Are you looking to change careers? If so this video is for you.
Hi, my name is Michael Gibbs and I'm the founder and CEO of Go Cloud Architects. And
we're an organization that's dedicated towards building high performance cloud computing
and technology careers. Personally, I've been working in technology for 25 years
and I've been helping others get their first tech job or get promoted in tech for
two decades. And it's my favorite thing in the world when someone says, "Guess what, Mike,
I got cloud hired." Today, we're going to talk about tech career transitions. And if you're
coming from another industry and you desire to move into tech, this is the tech career
transition. Now, I have a lot of experience with tech career transitions. Quite frankly,
I made one myself a pretty major one, and I've helped others transition into tech for decades.
I'll tell you a little bit about me. I started by practicing internal medicine. I was a nurse
practitioner, I had my own office, and I had a large practice of internal medicine clients. Now,
while I enjoyed internal medicine, I just love tech so much more. And all I did in my spare
time when I was practicing internal medicine was build networks and servers and I just enjoyed it.
In fact, all of my spare time was going into playing with technology. I'd work from say 7
in the morning till 6, 7 o'clock at night. I'd come home, play with tech till 2 or 3 o'clock in
the morning. One day my wife said to me, she's like, "Derek, you love tech so much, why don't
you go work in it?" She made that suggestion, six months later, I was the lead architect on my team,
the world's largest ISP and I loved it. And I've been working in tech ever since and it's been
the best thing that ever happened to me. And I want you to have this wonderful experience.
So I'm going to give you eight tips to help you transition into tech.
The first thing that I'm going to recommend, and this is a mistake that I see 90% of the career
transitioning population make. And if we get this wrong, it's going to affect your ability to get
hired, and if we get this right, it's going to make it smooth, fast and simple for you.
The first thing that I need you to do is find out exactly what people do in the job you desire. I
want you to know exactly what people do in the job you desire. And here's the reason,
when you know exactly what people do, you know exactly what you need to learn.
Now, I work for example, with the architect community and the architect community is a
community of systems designers. And that's where I spend the majority of my time.
Now often when I get people that desire architect positions, and there's lots of great reasons
people want these cloud architecture solutions architect positions, that people are actually
learning every skill other than architecture. And that's going to make it impossible for these
really great, really smart, really hardworking people to be hired. So find out exactly what
people and the job that you desire do, that is number one. If you know exactly the goal,
if you know the exact destination, then you can plot a course to get there, but you can't do it
if you don't know. So first and foremost, find out exactly what people do in the job that you desire.
Now, once you know exactly what people do in the job you desire, the next phase is still research,
is to figure out what the most critical and in demand skills are in your chosen career.
So first, what do people do? And secondly, find out what are the most in demand and
critical skills for your new career? Now, here's what I want you to do next. Master
the most in demand and most critical skills. So first you need to know exactly what people do,
then find out what's most important. And then master those most important things.
See, when you're transitioning, you can't know everything about everything, but if you can shift
your focus to what's most critically important and become great at those things, you're going
to be better than the rest of the people that have experience anyway. Because most people do a little
bit of a lot of things and don't master anything. So I want you to master the most in demand skills.
So find out what people want, find the most critical skills and then go master those skills.
Now, as you're mastering those skills, you're competent, you're good. Now, you've got a level
of expertise in these skills. We have to do some other things to get you to transition your career.
Say you're a medical professional like me, but you've got the right skills, but people are still
going to see me as just a medical professional. So if I want to seen as a cloud architect,
or a network architect, or an enterprise architect, or any technology professional,
I have to change the perception of me from Mike, the internal medicine practitioner to Mike,
the cloud architect. So here's where I need you to put your thinking caps on. Put
that cap on and I want you to think about your old job, that's right, your old job.
And then I want you to think about how your old job really teaches you the skill for your new job.
So I will give you a personal example. In healthcare, here's what happens. When I practiced
internal medicine as a nurse practitioner, physicians do the same thing, a patient comes in
patient. The patient has a problem of the day, it's called chewing complaint,
my throat hurts. So when a patient comes in and they say their throat hurts.
I meet the patient, the first thing I say is, "How are you? Could you tell me what makes your throat
better? Could you tell me what makes your throat worse?" I ask some questions. Then for example,
I examine the patient systems. I basically take out the tongue with the press of a flashlight
I look in the patient's throat and I say, "Hey, it's red." And then I say in my head,
"What could cause a red throat?" And I typically say, "Beta hemolytic strep." Go big, and I think
prescribe amoxicillin 500 milligrams, four times a day, I'm going to get out of medicine real fast.
But what do I do as an architect? See, as a network architect, cloud architect,
enterprise architect, what do I do? I meet with a client, I ask them their business goals,
their pain points, their challenges. I then assess the client systems.
From there, I basically design an architecture. So really think about the similarities between
these careers. Medicine, interview a patient, architecture, interview
a client. Medicine, examine the patient systems, architecture,
examine the client systems. Medicine, make a diagnosis, architecture, generate hypothesis.
Medicine, write a prescription, architect makes an architectural design. See, realistically speaking,
it's the same job. And that's why I want you to go to your old job and think how much of your old job
is really your new job, where the only thing that changed is the knowledge base of what you know.
Now I've got to tell you when I worked in healthcare or management consulting
or architecture work, I did the identical job. The only thing that changes in management consulting,
I'm working on business processes. And when I'm doing architecture work, I'm looking at the
technology that can transform the business as well as modifying business processes.
And when I'm doing medicine work, I look at the patient and I look at what they're telling me
and what could be causing them to be sick and give them things to make them better.
It's the same job. So be sure to explain to the hiring manager how your past experience is very
critical, relevant experience for your new job. This is really important because we're going to
have to show that you're experienced, even if your experience is different,
life is cumulative and your cumulative experience really matters. But it's really important that
the hiring managers can see this. You've got to get it in your head. You've get a crisp
in your head. If it's not crisp in your head, you won't be able to sell this to someone else.
Now I want you to get good at practicing telling people how your old job is really your new job.
So when I wanted a transition into tech and I was talking about this consultative process,
I asked my wife and presented it to my wife. I presented it to my friends, I presented it
to stuffed animals, I presented it, presented it, and presented it until people told me, "Yes Mike,
I see it. I understand that, I believe it. And you are correct." Because it's true,
take the experience of your old jobs to your new jobs, but make sure the message is that crisp.
Now I need you to go look at your resume. And again, I need you to rewrite your resume.
I you to write your resume, to show how your old experience is relevant.
So if you're going to any of these jobs that are highly consultative, pull out the
consultation piece from your last job, assume it exists. Don't lie, it has to be honest. But
if you were in customer service and you delighted customers that were frustrated, that is relevant
experience for everything. If you were with sales and you did some consultative work that way,
that's relevant for everything. So just look at your background and figure out the skills that
are related to your new employer, practice doing it, and rewrite your resume on this.
Now, the next part of this, which is really the last phase and the major phase before we
get to the get hired phase is to work on the attributes that are going to make the hiring
managers want you more. Now, this is essential. Now, the statistics on emotional intelligence,
executive presence, soft skills, and their career, I mean, it's amazing.
If you look at things realistically speaking, emotional intelligence is actually the best
predictor of your success long-term-wise. And soft skills have a massive impact on salary,
as does emotional intelligence, as does empathy as does communication skills.
But in your career transition, these things become critically important. And here's why.
When we interview as hiring managers a candidate, basically 50% of what the interviewer score is the
technical abilities and the other 50% is the other stuff, their likability,
the emotional intelligence, the communication skills, the social skills, the attitude. So when
you're transitioning cover careers, you have to be the most likable in your phase. Super emotionally
intelligent, have great social skills. So if you're a 40 out of 50 on technical competency
and a 50 out of 50 on everything else, you score a 90 out of a hundred, which is unheard of.
So when you're actually transitioning careers, you must polish yourself up. If you wanted to
sell your house, you would clean the house, maybe stage the house, maybe make it smell good with
some scented candles. Well, when it's coming to getting hired and transitioning careers, do the
same for you. Polish yourself up, work on your likability, work on your emotional intelligence,
work on your social skills, and practice your interview. Practice the interview,
practice the interview, practice the interview, and practice the interview some more.
Learn all those cliché questions like to tell me about yourself and the why I should hire. You
get used to these new cliché, behavioral interview questions that you see everywhere. Tell me about
a time where you did something wrong. Tell me about a time where you had a problem with someone.
Get used to these questions, master these questions and master the communication of these
questions and be great at them. So when you get in an interview, a lot of things are going to happen.
So the last part is getting hired. Now, let's look at what we've actually done. We've found out the
most critical skills for the job you desire. We've mastered the most critical skills for
the job we've desired. Now we thought about how our old job gave us the experience to prepare us
for the new job. We've practiced telling people to the point that other people understand it
and believe us. We've rewritten our resume, which is our brand. And then we made ourselves
so likable, so emotionally intelligent, such expert communicators with such excellent interview
skills. When we finally go on that interview, the interviewer says, "I've got to give this
person a chance. That kind of attitude, energy, enthusiasm, capability, I can't find it anywhere,
I will hire this person right now." So you want to know the secret of career transitions. That's it.
That's how you do it. Go find the career you want, find out exactly the necessary skills, master
those skills with expedience and excellence, show other people how your past experience is related
to your new job, become super likable, emotionally intelligent, develop a great attitude,
develop some excellent social skills. Master your interview skills, interview and go get hired.
That's how you career transition, I've done it, I've helped people do it for two decades.
And when you go from your past to your future,
it can be the best experience in the world. I'd like to thank you for watching this video.
My name is as Michael Gibbs, I'm the founder and CEO of Go Cloud Architects. It was nice
to speak to you today. And I look forward to speaking to you in another video, take care.
It was so nice having you join us for this video today. Let me tell you about some free
services we do for the cloud community. Once per week, we actually have a free
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Several more times per week, we have guests from industry. Industry experts that I have
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I look forward to seeing you and I look forward to assisting you in your technology career.
Thank you so much. This is Michael Gibbs from Go Cloud Architects.