I was laid off right after the Thanksgiving holidays. Emotionally I haven't fully come to grips with how this will effect me and my family given that this is my first time after over 20+ years of working in the software industry. Worse yet I am now looking for a new position in a market that really has contracted in the last 12 months, so there are positions but finding a match looks like it will be more difficult than ever. To make matters worse my job hunting skills in the current market are more than a little rusty, so the initial challenges will be to educate myself on what I need to appeal to requiters and companies be it resume, cover letters, interviews or social profile.
The second step is to assess my skills and background to ensure it is what the market is looking for and can meet the requirements that companies want to hire me to build the solutions that drive customers and revenue.
Things that mostly concern me looking for a new position is ageism in the market, it is well documented that older developers simply aren't getting positions or offers even when we bring experience that likely would be a benefit to the team and company. I started my career 10 years later than many and so don't know how that will play out with recruiters or interviewers, or how my present experiences will be reviewed.
What kinds of positions should I chase in the short or long term? I have a variety of experience with a bulk of it in enterprise technical support, but also devops, code maintenance along with working with cloud vendors like AWS, Google Cloud and cloud frameworks like Pivotal Cloud Foundry and Kubernetes.
First steps improve,
- Improve LinkedIn profile
- Update Resume
- Create cover letters for 2-3 types of roles
- Update Python skills - I have used Python but mostly for small glue code
- Update Kubernetes admin skills - been two years since I did much so time to add some focused learning here
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