
Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life? - innomansland
Tldr; I&#x27;m an architect (in a niche industry) trying to get a job in another industry but find myself constantly rejected for either having not enough experience for a similar architect&#x2F;lead role or being overqualified for a lower role (i.e. dev, support, etc).<p>I&#x27;ve been in the telco industry for 12 years where I started as a systems tester, became a support engineer, got into a lead role for a team of support engineers (i built the team from scratch at a startup!) and eventually ended up as an architect for a vendor (think Cisco) where I do pre-sales, architecture design and lead the onshore&#x2F;offshore teams to deliver client projects.<p>Early last year, I noticed a big shift in my industry to Managed Services and knew that it is a space I need to get myself involved in if I were to stay relevant for the next few years. Unfortunately, the company I am with is neither in this space nor have any plans in the future to be in it hence I started to look around for jobs at other companies in this space. After 3 months in, I&#x27;m now feeling utterly perplexed.<p>I tried applying for lead&#x2F;architect roles and was rejected (without even going to the interview stage) being told that I don&#x27;t have enough experience or expertise. Fair point I guess since I&#x27;m in a niche industry thus I started looking at roles that allow me to start at the bottom (i.e. dev, support&#x2F;operations, customer success). Even then, I keep getting rejected with the common trope that I don&#x27;t have enough experience or I am either overqualified and&#x2F;or will not be a good fit for the team!<p>I asked my professional network for some inputs on the matter and I&#x27;ve been told that I&#x27;m in an age group (30-40) where companies are not that keen to hire cause I&#x27;m considered too old (ageism). Is this possible? I&#x27;m barely in my early 30s so I find that very strange cause I don&#x27;t consider myself old at all.<p>So, have any of you ever been in the same situation and do you have any advice on how should I overcome this?
======
fecak
This could be a number of things. For context, I've been in recruiting for ~20
years (mostly software startups) and I also write resumes and consult/coach
job seekers on a number of topics.

Getting rejected without getting to the interview stage could be for several
reasons.

Ageism - not all that likely in your early 30s, depending on your audience.

Resume - if your resume doesn't convey your background well enough for the job
you applied for, obviously nobody is going to interview you. If your resume is
too bulky, nobody is even going to read (or skim) it. If you'd like it looked
at by a professional, I'm easy to find.

Overqualified/not a fit is often code for something else. It's much easier to
tell a candidate "you're overqualified" (i.e. our work is below you) because
that is flattering. It's much harder to tell someone "the team genuinely
didn't like you", as that is not only insulting to some people but also may
cause you to ask follow-up questions. Tell someone they're overqualified and
it's hard to follow-up - tell someone they "aren't a fit" and they don't
usually ask "why?", because it's rather ambiguous.

Sometimes overqualified means "paid above what we can afford".

You mention twice you're in a niche industry, so I am guessing it's pretty
niche. Your problem is likely a marketing issue. How do we package your
background in order to make it attractive to a wider audience? What are the
elements of your background that we can make more 'universal' to people out of
your industry? Does your resume speak too much to the people in your industry,
and does it assume that readers will understand some of the terms and acronyms
that may not be part of the wider tech lexicon?

Could be tons of things.

~~~
innomansland
hey dave, really awesome feedback! I couldn't thank you enough.

I actually agree on most points, especially on the ageism bit considering I am
not exactly old. It is been my sneakiest feeling that it _is_ my resume and/or
cover letter.

I saw in your profile that this is an area of expertise. Will it be ok if I
engage you for some help? I will send an email via my personal account later
in the day if it's fine with you.

~~~
fecak
My email is in my profile, feel free to send me what you've got and I'll take
a look (you may not need resume help at all, so don't order anything).

~~~
navalsaini
unsolicited - I mailed you my CV too.

------
mikekchar
If you were in the same industry (potentially the same company) for 12 years,
you may be getting tagged with a bit of a "career employee" stigma. I'm 49 now
and took 5 years out between the ages of 39-44 to teach English in Japan. I'm
back in the industry now. It took me about a month to get a job when I came
back.

The key is really flexibility. If you have a a very narrow focus, you will
have difficulty getting work. You need to be able to take on anything. In my
career, I've worked in health care, Windows productivity apps, telecom and now
I'm doing business systems/web development.

There is absolutely nothing wrong being a pre-sales guy. There is tons of work
in that area. But if you try to stay in a particular technology area, you may
find that there just isn't much work. You need to show that you can branch out
and be productive in whatever a company needs you to do.

For me, having a portfolio and a solid side project helped a lot. If you are
working now, I recommend spending the next year taking 8-10 hours a weeks to
build a good portfolio that show-cases what you can do. A side project is
fine, or several projects, or concentrate on writing blog posts -- whatever
you think will be able to sell your skills in the future.

Also, take time to go to meetups, coding dojos, etc. Again, if you spend one
day a week for the next year in these kinds of activities, you will find that
you will be well plugged in to the local scene.

And yes... I realise that this is pretty difficult when you want to also have
a life outside of work. But it will pay considerable dividends for your
career.

~~~
innomansland
This is gold! Can't thank you enough for your input.

Just as a side note, while my professional life is very "narrow", I have been
doing stuff on the side! I own 3 dropshipping sites (WooCommerce & Shopify)
and 2 pseudo-SaaS sites (one MEAN stack and the other Meteor.JS). I started
these projects last year just so that I can get my hands dirty in the latest
web technologies (last time i made a full fledged website, I was using LAMP
and/or Perl!) and also, hopefully, generate some side income for myself (my FI
goals is a story for another day).

Anyway, I did include these projects in some of my applications where
appropriate but it seems to be ignored. There was another Ask HN thread on
this particular topic [1] and it seems that side projects are generally
ignored?

You did raise an interesting point on meetups, coding dojos, conferences, etc
which will provide an avenue for me to meet people to hopefully build a
network outside of my current profession. There is one thing I am absolutely
confident with is talking to people! I love being in customer support. :)

[1]
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13463105](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13463105)

~~~
whack
Off topic but I had the same experience as well. I had a side project which
was twice as challenging and impressive as anything I had developed in my 9-5
job. But for some reason, interviewers only ever wanted to know what I did
9-5. I never did figure out why. My best guess is that they figure it can't
really be all that great if no one paid you for it.

~~~
mikekchar
I've heard other people say the same thing... It's interesting. My projects
have definitely got me interviews, but I admit that it has generally happened
when I met someone at another event. You get to talking about what you've been
working on and I just pull out my laptop and show them. So maybe that's the
difference. I know that when I've been hiring, I _always_ look at people's
side projects. If they have a nice project I might not even bother looking at
their CV. I might be strange, though...

------
murrayb
I am in my late forties and on my third career pivot. My progression was from
electronics technician to unix system administrator to project manager with
some short stints in other occupations between "real jobs" \- I worked as a
high school cleaner for a while and as a grave digger. Last pivot (to PM) was
just over 5 years ago. I wouldn't rule a fourth (or more!) pivot out, though
it is more likely to involve going from employee to self employed/business
owner rather than a different type of salaried position. You can succeed and
do well at anything at any age if you are willing to work at it. And by work
at it I mean in company time and in your own.

I recommend: only do stuff you are interested in any-way and only work with
people/companies who are fun and worthwhile.

Good luck!

~~~
rafaeladel
> My progression was from electronics technician to unix system administrator
> to project manager with some short stints in other occupations between "real
> jobs" \- I worked as a high school cleaner for a while and as a grave
> digger.

I take my hat off to you, sir.

------
zeptomu
So if they tell you you are too old in your early 30s/40s/50s/etc. their
hiring policy is fucked up in the first place, so do not worry about that, as
you do not want to work for such a company anyway.

My advice is to think about the $domain (news, social-media, medical devices,
bioinformatics, vision, gaming, earth-observation, automobile, chemistry,
education, ...) you would like to work in and the $activity (software
development, software testing, marketing, sales, support, devops, technical
documentation, talking-with-humans, teaching, ...) you would like to spend
most of your work time onto.

If you have clear answers to these questions it might be simpler to find
potential work employees and companies and you can also make a more
specialized cold-email application.

~~~
innomansland
Just to be clear, I was never told that I am "too old" but simply wasn't a
"culture fit". Note that particular reason was given probably 1 out of every
10 times and the other 9 times, it is usually along the lines of "we did not
find you a good fit for the role".

Funny enough, I do have a particular industry (actually two) that I am
extremely interested in - FinTech and Cloud Computing/Hosting. Neither which I
have any commercial experiences in and only ever dabbled on my own free time.

And yes, I have tried cold emailing companies that I am interested in but no
dice. :(

Thanks for your reply though! Did get me thinking.

~~~
zeptomu
> Funny enough, I do have a particular industry (actually two) that I am
> extremely interested in and that is fintech and cloud hosting.

Fintech and cloud hosting are very broad terms, but assuming you like the
domain of financial tech, the question remains what you would like to spend
your time on: Programming? Writing market analysis reports? Talking to
customers?

~~~
abpavel
wow... With that eloquence I can't imagine you looking for a job, but, please,
if you would ever consider a startup as your future challenge, with highly
scalable business model with target of 200x on the current stock option plan
price, interesting technical NODE.JS/ArangoDB scalability challenges, solving
worldwide network infrastructure stability, with a good salary and 30 days
paid vacation in Prague, CZ, please, do let me know at pavel at ipfabric dot
io.

~~~
innomansland
Hey Pavel, not sure if you reply was for zeptomu or myself but i just checked
out ipfabric and it looks really interesting! I hope it is ok if I send you an
email about this?

------
soneca
I am at a similar position but have not yet to started to actually look for a
job. I am a 37 yo marketing guy and now I am learning to code to become a
software developer (web). My approach is to take some time to learn the
basics, create some projects that a potential future employee would recognize
as demonstrative of my hard skills and then start looking.

When you talk about software development, this path is obvious, you can't do
anything if you don't code. But even when there is no obvious hard skill that
you can learn, I think you should try doing this way. Study, practice and
create a portfolio of projects that demonstrate you are really knowledgeable
about the topic. Don't expect any potential employer to trust that your skills
are transferable and the new skills you will learn "on the job". Try to be as
ready as possible to perform at the new role, not be hired as a promise.

Also, I don't believe 3 months is that long time to be discouraged and draw
conclusions about why you are unemployable. Keep trying to check if that is
actually the reality.

That said, I don't discard ageism or other reasons not related to performance
to influence all the dismissions. It is possibly (probably?) part of the
reason, but one you can't control. Except having some thoughtful arguments on
why your age shouldn't be a problem, maybe even an advantage.

Good luck!

~~~
mxuribe
This is interesting, in my almost 20 year career, I took the opposite
approach: started out as a web dev. ("coder"), then moved to
marketing...Actually it was as follows: web dev. > tech lead > project mgr >
product mgr.

It is weird for me though; whenever I am in interviews, and the interviewer
finds out my past, their eyes light up (because I can straddle both the tech
and non-tech/business/marketing sides), and always get excited about my
skillset...However, on paper, people eyes don't light up...Its like recruiters
and the HR filters want __specialists __(pigeon-holed into the exact job
duties without any deviation what so ever) at least per so many __job
descriptions __that I have seen...But then when you are in an interview with
the hiring manager, what they actually, really want are __generalists who can
have at least one specialty __in whatever specific role they need. I 'v gone
on enough interviews in my time, and while maybe not 100%, this scenario plays
out well over 90% of the time. Maybe its my resume, but it seems so odd; there
are roles out there not being filled, but plenty of people who can likely
satisfy them...Again, it could be my resume, but it seems the candidates know
what they want or what they can do, and the hiring manager knows what they
need...but the folks in the middle just can't get the relevant parties to meet
each other...I wonder if the initial vetting process for hiring is broken
nowadays...?

~~~
soneca
Thanks, I will try to have it in mind when starting to actively pursue a job.

Actually, a possible desirable outcome is to become a Product Manager. To get
the really interesting jobs with this role, I felt that I needed to have
practical knowledge of software development.

Any tips on how to direct my career toward that path?

~~~
mxuribe
I've only ever worked for "conventional" large, multi-national non-software
type corporations, so can't help with smaller orgs., or startups, or software
companies...so my notes should be taken in that context...

That being said, within non-startups and non-software companies, any folks in
any organization who have any inkling of software dev. (or any tech knowledge)
are usually respected...so you will want to highlight that. Not necessarily
that you CAN CODE...because the orgs specifically hire devs for that. Simply
that business/marketing folks believe you can act as a translator, BS
detector, etc.

For example, technology to this day is still dark magic for many people...So
much so that whenever a dev. or digital agency or freelancer/consultant gives
project/product stakeholders a development estimate - e.g. the platform will
be deployed in 3 months, etc. - stakeholders have no expertise to call BS on
that estimate, or wherewithall to pose questions about it. Your exposure to
the desires/wants/needs of the business/marketing side, and your exposure to
deeper tech than the typical person will uniquely position you to become an
advisor to the higher ups. Most higher ups will respect you, a small
percentage will abuse that...but with this dual-expertise, its straight-
forward to bounce to other jobs.

My overall recommendation:

* Gain tech experience, whether that's dev./coding or system admin, or even just a general survey/overall understanding of "how stuff gets done".

* Continue to improve your communication skills...your value will be shown when you can act as the translator between the "techs" and the "non-techs". The good techs will learn to appreciate that they can speak with and through you, too.

* Highlight the heck out of the above sets of skills. That could be with S.T.A.R.-type bullets/notes on your resume, or through side projects, etc.

I hope that helps!

Good luck...And you can always reach out to me for networking (bam! This is
another skill, that i admittedly don't do enough of! ;-)

~~~
soneca
Thanks! It helped a lot already! Opened my eyes to the potential of doing that
on non-software companies. I was indeed only considering startup/software
companies.

------
thwd
> So, have any of you ever been in the same situation and do you have any
> advice on how should I overcome this?

I haven't, but a good friend had a _very_ similar experience. He worked in
telco, stayed at the same company for almost 20 years and then wanted to move
on.

 _The problem wasn 't him, it was the company he worked for_. They had (still
have) a reputation for being bad on the technical side, using age old
technology and an even older management style, never updating anything to
contemporary standards. Sub-par products.

Potential employers didn't want him because they were afraid he was
representative of his old companies' culture. Half his resume was just the
different positions he filled at that one company.

The solution he eventually found was to dissociate himself from the company as
much as possible on paper. He also picked up 2 modern technologies that he had
never used and mentioned them in the applications, as a form of showing he was
ready to learn new stuff. It worked.

------
ysr23
Yes. I had a lot of problems. In my late 30s, I worked at a large
multinational for 10 years doing... some kind of middlemanagement sharepoint
stuff that makes my brain fall asleep just thinking about it. For about the
last 4 years i _knew_ i had to get out, but never did.

Eventually redundancy was offered and i went for it, all eager to throw myself
far away from microsoft vista, sharepoint and balanced scorecards into the
brave new ubuntu/os-x, ruby, agile world.

I worked on side projects, i built stuff, i hosted on heroku, i went to meet-
ups, i got mentored, i did all the stuff... except get a job. I went to
interview after interview (where i did actually get an interview). I got short
term contracts and held on until i was thrown out - what i realise now that i
didn't realise then was my confidence was shot. I was dwindling savings,
keeping a brave face throwing myself into everything but the constant
rejection was killing me, i just never realised it.

One day a doctor friend mentioned that they needed 'an IT guy' in their
clinic, with nothing else going i submitted the 42875th iteration of my cv. I
had no idea what the job would entail when i went for it, it turned out that
they had no idea what they wanted, but part of the job was making sure that
'PC LOAD LETTER' doesn't stop them from printing letters, but the interesting
part was that they had to submit governmental reports on patient demographics
and results - this was the interesting bit (for me).

So i took the job (awful, awful pay in the NHS it was about 13K (gbp) but it
just about broke me even... although possibly not after childcare). But
learned R and started rewriting excel macros and dismantling legacy access
databases (where applicable, some were perfectly good) and off loading heavy
lifting tasks to R - it was a tremendous expereience. The clinic was very
happy with my work (as well as the data stuff i would come in weekends to help
fix computers). But the most important thing was i LOVED my work, and so my
confidence was back.

This was the single most important thing, i loved my job, i loved getting
clinic computers working in an underfunded clinic, i loved helping management
identify trends in their clinics. And i came home from work, broke, but very
happy. And that was the key to getting my confidence back.

I've since moved, i'm in my 40s still very happy working as a data engineer
but the reason i write this is perhaps there is industry bias, perhaps there
are people looking at you and thinking 'too old' \- but perhaps there are
people looking at you thinking you lack confidence. Are there perhaps any
places that NEED someone like you? where you could find a fit?

~~~
innomansland
Interesting (and very uplifting) story! I love this bit:

> i submitted the 42875th iteration of my cv

I have to say this, I chuckled loudly at that cause I think i am at the low
hundreds at this point!

That confidence thingy is a very interesting perspective. I _think_ i am
confident with myself but it probably just applies to my current industry and
it is possible that I do not come across that when I apply for jobs outside of
my forte and industry. I do note that with the constant rejections, I am
noticing more and more that I am feeling dejected.

------
arethuza
" pre-sales, architecture design and lead the onshore/offshore teams to
deliver client projects"

Usually senior technical people who can do pre-sales and lead projects as a
"safe pair of hands" are in demand. Smaller companies are usually _always_
recruiting people for those roles - I suspect you are getting filtered by
clueless HR people for not having the the right buzzwords.

Have you thought about maybe paying for some training courses - the content of
the courses might be dubious but it might get you the right branding?

~~~
innomansland
This actually crossed my mind! I worked with these guy and he was recently
"fired" and straight off in 2 weeks, he found a job in another industry. I was
curious why and took a look quickly at his LinkedIn profile and wow, every
cliche buzzword you can imagine is on his profile.

My profile is fairly straight forward plus I just can't bullshit the way he
did it.

------
freddealmeida
I've made a few career changes so maybe some insight. I've went from developer
to creative producer to enterprise architect to now AI. For the most part they
wont hire you because they don't believe your skills transfer. So to get the
job you want you need to do the job. The best way to do this is to talk,
network, share, speak, code in the new industry you want to enter.

Agism, Techism, all the ism's are really an answer to the question: Can you do
the job? You need to answer this sufficiently well. I'm sure you can.

As an aside, I started my own AI firm in 2014 because there were no firms
doing it.

~~~
pinouchon
Just curious, what is your AI firm?

------
chx
I am now preparing for a small-ish pivot. For the last 12 or years I have been
a Drupal / PHP consultant, architected a few very large sites, including one
at the time being in the Quantcast Top 100. I am now trying to branch out to
Elixir or Go and can't really find a part time job doing either. I think this
would be necessary to build up some experience before completely jumping the
Drupal ship.

I am 42.

~~~
sundvor
Stay at it, get as much learning in as you can. E.g. do a very simple project
that you can expose on github, publish to a cloud server somewhere .. this
will let you show them what you can do. Perhaps also look at supporting stacks
like Angular1/2, at least down here the demand is through the roof for them.

I went from Coldfusion/Php for decades to C# / Asp.net after redundancy and it
was not easy. Got there in the end though, but I was fairly frustrated for a
while.

I'm 43 / straight / white male with a child. Fwiw, I regret not spending more
time on my physical fitness during my time off, but I'm back at it now. Just a
gut feel (no pun intended), but I reckon fitness could become a factor in
interviews; it certainly helps with sustaining focus though.

~~~
SyneRyder
> I reckon fitness could become a factor in interviews

Interesting. Another HN post a while ago mentioned they fought any ageism by
being physically fitter than those younger than them - racing the younger ones
up the stairs of the building without breaking a sweat.

Actually, here's the blog post, On Getting Old(er) In Tech by Don Denoncourt:
[http://corgibytes.com/blog/2016/12/06/getting-old-er-in-
tech...](http://corgibytes.com/blog/2016/12/06/getting-old-er-in-tech/)

"A year or so ago, I was attending a two-week training session with about a
dozen 20- or 30-something developers. The training was on the 22nd floor and,
every day after we came back from group lunches, I’d always take the stairs.
The first day or two, one or two of the kids would join me, but I got no
repeats. It’s pretty hard to be considered a has-been when they can’t keep up
with you."

~~~
mxuribe
I remember this post, and thoroughly enjoyed it, especially that part about
racing the younger ones up the stairs...Basically beating them young ones at
"their own game". ;-)

------
strongai
Hey, you're not old! Really. I'm 57. At a guess, if you're experiencing
'ageism' \- this is really a proxy for an employer's suspicion that you're no
longer as biddable as early-career folks who can be persuaded to work 12 hours
a day. It's their loss.

~~~
innomansland
Haha I definitely not think myself as old! I think antiquated will be a better
term. ;)

------
apohn
Part of the issue might come from being from PreSales. Does your resume
strongly reflect that you were in a PreSales role? Should it? If you are
applying for PreSales roles, then yes. If you are trying to get out of
PreSales, then no.

In my last job I was part of the PreSales organization and my official title
was a PreSales one. My team was very technical, but IMO PreSales people are
technical "experts" only in the sense that they are knowledgeable about the
product they sell and the architecture around their product. Basically, they
can talk the talk but how much they can actually do is very narrowly focused.
Many PreSales people typically aren't truly experts, even in the products they
sell.

I decided to get out of PreSales and into a lead technical role and spent 4
months applying to positions and getting nowhere. Eventually I figured out it
was because my resume reflected I was PreSales person and this was a huge
"Jack of all trades, master of none" red flag for people. I changed my resume
and completely de-emphasized the PreSales aspects and focused on all the deep
technical consulting work I had done. I did the same thing in interviews, and
made sure people understood I was in a very technical role and I was not
spending 40 hours a week giving demos.

It still took me time to land a new job, but I started to get interviews and
eventually offers after those changes to my resume.

------
mathattack
The best way to combat ageism is to look for hiring managers that are as old
or older than you. It does limit your search a little, but you have to limit
the universe of potential positions in some way. Enterprise roles tend to have
less ageism than consumer ones.

A couple other thoughts:

1 - When you have too much experience for the job, employers are concerned
that you're desperate, and will leave when a better opportunity comes by. If
you connect with someone senior in the organization, you can negate this.
(They'll have other uses internally for your skills)

2 - Smaller companies don't like hiring people from bigger companies. You have
to push hard on technical skills and show that you're flexible. Also don't
oversell the brand names of your employer. Names like Cisco and IBM mean
something to big corporates, but less in the startup world.

3 - Look for ways to leverage multiple areas of your background. For more
experienced people, it can help to look for jobs that are asking for 2 or 3
disparate skills that are less likely to be found in a junior person. For
example, "I'm looking for someone who has done both consulting management and
front office banking" In your case, telecom + testing + support engineering +
architecture is unique enough that there are jobs where you will be
differentiated.

4) The more senior you get, the harder it is to find the right job. It's a
matching problem. There's either 0 or 1 jobs at each company for your
position, but also much fewer candidates.

------
joshaidan
This is the situation I am currently finding myself in. I work as a telephone
switch administrator for an independent phone company in Canada. I've had this
just for 13 years now, it was the only job I've had since university. My
undergrad is in computer science. I ended up with this job because the company
bought out a friend's ISP that I was helping run when I was in high school. It
was a good job, nice company, they treat me very well. Pay isn't quite at
industry standards, but back then I was living in an isolated Northern Ontario
Community, so it was a decent job. Plus it allowed me to work from home.

But I love programming. I've been doing it ever since I was a kid on a
Commodore 64. While I do get to do a good amount of programming, I wish I
could do more. It would be awesome to get more into systems or embedded
programming. I recently moved to Ottawa, one of Canada's major tech hubs, and
I've been sending out resumes everywhere. So far I've only gotten one
interview, which was at Shopify. But I didn't make it past the initial
interview--there were too many other applicants with more experience than me.
I've applied to other telecom related vendors as well, like Cisco, Genband,
Nokia, etc. but I've never gotten a callback.

Now I find myself wishing that after graduating university I'd taken an
internship at Nortel or someplace like that, so that I'd have it on my resume,
and focused on my programming career rather than just keeping the same job. I
find that all entry level job postings are for new graduates only. I've
contemplated doing my masters so that I could "reboot" my career so to speak
and become a "new graduate."

~~~
hunterjrj
Apply to the CSE. Your telco experience combined with your education in CS
will be considered quite valuable to them.

[https://www.cse-cst.gc.ca/en/careers-
carrieres/professionals...](https://www.cse-cst.gc.ca/en/careers-
carrieres/professionals-professionnels/opportunities)

~~~
ghettoCoder
Yep. CSE or CSIS

[https://csiscareers.ca/available-jobs/3](https://csiscareers.ca/available-
jobs/3)

------
rsto
Given your skills and industry focus you might have good chances to land a
consulting job at one of the big IT consulting shops in telecommunications.

I have worked as a business consultant at Accenture for six years in its
telecommunications practice. Assuming your resume highlights both your
technical and sales skills, you surely would have made it to an onsite
interview for our team. With 12 years industry experience and team lead
experience you could at least push for Manager level (the lowest executive
level) or higher. For a technical role you should apply at Technology
Services, not Consulting. Either way, that you have deep experience with
specific vendor products also is a credential that you should highlight.

I am not at Accenture anymore and have no stakes in recruiting. My post most
probably also applies to the other big shops in the industry: IBM, CapGemini,
probably Siemens depending on your location.

If you need a personal contact in Austria/Germany I might be able to help
(just updated my profile with my contacts).

~~~
innomansland
Thanks for the offer mate! That was really nice!

I want to note that I actually do still have a job (funny enough, most
consider my company as "consulting") and the reason I want to change jobs is
simply that I been in it for 12 years and want to move on from my niche.

Also, being in telco for so long, I have had my fair share of dealing with
Accenture, IBM, Deloitte, Infosys, etc and no offense to these companies but
it is not exactly the sort of working environment I will like to be in having
been in a similar company for the past 5 years. ;)

~~~
rsto
I can relate to that and there is also a reason why I left the industry.

In my case, I started freelancing again as developer (which raised a few
eyebrows at my first clients, but that went away quickly) and contracted a
couple of years at a telecommunications provider implementing provisioning
services. I was at the start of my thirties then, so probably your current
age.

I now work completely outside the big corporations and I wouldn't want to go
back. Good luck!

------
expertentipp
As a person still minimally younger than 35 your opinions are quite sobering.
I think at this point of my career I should focus on high salary (in live in
EU though) while maintaining a good physical condition as I might have no
other choice than salary and lifestyle downgrade in 10-15 years from now.

------
JPLeRouzic
Hi,

I am retired, but I worked at a European Telco as a R&D engineer my last 12
years and as a manager before that. I was 58 when I left. When I was in my
forties I experienced the same rejection as you when I tried ti find a new
job. Fortunately is was during the Internet bubble and there was a great
demand for people speaking English and having knowledge in IP/Web and Java
programming (nobody said "coding" at that time). So I was a bit astonished to
be accepted but all in all those 12 years in R&D were deeply interesting,
sometime frightening and often frustrating. But I am grateful to the people
who recruited me. I never experienced some difficulty to learn or to adapt,
even now at 60. I look to start a new business right now. My tip would be to
not be impatient, stay where you are while it pays well. Things change quickly
in the tech domain. No technology or business process is adopted in a tsunami
manner, adoption is usually very slow (decades) and there are always several
technologies in competition. But meanwhile you might get some orthogonal or
complementary knowledge (Coursera/eDX) to what you have today in an effort to
show dedication and capacity to learn. Who knows, in a future job this new
qualification could make the difference. Good luke!

------
thinkxl
I wrote about my pivoting story in here:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13532415](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13532415)

tl;dr: was 28 sales manager in Mexico, no English. Today I'm 33, frontend lead
developer in US.

Sorry for the link, I don't want to write everything in here again.

------
SixSigma
One suggestion is on your resume use the STAR system

Situation, Task, Action, Result

Rather than the usual "my responsibilities".

Then you can demonstrate the value you brought rather than the potential you
_might_ have because listing your responsibilities doesn't mean you discharged
them.

------
webmaven
Related discussion here - _" Ask HN: Good Career Alternatives for 50+"_:
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13531096](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=13531096)

------
snarfy
You basically have to start over at the bottom. You might be a lead in your
current position but you are entry level in another. You'll need to take a pay
cut to switch careers, in my experience.

------
superplussed
And let's be real regarding ageism, you only get about 10 years of not being
"too old", and then for the rest of your career it's going to be an issue
whether big or small. Part of being a professional is navigating all of the BS
you will get if you are not under 35, white, straight, and male.

~~~
Chris2048
> white, straight, and male

Nice flame-bait.

But are you talking about employability? Because western tech employers
literally compete for token females.

~~~
superplussed
Nope, wasn't trying to bait any flames, just making the point that virtually
everyone has to deal with some sort of -ism, even straight white males will
find it eventually with ageism.

------
nailer
Find some kind of skill pivot. I.e., so you already have the skill to get
employed in your new thing even though you haven't had it on your CV before.

In my case:

\- Unix (via Python and devops) to programmer.

\- Programmer (via product and custdev) to founder.

