Skill vs Talent — The COVID Shift
By: Desley M. Charles
Tags: Skills, It, Mentorship, Engineering, Careers

For quite some time I struggled with the notion of telling my story. I suffered from Imposter Syndrome, focusing more on being an enigma than an outlier, unable to accept the validity of why; time after time I would surpass highly qualified candidates to land highly sort after roles in the technology industry.

After all I had no college degree, not even a certification but found myself working at Apple, Hewlett Packard Enterprise and a subsidiary of Toshiba just to name a few, even interviewing at Google — for an Infrastructure Engineering role. Then it occurred to me that we were already experiencing a shift in the industry which would only be accelerated by COVID.

This shift came in the form of a recruitment strategy pivot. Most companies were now seeking adaptive, competent talent vs hard skill and extensive work history — and I had found that sweet spot. While coding, database management, cloud computing experience & solutions engineering were fundamental essentials, curating and maintaining relevant knowledge capital, effective stakeholder engagement and an innate aptitude to learn & quickly adapt to change was now paramount to Hiring Managers. Whiteboard coding questions by and large were being replaced with situational, behavioral & project based queries. What did you learn, how did you learn it and how long did it take?

My advantage was that aside from a few basic college courses, I was self-taught. That isn’t to discredit those who opted for the traditional route, but for me this made it easy to digest information, retain it and quickly pivot to new and emerging technologies. From my perspective our educational infrastructure had become obsolete and in order to remain competitive I had to up the ante.

At the onset of my career I worked as an Analytics Intern for a company called Resonate. This sharpened my research skills and introduced me to human attribute analysis. What factors affects one’s decision making process? How do values impact ones perspective? Once I applied some of these concepts to the interview process and the interviewer, I’d ace every single interview.

It was simple — publicly available data was my primary resource, how I leveraged it became my mastery. I started on YouTube, obsessively learning from ground zero. The OSI model, Networking, Data structures, python, Linux, PowerShell, ITIL problem management, IT acronyms. I’d create an AWS account and work on EC2 instances, and test my knowledge in virtual lab environments all for free.

leveraging sites like Glassdoor, LinkedIn, I also joined communities like the Massachusetts Institute of Technology Review and attended any free webinar that related to my field. Before long I had curated a career development strategy that enabled me to easily identify gaps in operational efficiency, bring much needed value & expertise, and most saliently — exceed expectations and organizational goals.

The truth is I was shy, intimidated & uncertain, self doubt had brought me to the brink on many occasions, but there was a pivotal moment when things changed. I’d been working 3rd shift at HPE decrypting and analyzing log data all night when I finally conjured up the courage to disclose I had found a bug. Being 1 of 2 African American women on a team of 55 insanely brilliant engineers was intimidating, but in that moment something clicked, I was forced to strip away all of my insecurities, I was a badass, it was now or never. I found the courage to be bold and comfortable in a seemingly uncomfortable space. I’d been hired to deliver results, in my season of preparation I’d passed up countless opportunities because I was too shy to speak up or be intentional about my purpose. Skill was my qualifier, but talent cemented my presence.

I am now a PM for Finance and Risk Management Solutions at a Fortune 500 Fintech firm, & an Undergraduate Finance major at GSU — with a wealth of knowledge and a highly sort after business acumen which has earned me quite a few distinctions. I’m entering the coaching & mentorship space as well; as many have experienced COVID related job loss and would greatly benefit from my insight, career development strategies and professional experiences.

To connect — you can find me on IG; @the_mentologist or email me at Mentologist411@gmail.com

Cheers!