How to? Minor Career Change

Sit down with your resume and a nice writing tablet and do a brain dump on all - and I mean ALL - of the things you have done. In the end you will end up with at least another resume (maybe more) that can be targeted to your desired positions.

My experience is broad, and without stretching the truth I can come up with threads for Product Development, Business Development, and Operations - all from the same sets of experiences.

You just need to find those kinds of threads in your experiences and draw them out. If you are a little thin in your new career destination, just maximize what you can and leverage it to the hilt until you can gain more experience. Join a professional group in your chosen field. I'm with PDMA, ASQ, and CORFIDA. Group member adds another credential to your resume. And finally, the people in your professional groups will lead you to new opportunities once you become familiar to them.

While I have much experience that would be relevant to other roles as you mention, and I'm sure I could do them if given the chance... that's what seems to be the problem. In a job market like we have today which is glutted with lots of skilled and experienced people nobody will give people a chance to do something different. It is much easier for employers just to insist on candidates that are already doing the same job and are 110% matches to their perfect job description. In the past I was often asked to do something other than software development... DBA, sysadmin, etc., but I didn't do it. Those kinds of opportunities don't come around anymore and from talking to recruiters they say their clients insist on only being presented exact matches and hiring managers echo that they don't have time or budget to train or let people learn.

I'd love to be proven wrong though... If anyone has been able to move into a different area I'd certainly love to hear about it.

Your angle about joining the professional organizations is interesting, but in practice how easy has it been to break into other cliques?

Interesting thoughts. I know I have always had a hard time keeping my resume to a point where it is not too long. Due to some of the things I have worked on I do have a wide range of experience that could fit in different areas.

I will have to give that a try.

Ironically I had this discussion with a recruiter friend of mine. He basically said that if you really want to make a change it takes effort to get over that "100%" job to recruit match that some recruiters look for. He said a good recruiter will sit down with the recruit to see what they are really about, not just what a 2-3 page document says.

Unfortunately he also said there are more recruiters who are too based on numbers to spend the extra time than there are that will.

Recruiters' attention spans are economically driven. They get paid on commission and just like sales people in other industries they need to kill today to make a buck today. It's tough for us to end up on their desks at the same time that there is a decent current staffing requirement for us. I'm envious if you know a recruiter who will dig a little deeper into who "you" are. That's a bonus.

As for breaking into other areas via membership groups, I just joined Rocky Mountain Regulatory Affairs Society (RMRAS) in Denver. I did that at the suggestion of a recent contact in the medical devices industry who is helping me. Today I had lunch with two new contacts who know medical devices and industry regulations. I've put the word out through others that I'd like to investigate working in the medical world, and once I attend my first meeting of RMRAS I'll get a feel for what it will take for me to break in.

I'm not really sure I want to go medical, but that's what is available around here and I'd be smart to position myself for a run at it. My investigations will lead me to a GO - NO GO decision to pursue further contacts/classes/certifications. And that's what it takes to make an industry change: a committed effort to retrain.

It doesn't have to be full bore, either. I may spend a little effort to take some training and get a certificate of some kind, then go fishing with my new bait. A decision to proceed even further will be made based on the nibbles (or lack thereof) from employers responding to my latest credentials.

Whatever your resume says now, my suggestion to data-dump on a tablet may show you that you already have some experience to apply to your new chosen field. It will also reveal what you will need to fill in.

I just tried to do something similar. I have a 10 year track record of successful software project management, with 18 years experience in enterprise software all around. I really want to do software PRODUCT management. I got certified by Pragmatic Marketing, got an MS in Engineering Management from UT, and spent 4 months full-time networking and applying with every software company I could find in Austin.

Everyone I networked with was great - they were very helpful and friendly and volunteered a lot of very useful information. The interviews I had with HR all went splendidly. Then I would interview with a hiring manager, and his first question was always, "How many software products and you successfully delivered to the market?"

No matter how nicely I said it, the answer to that question was "none." Even though I have done everything that product managers do, I have never been a product manager. I always emphasized what I HAVE been successful at that was relevant to product management, but I could not overcome that pesky lack of experience.

I was not successful in switching to product management.

Having said that, I would think switching from systems engineering to sales engineering should be easier. With sales engineering you need to demonstrate that you can establish rapport with people and that you can generalize from bits and bytes to business value. Sales engineering is often a hard, stressful job requiring lots of travel, and often there is a fair amount of turnover. I would think you should be able to find some good opportunities.

And I have to agree with the comments about headhunters. When you're changing your career focus, headhunters will be of no use (at least not in this market).