How does upskilling work?

[d000hg]

Lots of people talk about bench time as being a good opportunity to learn new skills. But how does this help, when you don't have any experience?

"Hello, Big Fish Recruitment, Dave Speaking."
"Hi. I'm calling about that ASP.NET role on Jobserve, I just sent you my CV."
"Oh, yes mate I saw. Um, you don't have any ASP.NET on your CV?"
"That's right, my experience is with J2EE/JSP but I've been learning ASP.NET..."
"Sorry, this role requires someone with experience."
"Oh, well,..."
"If anything with J2EE comes up I'll let you know, if you can give me some references?"
""

[thunderlizard]

Upskilling can be a vicious circle - you can't get the experience without already having the experience. But properly learning things during bench time is a pretty good way to break in.
The process is roughly
(1) learn the skill until you're confident you could do it professionally
(2) Tell everybody you can do it - you won't be lying.
(3) When questioned, don't lie about your lack of real-world experience but talk the talk, ace any technical tests etc.

Back in ooh, 2001-2 when I was looking at bits of .NET stuff, I'd got all the vendor certs and written a few articles in two well-respected tech journals before writing a line of commercial code, & got my first few contracts based on that.

If you go via the jobserve/agency route, you will find people more box-ticky and less forgiving. However, an agent might be picky about x years experience when there are 6 possible candidates: but if you're the only one, he'll be more than willing to turn a blind eye and sell you to the client on other strengths.

It definitely does get easier as you go along: e.g. if you're already a guru on Oracle and DB2, you could probably pick up a contract involving Oracle, DB2 and SQL Server without the client worrying whether you'd cock up the SQL Server part.

[MrMark]

Get some webspace, practice making websites using your newly acquired skills, then put together some sites for your friends' businesses. Then you can claim to have done freelance work using these skills (and have the evidence to boot). The agent/employer doesn't need to know how little/nothing you got paid - the fees were confidential innit? Boomed!

[Scotchpie]

Well before my current contract I never had any experience with VB.net/VBA/ASP except for what I learned teaching myself these skills during the evenings and weekends.

I found I really enjoyed coding and wanted to develop my programming skills by working on a project for a client but like you had nothing to add to my CV. and no experience to show potential clients so I fell back to my old standby - data analysis.

When I started working for my current client it was in a purely analytical role, however after using what I'd learned to write myself a few programs to ease the reporting part of my job I was asked if I could write some more for others and before long it became my role to develop database front ends and reporting tools for the client.

Over the next few months they are planning to move their reporting processes over to the intranet so permies can query the databases via asp pages and guess whose been asked to take a lead role in it. I now code more than I analyze and will have some good experience to put on my CV.

Other than that why not write some open source programs and post them to sourceforge. These can become your own work samples which potential clients can download and try out themselves. Also it gives you a cool looking entry on the CV - "Aug to Nov/ 2008 - senior developer and programmer for the open source project...."

[Purple Dalek]

Lots of people talk about bench time as being a good opportunity to learn new skills. But how does this help, when you don't have any experience?

"Hello, Big Fish Recruitment, Dave Speaking."
"Hi. I'm calling about that ASP.NET role on Jobserve, I just sent you my CV."
"Oh, yes mate I saw. Um, you don't have any ASP.NET on your CV?"
"That's right, my experience is with J2EE/JSP but I've been learning ASP.NET..."
"Sorry, this role requires someone with experience."
"Oh, well,..."
"If anything with J2EE comes up I'll let you know, if you can give me some references?"
""

blag

HTH

[Doggy Styles]

Lots of people talk about bench time as being a good opportunity to learn new skills. But how does this help, when you don't have any experience?

"Hello, Big Fish Recruitment, Dave Speaking."
"Hi. I'm calling about that ASP.NET role on Jobserve, I just sent you my CV."
"Oh, yes mate I saw. Um, you don't have any ASP.NET on your CV?"
"That's right, my experience is with J2EE/JSP but I've been learning ASP.NET..."
"Sorry, this role requires someone with experience."
"Oh, well,..."
"If anything with J2EE comes up I'll let you know, if you can give me some references?"
""

If you are confident you can use a new skill, why don't you just add a bit into your CV? Look at one of your existing gigs and say you did some there. Lot's of chaps do it.

It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. Do dogs eat dogs?

[Bob Dalek]

If you are confident you can use a new skill, why don't you just add a bit into your CV? Look at one of your existing gigs and say you did some there. Lot's of chaps do it.

It's a dog-eat-dog world out there. Do dogs eat dogs?

Not sure, but sheep were eating sheep, and look were that led.

[Pogle]

I've lost count of the number of contractors I've interviewed who say they have BODI skills, but when you start asking technical questions that require a little experience to answer, they fall down.
I don't think its a good idea to blag.

[d000hg]

I've lost count of the number of contractors I've interviewed who say they have BODI skills, but when you start asking technical questions that require a little experience to answer, they fall down.
I don't think its a good idea to blag.

Yeah, and odd as it seems, some of us aren't comfortable lying.

[bored]

Why not contribute to some open source project, or in the case of ASP.NET, make a website from which you could generate a bit of AdSense revenue? Either of these can then be put onto your CV.