In the tech industry, moving up the ranks without the traditional opportunities of visibility and networking can be backbreaking.
Since the pandemic, a majority of workforce has been working remotely. And a blizzard of layoffs that’s been sweeping through the industry only adds to that uncertainty making it trickier for workers to curve out a successful career from afar.
The 2024 Hiring Trend Report traces a significant shift in the sentiment around technical hiring. Axios Market reports that job postings for developer positions are the lowest in five years. The business world is transitioning from volume hiring to hiring that matters, and a big reason is that more engineers have upskilled, tapping into AI tools in their everyday work, delivering greater output than usual.
Full-Time In Office or Full-Time Remote?
Polls show that many seasoned employees favor working remote over working out of office as it helps them balance job responsibilities with personal obligations. But for people who are just starting out, being outside the office is a rather uncomfortable experience.
Thankfully, most companies have been hands-on with helping these employees close the distance by putting in place technology for communication, putting together practice handbooks, and mandating availability of middle managers and senior staff members during the work hours. But climbing the career ladder still remains hard from a distance.
“Own Your Career”
So how do employees ensure they keep moving towards their career goals in this new reality?
By owning your career, says Jack Poller, industry analyst and Tech Field Day delegate.
“Careers are about people, and not resumes,” Poller said while sharing his thoughts at the Ignite Talk at the recent Cloud Field Day event.
When a candidate sends in a resume, it first goes through an AI applicant tracking system that checks for keyword matches before pushing it downstream to an HR person. If the application has 9 out of the 10 keyword matches, the resume is passed on to the recruiting team. If not – it is tossed in the bin. This is the main reason why getting a call back from companies is so frustratingly hard.
Poller who has played many roles in his long and illustrious career from an engineer to a marketer to now an analyst, says that the secret to, whether it’s landing a dream job, or pushing forward in career, is to understand that every interaction is about selling yourself as the right person to the person in front of you.
Another thing to familiarize with is how success is measured in the corporate world.
“There’s exactly one measure of success that matters and that’s profit,” said Poller. “And there’s exactly two ways we can do it: To control profit, we can either increase our revenue and sales, or we can reduce our costs and expenses. At the very end of the day, no matter who you’re talking to, that’s what you want to be thinking about.”
To get closer to one’s goals, Poller says it is also imperative that one finds the right set of people who can boost their efforts. But none of it is possible without articulating one’s vision adequately to them, he reminds.
Just communicating your career plans can win you necessary support and all momentum you require. Communicating not only helps one obtain valuable advice from people ahead of them, but also fosters team relations, and helps hone the ability to influence people into seeing their vision and views.
Doing this remotely however is far from ideal, says Poller. The new geography of work, while it lends flexibility and freedom to the masses, is often conflicting with the basics of any relation including trust. For example, creating a personal relation on one-one-one video meets without feeling the other person’s energy is challenging.
Poller suggests professionals to get out there and be among people as much as possible to build that bond.
And last but not the least, there’re no shortcut to success. Poller says that while there are always people around who can provide support and mentorship, the hard work is all but one’s own.
“If you’re going to do something that is off-brand or a stretch for you, you have to do the job in order to get the job,” he emphasizes.
Poller highlights a simple equation in conclusion: Everything narrows down to what is the problem the company has, and how are you solving it.
Conversely, it is important to remember that building a career is not a sprint. It’s a long journey that has its highs and lows, and people must not hesitate to take a step back from time to time and reflect on the important things.
“Throughout your career, keep an open mind,” he says, but also remember to “take a break, and look at things from a different perspective.”
Catch more Ignite Talks on tech from the Cloud Field Day event on the Tech Field Day website.
