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Dear Queens,
I have been trying my hardest to take advantage of the September surge in the tech industry since I have a bachelor's degree that people tell me is valuable but because I have a BS and one year of experience in corporate tech & I am currently competing with people exiting their master's and PhDs to enter this weird job market, this feels more and more hopeless.
I have applied to be a software developer, patent examiner, tech sales, and everything that I could possibly pass for a remote job within my credentials to try to stay in tech, but I must face the difficult truth that my effort is meaningless and that I will not be welcome in tech no matter how hard I try and how many women in tech mentoring organizations I try to contact.
I have attended multiple LI audio events with recruiters and brand experts whose advice has helped increase my LI profile's visibility in my profile analytics but it isn't yet helping me get noticed by hiring managers for the opportunities that I want.
I have completed several certificates worth of programming skills and placed them on my LI profile and LI coder group activity and still nothing. I am trying to spend my weekends to fill out a programming portfolio since my day job creates such a mental energy drain that coding well during the business week is really difficult outside of my lunch breaks.
All the interview requests that I get are for jobs that basically are like my current in-person job where I would just be a diversity hire.
I am currently keeping my toxic job only for rent money until I can escape, but what do you do when there is no escape route?
Feeling discouraged,
-M&E
Yeah, you're not getting good advice here.
Let's start with this:
A year of experience in what? This does matter. If you're applying for Data Science or Machine Learning jobs, then no, this won't cut it due to the large number of people with Masters and PhDs. But if it's general IT, then having the certs matters more than having a Bachelor's degree or higher, i.e., Net+, Sec+, CySA+, Linux+, RHEL, CCNA (Cisco-specific), Microsoft, AWS, etc.
As for software engineering, unless you have a couple internships, a strong GitHub, or other projects to show, you have zero chance. I'm not trying to discourage you, but it's important to understand where you are in comparison to other candidates.
Yeah....no. If they're the programming skills/courses on LI, that's not going to cut it. As I mentioned above, depending on which jobs you're applying for, you really need vendor certifications and a strong GitHub. Also, be prepared to work a shitty pay job, i.e., less than $60K in this economy, for another year or two. Take additional projects to supplement your income and get experience. It took me 3+ to break the 80-100K mark. It's harder for women, true, but it really does have to do with employers only considering people with 3-5 years of industry experience.
Networking does not help women in IT, mainly because there are so few of us and most in higher-level positions say, "Screw you; I got mine." What does help is the following:
CERTS, CERTS, CERTS. I can't stress this enough. If you have vendor certs, i.e., Cisco, CompTIA, Scrum/Agile, then as an early-career IT/engineer, you're taken more seriously.
GitHub.
LI needs to clear and concise, if you choose to use it. Beware, though, that your picture will be used against you if you apply directly through LI. For this reason, I go with Indeed.
Aim for the shittier jobs, even contract work, until you can bank on 2-3 solid years of experience. I hate saying this, but due to that shit-for-brains Elon Musk and Amazon's hire-to-fire policy, the market's saturated with overqualified candidates who are willing to take a pay cut to remain employed.
I like your idea of attending seminars, but make sure that they go toward #1. Scrum Master/Product Owner are easy certs to get, and they lead into CAPM. Sit those classes, start working toward the easy certs, then move into the more advanced stuff.
Hang in there.
You could:
masculinize your name
rework your resume (power verb + action = result)
apply for jobs when you meet 50% or more of the requirements
apply for lots of jobs, since it's a numbers game
tap your network
create a bombastic and bragadocious intro email (in my experience, tech rewards women for this)
These days they use ATS for tracking resumes. It's possible that your resume is being bypassed here. We will need stats. What is your degree? How many jobs have you applied for? Are there University resources or networking groups you can benefit from? It's a silent depression right now and a difficult economy. Just very hard to find a job in general. But you have a job so finding another one will be less dire than if you were unemployed. I'm happy to give some advice once I have a clearer picture. Also what cerirficates did you get and from where?
Literally cannot masculinize my name. It’s ridiculously feminine.
Reworking my resume is really difficult when I have followed that structure and I haven’t had much chance to get actual results when my immediate boss sabotaged my project to get tangible achievements in.
Trying to rework my resume to be broader for more jobs since the ATS systems keep chucking my resume out and I am just done with believing it is possible for tech to genuinely help me.
I shall try but I’m thinking it’s hopeless.