I learned far too late in life that not all work experience is equal. It isn’t enough to simply come to work, do work, then go home and call it a job well done. That may be fine at wherever you work now, but your career is not a contained element within your current job. When you leave (or are separated against your will), then you may be in for a rude awakening at your next employment when concepts, processes, and software are all foreign to you. There is a language to business, and you need to be fluent in it at all times.
Work Experience Stagnation
I spent several years working at a large international B2C company that focused on IT products. Placed in a role where I managed site content, I was immersed into the many homebrew applications the company had created for this task. Some of the processes to display the content where I needed it to be were bizarre and byzantine. One process created a container for the content. Another process placed the container onto the site. Yet another process created content to be placed inside the container. Keep in mind that there was no documentation for any of this. Instead, instructions were passed down as tribal knowledge.
I had just come from a previous company where I was updating databases in SQL to publish site content, so these scratch-built applications weren’t that difficult to deal with in terms of process flow. In fact, I became very proficient within the environment, able to explain its quirks, limitations, and workarounds clearly and with ease. I eventually architected major changes to the platform that made it much easier to use and allow for richer content to display on the site.
Yet, despite the advancements I had achieved with our content applications, I never felt like I was working with a proper CMS. In fact, it wasn’t even something I could share as valuable experience when talking to recruiters.
Recruiter: “What CMS do you use?”
Me: “It’s proprietary.”
Recruiter: “Oh.”
There is a sliding scale of acceptable software experience, and it’s important that you stay within those parameters. I’m sure the applications vary with industry, but there’s a reason why you continue to see Adobe programs listed on marketing job listings instead of any of the off-brand programs. That’s not to say that value can’t be found by using similar applications, but you must recognize the learning curve that comes with any new environment. Employers will.
Beyond the technology experience, I also wasn’t being exposed to common business practices that other similar sized companies were doing. There were no one-on-ones, rare team meetings, and I was never part of strategy sessions. New work just seemed to fall from the skies. In fact, I was given very little attention unless there was a problem. In which case, people I’d never seen before would show up at my desk with complaints. On one hand, this was good, because it allowed me to focus on internal side projects that eventually earned me a promotion. On the other hand, when I finally moved to a company with more team dynamics and required more reporting and proof-of-performance, the experience was jarring. It took me a little time to get into the same gear as everyone else.
I think everyone feels a little bit of imposter syndrome when they start a new job, but I think I was actually an imposter. I sat during meetings, nodding my head, pretending to understand the concepts and terminology, but making mental notes to Google these things later. Of course, I adapted to the situation and became a top performer, but that doesn’t mean the transition between jobs wasn’t unnecessarily difficult.
Balancing Work Experience
I’m a big proponent of self-education, and the internet provides us with endless training material. It’s easy enough to buy necessary programs and watch online tutorials. Furthermore, joining business-focused social networking sites like LinkedIn or similar groups on Facebook can lead you to various reading material on how modern business is conducted. So even if your current job isn’t using best practices, that doesn’t mean you’ll be ignorant of them. And once you know they exist, perhaps you will be the changemaker at your current workplace.
However, none of this is to say that self-training works in all cases. I’m sure there are industries that require on-the-job experience using very expensive and very exclusive software. But in those cases, I’m sure the industry is so esoteric that alternative experience doesn’t exist, meaning that any experience you’re getting in that industry is the “right” experience.
Fortunately for me in the marketing field, I spent a lot of my non-day job hours working on WordPress sites and writing hundreds of articles for various publications. Of the nearly 2000 articles on my entertainment news & reviews site, www.workingauthor.com, over 800 of them are written by me. That’s been a significant weight to help balance the scales in my favor when looking for a job.
You work for your job, but make sure your job is working for you, too. If it isn’t, then take steps to protect your career. That’s the only way to survive in the professional world.