That leaves retraining.
What can I do that would that would complement the skills and training I have gained over the last 20 years. A friend of mine who is a VP at a large consulting firm mentioned that the biggest area lacking on my resume was programming experience. Another friend at a different consulting firm mentioned a move into project management.
The biggest problem with programming is that I haven't programmed in the last 10 years. Any of the languages that I had any competency with have been overshadowed with stronger languages. It would take me months to reach any sort of competency and experience with any of them. I do agree that I should learn a new language but let's wait till after I have a different position.
Project management is an area to strongly consider. The problem with it is a catch-22 type problem. The positions request certification but in order to get certification you have to have worked in project management. There is a lower level CAPM certification to consider and this is one area under consideration.
I'm considering a third option that would utilize many of my existing skills. The area of technical writing. Yes, it's outside of IT management but it does help to have an excellent level of technical competency to write many of these documents and manuals. My main concern is the fact that I have never written for anyone before and have never worked under a deadline.
We will see how this all plays out. In the meantime, I just need a job to pay the bills.
1 comment:
I think you're awesome. I don't need you to have any practice sheep in the back yard, though.
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