Happy Holidays: Gift Yourself A Break
By: Rebecca Rosenberg
Tags: Job Hunting, Job Hunt Tips

Job hunting, during a “normal” year, is an enduring, tedious, and, at times, humiliating process. Job hunting in 2020 is all of that, plus being sensitive towards employers dealing with the pandemic, understanding the weight and magnitude of unemployment and how you fit into it, etc. Plus, if you’re like me and looking for an entry level job for which you are qualified via certification, the applicant pool and competition is steep.

Job hunting in 2020 during the holiday season? Forget about it.

I haven’t written much about my academic expertise or previous professional field due to the sheer fact that I find them inherently disparate to what I’m looking for now. I was an American Studies/Women’s, Gender, and Sexuality Studies scholar in college, and went on to work at some lovely nonprofits the year after graduating. Aside from writing, this line of work doesn’t put as much emphasis on hard skills as the tech industry does. What’s important in the nonprofit world is the ability to relate to others — finding similarities between different communities; being able to translate what someone wants into action; creating the best way to reach those who you wouldn’t reach normally; and so on and so forth.

Although a shift to more balanced priorities is definitely in the works, the tech world values hard skills over soft skills, and for good reason, too. When hiring a programmer, employers are usually looking for a solid grasp and understanding of computer science theories and an expertise in one or two programming languages.

What I’ve come to realize, though, is that you actually do need soft skills to excel in the tech industry. Sure, you need to learn and deeply understand at least one language, but once you do, the possibilities for yourself are endless, as long as you keep your critical thinking, ability to find similarities, and adaptive nature sharp. The ability to solve problems intuitively and the capacity to adapt what I know to what I have to accomplish are all skills I developed without a BS in computer science.

Why is this related to the job hunt, you might ask? Because, if you’re shifting career paths like me, you might feel like your previous experience is worthless; I felt that way, too. This past month I was able to understand that it’s not worthless, but it actually makes me a more interesting and dynamic candidate. I wouldn’t have been able to make this realization without giving myself a week’s worth of rest and reflection, considering where I’ve been, how it’s shaped me, and what the current version of myself can offer to the tech industry.

Not only can I master any language I set my mind to, but I also have the ability to speak about it and its inner workings with others. Sure, I can iterate through an array to find the largest number, but I can also take that algorithm and adapt it to an entirely different situation, based purely off of minute similarities between the two problems. My communication, collaborative, and problem solving skills are important to any industry, and so are yours.

So, this pandemic-holiday-season, gift yourself a break. Whether that means a full-week hiatus, like myself, or giving yourself more slack than usual, take the time to acknowledge just how far you’ve come.