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Episode #53 - Too Many Skills

About This Podcast

Whether you know it or not, you are techy. I can’t wait to show you how. As a returnship mother of four, I have felt techy, felt not techy and everything in between. I’ll show you how to grow your skills and share with you some of my favorite friends who are women just like you crushing it in the tech world. Join us!

In This Episode...
  • >> I wish someone would have told me how having too many skills can be a negative when I was returning to the workforce.

    >> Communicating your skills effectively for value (that means eliminating some).

    >> How to overcome the challenge of too many skills.

Transcript

Ellen Twomey: You are listening to the “You are TechY Podcast” episode number 53.

Intro Voice: Welcome to the “You are TechY Podcast” where it’s all about growing in your “techy-ness” so you can find the tech job of your dreams. And now your host, Technology Learning Coach, Ellen Twomey. 

Ellen Twomey:
This episode is sponsored by our very limited-time AND free training – 3 Strategies to Jumpstart Your Jr. Developer Portfolio – Specifically Designed for Moms. In this free training, I’ll cover the strategies necessary to become a Jr. Full Stack Developer including the exact skills employers are looking for. You’ll learn how to maximize your income with portfolio-ready skills that hiring managers are seeking, not to mention the steps to skip so you don’t find yourself down that endless tech learning rabbit-hole.

Join me Live for the  – 3 Strategies to Jumpstart Jr. Developer Portfolio. Sign up at youaretechy.com/dev that’s -Y-O-U-A-R-E-T-E-C-H-Y.COM/ D-E-V. I’ll see you there!


Welcome. Welcome. What’s up everybody. It’s a good day today and I’m excited to be with you. I’ve got a great topic for you, too many skills. What. What’s up with too many skills. How can you have too many skills? Well, I wish someone would have told me this was a thing about two decades ago, and I definitely admit that it’s a weird world that we have going on here.

When most of us have had multiple different jobs at multiple different companies requiring all sorts of different skills who would have thought we have a situation where too many skills. Was a negative thing, but it’s true. It can really be a negative thing. And I see this a lot of how too many skills is a problem.

So in today’s episode, I’m going to walk you through how to solve that problem. And have you heard the phrase, the exception proves the rule? Well, the other day I was talking with a millennial who’s been at her job. And her same company since graduation, which is like 15 years ago, I was like, wow, I don’t think I have ever met another millennial.

Who’s been at the same job since college. And I’m sure you’re out there. We just haven’t met and no judgment here on millennials, because I’m just a Scotia too old to be a millennial, but I’ve had many different jobs and many different roles as have most of my friends in my generation. So my point is that we’re dealing with multiple generations of multiple different jobs as the norm.

Okay. And this is not like the boomers where they had one job at the same company. For me, that was Ford. Like you were, could afford for 30 or 40 years. Cause I grew up in Detroit and then you retired that, that was the norm. And that’s not. The way that most of us in the subsequent generations live. And it’s kind of silly if you think about it, because what is so bad about having lots of skills?

I mean, that sounds like a good thing, right? And what a ridiculous age that we live in that too many skills is negative, but if you don’t get a handle on how to solve for this, it can be damaging to your career. So let’s walk through the problem of too many skills and here’s the problem. Hiring managers and recruiters are overwhelmed and they’re overwhelmed because they have so much information.

A resume will no longer suffice, especially in tech. To help them understand if a potential hiree is going to work out at their organization. That’s why you see robo- sourcing apps and software out there. Right? They’re going to robo-source your resumes, your LinkedIn profile. There’s just too much information for one person to be able to sift through it, all that they need a filtering system just to get them to a manageable amount of information.

But once you get past the resume review portion and into the interview portion, now communicating is the challenging part and the other person is going to get overwhelmed as well. The recruiter take it from a recruiter’s perspective. She only has so many hours in a day to interview who she feels are the best candidates, and then recommend them to the hiring manager.

She doesn’t care about each and every skill that you have, it’s not because she’s mean or doesn’t value them all. It’s because she can’t possibly comprehend 20 different skillsets on 20 different potential interviewees. Right. It’s just too much. So what does she care about? She cares about the job. That she is trying to fill.

And she cares about the alignment of your skills and experience to that role. Then she can tell the hiring manager, he looked Gina, she’s done user research, she’s done. Wireframes, she’s even got a little bit of coding. So she would really be a great fit on your team. That’s exactly what you said. You want it.

And the recruiters looking to please the hiring manager. So if you think that your experience in project management is relevant to the UX design role, that’s only true if the hiring manager values that skill in this role. And let’s say this hiring manager, let’s say she has a great project manager on the team.

And what she would really prefer is that you have some front-end coding skills. Your PM skills, your project management skills are labeled in their brains, the hiring manager and the recruiter as too many skills. She’s going to see that as a negative, even though you’re convinced you’re really great at it.

Now, some of you are out there like, Oh, so project management isn’t relevant to UX kind of depends. It depends on the makeup of the team and the different roles that you’re going to fill. Some UX designers do a lot of project management. They’re kind of working in the requirements and making sure that the design assets go in and the right ways, and they can be very heavily involved in that.

And some are not. So that’s why I’m saying you want to look at the skills. We’re going to talk about how to look at the skills of that role and then align it to your skills. And you are not going to be naming all of your skills all of the time, even if you think it’s a great experience that you’ve had.

Okay. So you can only apply a limited amount of skills to a specific job. And I’m talking about when we’re being interviewed, right? Depth of knowledge becomes far more important because what does any company want from you? They want value. They want more value than they’re going to pay you. And value comes in the form of results.

They want to know that you can maybe serve their customer’s needs in a way that’s not currently being met. That might be a result that they want. That could mean as a UX designer, you help them retain more customers because you’re able to create a user experience that far exceeds what they have now, but fundamentally you’re performing a value, add a result for the business and finding out what that is that they really are saying they want and need.

That’s the important part. Okay. So when you’re evaluating, if you have too many skills, you do, you have too many skills for any one hiring manager to look at what you want to really look at is alignment to the organization’s needs. Not just a fit for the job. They want a UX designer. I’m a UX designer. We have a fit.

It’s not quite like that. It’s more about do your specific skills as a UX designer, help them solve a problem or get a result that they’re looking to get. Okay. Those skills are the ones that they are going to care most about, even though. You’ve likely had a ton of other relevant experience. Instead, we’re going to focus on the ones that solve the problems the hiring organization is saying they have.

Okay. And I’m saying it that way intentionally. They’re saying they have those problems. I don’t doubt that they have those problems, but you will likely be able to identify other problems. Most organizations have many, many problems and you might say, yeah, but I can do this. And I think you guys need help with that.

But at the interview time, that’s just not a great time to do that because they cannot comprehend. All of their problems and all of the ways you can solve for it. They’re going to be more narrowly focused on solving this problem that they’ve put a lot of time into thinking about. And I know that they have, because they have a job posting for it and putting a job posting together means that.

Spend some time thinking about that need and how you want to fill that need so honor that they are saying, this is the problem they are having. And that as a UX designer, they want some front end skills, not project management skills. So honor that. What are ways that you can. And what if you say I don’t have front end skills.

Well, you can look at it a couple of different ways. You can leverage your previous existing skills to say how you can learn that and how you can be good at that. You can acquire that skill, or you can acquire it at a certain level, or you can say, you know what, this isn’t the right. Job fit for me. Cause I would, I’m really looking for something that I can leverage my project management skills or, or whatever the skill happens to be.

Okay. So there are a few different ways you can go with that. But what you don’t want to do is force on your too many skills. So, so let’s look at how to overcome this problem, that you’re such a talented and amazing individual who has so many skills to offer the workplace that we actually need to kind of filter through.

So here’s the step-by-step process. Of how to overcome the problem of too many skills. What we want to do is do a pre analysis. Yes. Yes. You, you do want to do this for every company for every new position that you’re interviewing for. But trust me that when you do it once the first time will be the hardest and then you’ll just be tweaking.

It it’s very much like a resume or will your resume stays the same, but you might. Tweak the statement, the top statement for different jobs, but say a cover letter. You’re just going to, you’re going to tweak it. It’s really hard to kind of write your first cover letter, but then, but then you can just tweak it for each job.

And so this is a similar concept. Now this is not something that anyone else is going to see. It’s a pre analysis. You’re, you’re really writing this down so that you have clarity of thought, but I am. Surprise surprise. Gonna tell you to write it down. Okay. So here are the steps. There are five steps to do a pre analysis to solve for the problem of too many skills.

Number one list out your skills. And I think this is a really helpful thing to do before you interview anyway, is just list out all the skills you have. And if you’re like, well, do I list out this or that? I’m going to just say, list them all out. Well, let’s, let’s throw this in a Google doc or a word document, and let’s just save it because you’ll probably think of a few more, but how awesome is it to list out all the skills that you have?

I think that’s really helpful. Okay. Number two is you really got to decide on your next career move by clearly defining what it is, what your next career move is with the title of the role, the type of company. The location of where you will work specifically the city. And then is that in the office or hybrid, I’ve hear heard a lot of hybrid people or is it remote and, you know, what’s your ideal and then what you’re going to be paid.

And then. Skills that you would be most likely to perform. So I would just list maybe three, four, five skills, the top ones that are going to happen. So in UX design, you know, that’s going to be things like user research and wireframes and persona building and things like that. So that’s just generally, and that’s what number one.

And number two are all you, you do, you do not need to look of any there’s no, indeed death scroll on that one. That’s all about you, your perspective, where you’re coming from, what job you want to have, but then when it comes to number three, I want you to start doing some research and I want you to. Look at the job postings and list out the skills that are needed for this role.

Now, this is different than when we’re just creating a learning plan here. We’re actually getting ready to interview. And so you’re looking at this job to say, is this something that I’m really interested in? And this is a great way to get excited about a job. And I want you to get excited about more than one.

Okay. That’s going to put you in a better position to negotiate. I want you to get excited about more than one job, and it’s also going to be a great way to be like. I like that pay, but I don’t actually want to do that job. And that’s a good thing to know. Sometimes we can get attracted to this kind of conceptualized future self, but when it comes down to it, we’re like, yeah, but I don’t actually want to do those, those things on a daily basis.

That’s not the job for you. So this number three, the step number three in your pre analysis is what skills are needed for this specific role job. Number one, what are they saying that it requires and take them at their word that this is what they’re going to care about. And I will tell you, when you go to the interview, it’s not a hundred percent that they’re going to ask you about every skill that they’ve listed on the job posting.

But I will say that them ones near the top are the ones they’ve spent more time on. So you’re going to list out for that particular job. And now step number four is to decide which of the skills on your list best communicate the value that they’re looking for. Okay. And so then that’s going to be basically, that could be like a column number three.

You’re going to put that cut in the column. Here are the ones that they are really saying they’re looking for here are the ones that best represent. What they’re looking for. So you might’ve spent a ton of time in social media, let’s say, but you’re going to be a UX designer. Some of those are going to not be as helpful depending on how they list out the job.

You don’t want to just look at your like last three jobs and say, okay, well, I’ve got to tell them everything that I did. No. You’re just going to pick out the best that step number four, and then step number five is really, really, this is the most important. I want you to decide which skills you will not talk about in the interview.

That’s all right. Which ones can you clearly see? They are not going to care as much about, I want you to decide that you have skills that you will not speak about, and that might sound crazy to you. But the reason I say this is I’ve met. Many people who are over educated and they might be overeducated in traditional sense, or they might have a lot of certifications or, and oftentimes when they’re telling you about those.

It can be overwhelming to hear all of that. And actually the way that they come across is a little insecure that they need to prove themselves through. I have this certification on, I have this and I have that and I have this. It doesn’t come across well. Where if you focus on solving the problem, the business is saying they have.

You will come across much more confident because you’re saying, Hey, I can see that you care about this, and I’ve actually done that. Or I can see you really care about this. And I know my resume might not read that I’ve done that exact thing, but let me tell you about this experience that I’ve had. Let me tell you the story about how I get your problem, how I can solve for that, because I’ve done this other thing.

It applies more than you might think from a, from a resume. So, this is where your empathetic skills of thinking about it through the overwhelmed recruiter or hiring managers, stance is super important and you might be thinking, how do you know the hiring managers overwhelmed? I know because they’ve written a job posting to say, we have a need, we have a need that is going unfulfilled on our team.

And I know recruiters are overwhelmed cause I’m friends with a bunch of them and they’ve got a lot to do. They have a lot to do. It is a big. Big job that they’re asked to do and recruiting firms, rightly companies will pay them a big fee because it’s a lot of work to sift through all of the specific skills and jobs are becoming more and more specific and it’s harder and harder to do this.

It’s just not most job titles didn’t even in technology. They didn’t even exist. Well, when I came out of college 20 years ago, so it is a hard job. Why don’t we make it easier on them? If you want to be a great candidate, it’s not about how many skills you have when you can think about them, empathetically and reduce, actually filter out for what they need.

Okay. Now you’re a great candidate. And guess what? That requires time and writing it down, do not do this in your head. I guarantee you won’t be able to come up with every skill that you have ever had. Just doing it in your head. No way you have too many skills, you’re too valuable. So what you are doing here is consciously acknowledging.

I have a bunch of skills that this company might not find valuable at this time. They’re likely overwhelmed and they need me to be the clear communicator of my value that will solve their needs. Now. And don’t get upset. If you try to describe how you can add value with your other skills and transfer it and they don’t get it, just make a note that 

it’s 

Ellen Twomey: curious.

And if it happens two, three, four times, Now I want you to stop using that example because you have enough data to say, you know what, this isn’t being communicated well, whether it’s not in alignment to skill or you’re not communicating it well, either way quick story. I remember when I was in high school and I went to interview for a bagel coffee shop.

Do you remember when those were super popular and in the interview? The woman? I remember she asked me why I’d be a good fit for the job and. I said really enthusiastically, I love coffee and bagels. Yes. I was a very early coffee drinker. Thanks to my older sister for introducing me. And I’m like, they’re two of my favorite things.

And I thought that was a fantastic answer. Like love of products. I’m going to be able to come every day and show how much I love the product that we’re selling. And what she heard was I’m excited to get free bagels and coffee, and she didn’t value my passion for the product. So here’s my question. W was she right?

Or was I right? Here’s the answer? Who cares? You know, she said, yes, you get a free coffee and bagel, but, and then she led me down the path and I could come up with a better answer that she liked and I got hired. So I guess I won’t ever know unless I try that same tactic on three more bagel shops, but I don’t, I don’t really plan on doing that.

I will tell you that passion for product has been very helpful in entrepreneurship. So. Sometimes we’re not communicating our value. Well, sometimes it’s just one person and they don’t get it. And sometimes that value is just better suited to another environment. And this is why I highly encourage you.

And this is the strategy we employ in our getting hired course. I highly encourage you to interview at multiple places at the same time. And I know that that means that interviewing basically becomes your job, but that’s a good thing because you’re going to be able to strategically benefit from every interaction.

You can use one interview and get better and leverage that for the next interview. And then when you do something and it doesn’t work two or three times, you can then make a note and say, you know what? I’m going to try a new strategy. I’m going to try new strategy. I’m not going to mention that story.

I’ll tell a different story to answer that question. And Oh, this company really appreciated that previous skill, 

but 

Ellen Twomey: this next one, didn’t so much, you have the ability of a little bit of scale of repetition to decide. It, it’s not like, are you broken or are you wrong? It’s sometimes you just need a few trials to say, uh, that wasn’t quite right.

You can tweak it and try to say it better, try to leverage that skill better. Or you can just scrap it and say, you know what? Instead of trying to convince them how great this one skill is, I’m just going to go get this other skill that they’re saying they need so much. And I’m going to create a deliverable and show them that I’m doing it.

And check that box. And what do you know? Maybe I’ll answer that question a lot easier, but this is why it can be so beneficial to have multiple interviews at different companies around the same time. I mean, I literally advocate coming home from an interview. And applying to the next job. It’s very powerful.

Don’t ever wait for someone else to hold your future in their hands. You never know. Don’t tell me you fell in love with the job. It won’t matter. I fallen in love with many houses that I didn’t get, and it’s very important to. Have it’s not, I wouldn’t call it a backup plan. I would call it optionality. Uh that’s my friend does seem to love.

He loves that. He’s not my friend, but I do read his books. I do read his books and he calls it optionality. There’s a lot of control and confidence that can be gained when you have multiple options and you aren’t doing, what would they say? Putting all your eggs in one basket. You can feel really amazing.

You can go into a negotiation with a lot more confidence. If you have two or three negotiations going on at the same time. And I highly encourage that highly encourage you to do that. I know that it’s more work upfront, but it makes it much easier and less stressful actually on, on the negotiating solidifying a job on that end.

So I strongly recommend you do that. Okay. So make a list of your skills. Make a list of the skills that the job you seek once and then edit your list for only those skills that are the best fit for that role. That’s how you overcome the problem of too many skills. And that includes deciding which skills you will not talk about.

Very important, very important. All right. Good luck on your next interview. I’m so grateful you came by today. And I’ll see you next time.

Hey, if you enjoyed listening to this podcast, you have to sign up for the “You are TechY” email list. Imagine being in the tech job of your dreams. Join me to get the strategies, training, and never-ending support to get hired. Sign up at youaretechy.com. That’s, Y-O-U-A-R-E-T-E-C-H-Y.com. I’ll see you next time.

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