<story><title>Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?</title><text>Tldr; I&amp;#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&amp;#x2F;lead role or being overqualified for a lower role (i.e. dev, support, etc).&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#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&amp;#x2F;offshore teams to deliver client projects.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;m now feeling utterly perplexed.&lt;p&gt;I tried applying for lead&amp;#x2F;architect roles and was rejected (without even going to the interview stage) being told that I don&amp;#x27;t have enough experience or expertise. Fair point I guess since I&amp;#x27;m in a niche industry thus I started looking at roles that allow me to start at the bottom (i.e. dev, support&amp;#x2F;operations, customer success). Even then, I keep getting rejected with the common trope that I don&amp;#x27;t have enough experience or I am either overqualified and&amp;#x2F;or will not be a good fit for the team!&lt;p&gt;I asked my professional network for some inputs on the matter and I&amp;#x27;ve been told that I&amp;#x27;m in an age group (30-40) where companies are not that keen to hire cause I&amp;#x27;m considered too old (ageism). Is this possible? I&amp;#x27;m barely in my early 30s so I find that very strange cause I don&amp;#x27;t consider myself old at all.&lt;p&gt;So, have any of you ever been in the same situation and do you have any advice on how should I overcome this?</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>fecak</author><text>This could be a number of things. For context, I&amp;#x27;ve been in recruiting for ~20 years (mostly software startups) and I also write resumes and consult&amp;#x2F;coach job seekers on a number of topics.&lt;p&gt;Getting rejected without getting to the interview stage could be for several reasons.&lt;p&gt;Ageism - not all that likely in your early 30s, depending on your audience.&lt;p&gt;Resume - if your resume doesn&amp;#x27;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&amp;#x27;d like it looked at by a professional, I&amp;#x27;m easy to find.&lt;p&gt;Overqualified&amp;#x2F;not a fit is often code for something else. It&amp;#x27;s much easier to tell a candidate &amp;quot;you&amp;#x27;re overqualified&amp;quot; (i.e. our work is below you) because that is flattering. It&amp;#x27;s much harder to tell someone &amp;quot;the team genuinely didn&amp;#x27;t like you&amp;quot;, as that is not only insulting to some people but also may cause you to ask follow-up questions. Tell someone they&amp;#x27;re overqualified and it&amp;#x27;s hard to follow-up - tell someone they &amp;quot;aren&amp;#x27;t a fit&amp;quot; and they don&amp;#x27;t usually ask &amp;quot;why?&amp;quot;, because it&amp;#x27;s rather ambiguous.&lt;p&gt;Sometimes overqualified means &amp;quot;paid above what we can afford&amp;quot;.&lt;p&gt;You mention twice you&amp;#x27;re in a niche industry, so I am guessing it&amp;#x27;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 &amp;#x27;universal&amp;#x27; 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?&lt;p&gt;Could be tons of things.</text></comment>
<story><title>Ask HN: Ever faced difficulties pivoting your job or career later in your life?</title><text>Tldr; I&amp;#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&amp;#x2F;lead role or being overqualified for a lower role (i.e. dev, support, etc).&lt;p&gt;I&amp;#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&amp;#x2F;offshore teams to deliver client projects.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;m now feeling utterly perplexed.&lt;p&gt;I tried applying for lead&amp;#x2F;architect roles and was rejected (without even going to the interview stage) being told that I don&amp;#x27;t have enough experience or expertise. Fair point I guess since I&amp;#x27;m in a niche industry thus I started looking at roles that allow me to start at the bottom (i.e. dev, support&amp;#x2F;operations, customer success). Even then, I keep getting rejected with the common trope that I don&amp;#x27;t have enough experience or I am either overqualified and&amp;#x2F;or will not be a good fit for the team!&lt;p&gt;I asked my professional network for some inputs on the matter and I&amp;#x27;ve been told that I&amp;#x27;m in an age group (30-40) where companies are not that keen to hire cause I&amp;#x27;m considered too old (ageism). Is this possible? I&amp;#x27;m barely in my early 30s so I find that very strange cause I don&amp;#x27;t consider myself old at all.&lt;p&gt;So, have any of you ever been in the same situation and do you have any advice on how should I overcome this?</text></story><parent_chain></parent_chain><comment><author>mikekchar</author><text>If you were in the same industry (potentially the same company) for 12 years, you may be getting tagged with a bit of a &amp;quot;career employee&amp;quot; stigma.  I&amp;#x27;m 49 now and took 5 years out between the ages of 39-44 to teach English in Japan.  I&amp;#x27;m back in the industry now.  It took me about a month to get a job when I came back.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;ve worked in health care, Windows productivity apps, telecom and now I&amp;#x27;m doing business systems&amp;#x2F;web development.&lt;p&gt;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&amp;#x27;t much work.  You need to show that you can branch out and be productive in whatever a company needs you to do.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.&lt;p&gt;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.</text></comment>