Hi all,
My friend is just transitioning from early career and entering mid-career with 6 years of experience.
After graduating with a Masters during peak COVID and had to search for 6months to find a job. Almost 300 applications in, and almost about to give up and start applying for minimum wage, they received an offer. It was a long search that involved cold calls and informational interviews with those in the industries that they wanted to join. Some offered to refer, but no references ever seemed to work out.
- what finally got them the job was to reach out to the right person. It can often be the team lead, the hiring manager or the direct boss leading that team. It was the latter for my friend, over email.
After spending 4.5 years at the first job, they asked for all kinds of work they could get. Computational analysis, hand-on testing/ calibration, systems work, documentation, data processing pipelines, hazard analysis, qms etc. - everything, that helped them gain a lot of experiences but still a lack of depth, however it helped them build a wider toolset and better communication skills to work with different people and experts.
- pickup all skills that you can or build as many skills within your domain of knowledge. It pays dividends over time, not a one-off high salary job trigger. It's like wealth, it compounds slowly, just need to be consistent.
They were still at 60k almost 4 years later and the project felt like it did not provide any more support or room to grow. They started looking and after 18 months of looking on-off, and 6 interviews, they found a role with 1.5x the salary, in a field they always wanted to be in, with the perfect balance of work activities that they had sought.
- interviewing skills for mid-career roles are more important than Competitive skills (specially for technically involved leadership roles).
- you need to convey how your skills fit the role they seek (this is for you to learn to communicate)
- treat it like a conversation with a new friend
They worked there for a year and came across another opportunity. They used a counter offer to raise their salary by another 1.2x and feel more comfortable now.
- when you come by a negotiating opportunity, always take it if it doesn't erode another's trust in you.
They now seek to stay at the current place and grow their skills. Seeking out more challenging roles and entrenching their array of skills and picking up some new ones.
Keep trying. It took them 6 years to get where they thought they would be after graduating. It was full of thoughts at a lower wage of 55k for 5 years where they had thoughts of never being able to grow past 100k or having significant saving to ever buy a house in the GTA, forget Toronto. They spent and saved consciously but were always irritated by how it took so much energy to think and worry about finances.
I understand that there are many without work and even those without work and without healthy finances.
All to say takes time these days, more than before perhaps, for anything good to happen in the job market. Keep your head down, but chin up and keep working, be sincere and don't lie to yourself, things will work out!
