329. Why Industry Specialization Can Unlock Job Opportunities for Developers

Does having unrelated skills in a particular industry help in software development? If I switch careers, does my previous experience even count? Is my experience valuable to employers? These are the questions we will answer in today's episode of DevQuestions.

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SPEAKER_00 0:00

Software developers often have skills outside of software development. Sometimes that comes from transferring from another job type to become a software developer. And sometimes that's just people having side jobs or experiences or hobbies that involve other industries. Often, people don't know how to classify this additional outside experience. In today's episode of Dev Questions, I'm going to teach you how to think about outside experience and how to take full advantage of it to unlock even better job opportunities. Software development is more than just writing code. So let's talk about the rest of it. Specifically, let's talk about industry experience outside of software development and how it can really benefit you. People often talk to me about how to build their resume or how to explain certain experiences or jobs to potential employers. One area that gets overlooked too much, in my opinion, is outside experience. Let's say you used to be a realtor, but then you switched careers and became a software developer. You had 10 years experience as a realtor, but then you started over and only have a few years of experience as a developer. Companies are treating you like a junior developer. What can you do? Well, the most common thing people do is just accept it and basically start their career over from scratch. That's a bit frustrating to me because there is so much more you can get out of this. Some people talk about their previous experience and how it built better life experience and try and just use it as well, I'm older and wiser now and have learned some life experiences. And that does give you a little bit. You get some, you know, yes, I've got some experience here, um, experience to talk about, but it really doesn't give you a whole lot over the previous thing of just saying, let's start over. But the real benefit comes when you can turn your previous experience into a major asset. So let's talk about how to do that. Look for jobs in or around your area of expertise. In our example, you have 10 years of experience as a realtor. Look for jobs in real estate companies, home inspection companies, title companies, mortgage companies, and other related industries. Know that you have a clear advantage in these industries because when you come in the door and you're looking at a home inspection company and they need home inspection tools. Well, you're a realtor. You have experience going through houses and working with home inspectors and looking at those reports and knowing what's valuable and what's not and how the customer wants to see it. So you come in, you can talk about that stuff in your interview. Don't just talk about, yeah, I've been, I've been a developer for three years now and I've I've built some applications. I have a little bit of experience in the field. Talk about that, but also talk about the fact that I have worked as a realtor for a decade. I know how this field works, and I know then a lot about how your field works and how to make it even better. I know what your customers want. A developer needs to understand why they're building what they're building in order to make informed decisions. Some developers don't do that. Some developers just say, well, I must know best because I'm a developer. It's not the case. In fact, I've come across your apps a lot in the past and I've had to fix quite a few of them. The more you know about a subject, the better you'll be at asking the right questions and the less blind spots you will have. If you've ever heard of the Dunning-Kruger effect, this is in full display when you have developers that just don't know their subject matter. You can't just rely on the user to tell you what you need to know. If you've ever known about a subject and then had a user try to explain what they want, you know that they just don't know how to communicate. They don't know what you need to know. So they're not going to give you a full picture. You need to have a bigger picture of whatever industry you're working in. I used to work for an insurance company. One of the things we did as new to the company employees is we went through an insurance program where, yeah, I'm not qualified to sell insurance, but I know the ins and outs of the basics. I know about the different policies and how they work and how they interact and why we have certain things and why we do certain things and what the regulations are around those things. That's very important because I had to know what questions to ask when it came to building the apps around insurance. So if you come into a company with experience in that field that you're building apps for, well, you got a real leg up on your competition. Now, I talked about one example. Let's cover a few more so you can kind of see the pattern here. Because you might say, well, yeah, realtor, they got a lot of different fields they work with. Let's talk about electricians, electrical companies, energy providers, construction companies, electrical supply houses, companies that provide apps and services to any of those organizations. These are all areas where electricians, turned software developers, can really shine because they can bring in those skills and say, hey, I know how this stuff works and I know what's going to be good and what's not going to be good. I can fill in the blanks when our users tell us what they want, and I realize, hey, you're missing these things, right? So you bring a lot of experience into a job like that, where all of a sudden, yeah, you're a junior developer compared to other junior developers, but but you're being treated more like a mid-level developer or even a senior developer just because of the experience that you're bringing in. You may be paid more because of that experience, even though you're not as qualified as a in a software development because you have that other experience. So this is something that software development experience, you can gain over time. You can grow that, but it's hard to grow your experience as an electrician while working as a software developer. So it really is harder for the software developers who just came in from graduating or from other companies that have no relation to this field, it's harder for them to kind of pick up these skills they need. And it takes more time. You come in with a lot of that already done. And let's take another example here. Mechanic. Maybe you worked in a garage. Well, what if you worked for other garages who are building software or auto parts companies? Knowing what parts go where, really important. That would not be something I'd be good at. Car manufacturers, do you know how many apps? Have you ever looked at car manufacturers or dealerships? There's another one, where they have these apps that are terrible. And they'll even tell you, yeah, this app is terrible, but it's what we have. Well, you could help make that better. Insurance companies, you know how cars work and what breaks and what that might take to replace it. You bring invaluable skills beyond just I'm a software developer. So whatever your skill or ability is, bringing that into potential employers in that field or related fields can really be a big deal. The key here is how much knowledge you have in the outside field. If you don't have a lot of experience or the experience is fairly generic, you're gonna get less value out of it. Let's say you, you know, you didn't, you weren't a mechanic, you just worked the reception desk at a mechanic, uh, a garage. Well, that provides you some experience. Doesn't provide you nearly as much as actually being a mechanic. You have secondhand knowledge about a lot of things and some firsthand knowledge about other things. You can still use that experience. It's just gonna provide a little less than the more detailed experience you might get by actually replacing parts on a car. Same thing with electricians or same thing with realtors. If you work in a realtor office, you're gonna have different experiences than an actual realtor in the field. That doesn't mean they're necessarily bad, but are those experiences things that other people won't maybe inherently know or know from working in other fields? For example, you know, if you work as a clerk at a grocery store where you're scanning groceries, that might not provide a whole lot of experience in anything unique, because a lot of people have done those jobs. But you can talk about your customer service and all the rest. But just know that the more specific your knowledge is, the more localized it is, or the more specialized it is, the better it's going to be. So once you have that special, if you have specialized knowledge, target companies that need that knowledge from their developers. And the more you do that, the more specific you can be, the more you can target those types of companies, the more successful you will be. Just make sure to talk about your experience and how it brings additional value to the table. Sometimes companies don't always consider the fact that, oh, wait, that that is really valuable. But by you bringing it up and positioning it in as a value add, you can put yourself ahead of a crowded field of potential developers. All of a sudden, where you were middle of the pack, maybe, they're reevaluating all their developers, thinking, wait, none of them have experience as a realtor. This person does, and they're a developer. Wow, that that is really valuable. So don't let that experience go to waste. Use it. Even if it's a specific hobby, use that knowledge to your advantage. All right. Take what you have and use it for the most possible gain. Thanks for listening. As always, I am Tim Corey.

SPEAKER_01 10:43

Thank you for joining us for this episode of Dev Questions. When you're ready to learn to think and code like a professional developer, head over to IamtimCorey.com and enroll in a course.