As a hiring manager, I was sooo disappointed when I met promising candidates who had the same year of experience 5, 10, even 20 times. Sometimes their resumes disguised that fact, because they'd moved to several projects or to several different organizations. But, they hadn't done anything new in years.
The worst example of this was when I interviewed someone who'd finally been laid off from DEC (Digital Equipment Corp) in the early '90's sometime. (I can't remember if Compaq had bought DEC by then, and he'd been laid off by Compaq or DEC.) I phone-screened this guy for a client, and thought he had some promise, so he came in for an interview. During the interview, I discovered he'd worked in the same facility, working in the same office, working on different projects for different managers, but doing the
same work day in and day out for 20 years.
I was blown away. Surely I had misunderstood. I asked more behavior-description questions, trying to discover what he'd really done, and sure enough, he had kept the same role, doing the same thing he'd done for 20 years at the same company in the same office.
I asked him why he was looking. "Because I need a job." Had he looked inside DEC? "Yes, but no one needs this type of work anymore. I was hoping to stick with it." Didn't he want to learn something new? "No, not really."
My goodness. Not the kind of person my client needed at the time. And, no, we didn't need precisely his skills, which is what he wanted to find a job doing. I don't know what happened to him; I was astonished that he'd spent 20 years doing literally the same thing every day.
It's easy to get in a rut at work. So, now that it's January, take stock of your skills. In fact, take this time to edit your resume. (I'm reviewing Andy Lester's
Land the Tech Job You Love: Why Skills And Luck Aren't Enough, to be released soon, and he has excellent advice in how to organize your resume.)
Write down your achievements from last year. See if you can quantify anything about them, so they pass the "so what" test. "Led the team that reorganized accounting workflow" is interesting. Add ", saving the finance department at least 20 hours a week according to the CFO" is a huge thing. Write all of these down. You likely have somewhere between 2 and 5 for the year. That's good.
Now, take a look at your resume. Do you see areas that have gaps? Maybe you haven't led a team yet. Do you want to? If so, put that on a list. Have you explored a particular language or OS or database that intrigues you? If not, put those on your list. Make sure you have at least three things on your list.
Now, you have fodder for a conversation with your boss, about what you might want to do over the next year. If your job doesn't allow you to do those things, look for an open source project. (No, you don't have to leave your job to do other work.)
No matter how you approach getting more experience, make sure you are making each year count. No years and years of the same experience for you. That's not the way to grow a career.
