How To Get The Experience (Before You Get The Job)

How to use micro-experiences to build a great story on how you're entering the industry

There is a continual problem for Bootcamps graduates: despite their best efforts, they struggle to find work they are sufficiently experienced to apply for even at the entry level. Most positions that call themselves junior engineers usually require 2-3 years of experience, not as an exception, but as a rule. They apply to jobs feeling they are qualified for but don’t get callbacks, largely due to this lack of experience. You can't get the experience without the job, but you can't get the job without the experience. This forces many career changers to wait for someone to ‘give them a chance, feeling helpless to do anything. But it feels like that chance may never come.

If you feel you’re in this situation, I’m here to tell you you don’t have to wait. Even if you have no prospects, you can begin building your career without anyone's permission. You can be in control and start moving forward towards your new career. I call this sort of work “micro-experiences”, the process of building expertise by building small, targeted experiences in the direction of your new career. Instead of waiting for the full-time experience that isn’t materializing, you can use your current opportunities and smaller steps to make the big experiences more approachable. Micro-experiences can build that pathway to a career in development

To begin, let’s chat about the brutal reality of most career transitions.

The Brutal Reality: Education and Project Work Alone Is Rarely Enough To Make The Transition

Most people imagine that by the time they have learned full-stack development, even for an extended period of time, that the next natural phase is to immediately jump into a full-time position. But the truth is that the market is not always so kind.

In 2012, it was common to see Bootcamps promoting a 90% job placement rating. This was largely due to the fact that full-stack web development talent of ANY sort was rare and there were not enough people in the market at the entry level to fill these positions. Bootcamps were a new concept at the time and were novel enough to grab employers’ attention. At this time, expecting a placement from the Bootcamp was reasonable.

Is that true today? Don't we have a talent crunch requiring more developers than ever? The answer is yes, but it's not for entry level positions. Bootcamps, Online Courses, and other educational channels have flooded the market with people who know the basics of web development (React, Bootstrap, JavaScript, etc.) and can create a reasonable-looking portfolio. Between college graduates, self-taught developers, and Bootcamp graduates, entry level positions don’t stay open for long. For common technology roles (such as full-stack developers), the bulk of the job demand comes from mid-level and senior positions remaining vacant. (In my organization, we’ve been understaffed for over a year due to these vacancies).

In other words, the challenge is not just finding a candidate who has the knowledge, but someone who has demonstrated experience in the role.

If you don't have the experience to show you know what you're doing, you are just as qualified as a new college graduate, the person who just completed a free JavaScript course on YouTube, and the self-learner who puttered around in their free time. In economic terms, there is a surplus of supply and not enough demand for entry-level developers. When that happens, competition stiffens and the job will often go to those most connected or with the most direct experience.

There are many jobs available, but not for entry level positions. And for those roles, the opportunity is quite great. It's at this level (call it mid-level or associate level) that graduates have the best chance of finding opportunities. And in order to do that, you’re going to have to approach your job search in an entirely new manner.

And it will become liberating.

Micro-Experiences: An Overview by Example

A micro-experience is a short-term engagement designed to give you targeted, demonstrable skills within a particular discipline, allowing you to tell compelling stories about how your experience. By taking on these micro-experiences, you can take control of your career trajectory, and begin building towards jobs that other engineers cannot compete in, simply because you have demonstrated experience.

So what does a micro-experience look like? Let’s take an example of a Business Analyst who’s interested in becoming a Spark Developer. They’re tired of just getting sent the reports, and instead, want to be the person in charge of controlling them. If you were to do this the traditional way, a motivated developer might go online, take a course on Spark, and then ask around their peer group what opportunities there are available. This, of course, fails more often than not and, worse, doesn’t add anything to their resume (education alone means very little, with some exceptions).

However, someone applying the Micro-Experiences framework realizes that even if they don’t get a job immediately in their discipline, they’re going to want to tell a great story about what they did. They also realize their resources are limited and they need to make a choice. They have many interests, but spark is really the one they are interested in now. While it hurts to say no to things like game development, they want to grow, so they make a choice to just focus on Spark and data development.

To start, they research their field and understand the specific job roles that are hiring. When doing this, they will find a number of common job titles: Data Scientist, Data Engineer, Business Intelligence Developer, etc. When looking deeper into the resumes, they see that there are some common patterns that underlying all of these positions, including great database management skills and python development skills. These skills are both important and require good experiences to back up the education, so they choose to start with Python development.

To begin, they start with a course on python development for data analytics and learn the skills as much as they can. While they do that, they also start to network with data analytics professionals, including local meetups, discord groups, and cold messaging folks on LinkedIn. They start to ask questions of people about how they got involved in the industry and what they did to learn. They’re constantly networking to understand the details of what the industry is looking for and needs. They’re also looking for people that they can help with their newfound skill set, both in their job and in these groups.

Eventually, they complete the python course and create a basic portfolio of scripts they’ve build, showcasing them on Github, LinkedIn, and their local networking groups. After this, they make the jump to actually take on a project to use their skills with. They find a local organization that’s looking for someone to help with automating their reporting, but don’t know how to do that. They can’t pay much (if anything), but they will give a referral and a good experience. The developer goes to work for them on their nights and weekends to automate the reporting. They’re making sure to dive into problems that are tricky or messy, and bringing them to a conclusion. After working for this group for a few months, they conclude the project amicably. The organization asks if the developer can stay on, but given their budget, they decide it’s not reasonable to continue.

They add that they’ve now taken a python learning course to their resume, and then add their experience working for a local company. They use the job requirements they saw previously to structure their experience, putting high-impact phrases and skills into the resume. They focus on the results they were able to bring this company and have great supporting evidence for the project. By the time they’re complete, they have a section for the consulting work they’ve done, solidifying their python experience. Better, they can start telling their story about what they’ve accomplished to people interested in jumping in. They’re on their way.

At this point, it’s been about 3 months. Perhaps they’re ready to go deeper into python. Perhaps they want to pivot and now learn database skills and meet with the network they’ve already developed. Perhaps they want to start applying for jobs again and see how the market responds. Or maybe they learn that development is not for them. Regardless, this experience has resulted in a complete experience and a great story.

How To Structure A Micro-Experience

At the core, a micro-experience is just a simple three-part structure, boiled down to the smallest level possible to allow for meaningful experiential knowledge. In essence, every career transition looks like this, though they are mostly hidden and not deliberately pursued. The micro-experience framework is an attempt at making this process deliberate and pursuable.

The structure looks like this.

Let’s dive in:

Define Your Direction, Exclude Other Paths

Identifying the overall direction one wishes to pursue. It does not have to be so specific as to know exactly where the path ends, but it must actively eliminate some pathways in the future. For example, you may decide that you want to pursue Data Science, but don't want to close the door on Game Development for Full Stack Development.

The micro-experience framework starts by deliberately shutting the door on other avenues, at least temporarily, so that one can focus their energy on the most meaningful work.

Identify Target Roles, Find Your Experiential Skill Gaps

Find the roles that are the in-demand positions at the mid to senior level for your field. There are very likely going to be a few role names that fit the general direction you’re heading, but the goal is to find 2 - 3 roles that you can compare yourself to.

Synthesize these roles in order to understand what is expected of these folks, and what skill gaps and experiential knowledge are missing from your skill stack. Review and analyze until there are several good options worth pursuing in this area.

Identify High Impact Learning to Cover Multiple Skill Gaps

Identify which demonstrable skills would be able to showcase the skills you’re lacking. When looking at your skill gaps, you’re not simply looking for skills you want to pass a coding test with, but skills that you can incorporate into both past experience (I have solved a problem involving X by…) and future extrapolation (If I was in a scenario that involved X, I would do…).

Then, figure out the education needed to be able to learn those skills and find a course to learn those skills. Then learn them.

Network Your Industry, Find The People to Guide Your Path

Find a community related to your area of expertise. Do not overlook the benefits of having a great network, whether it’s for finding better courses or giving you insight into future opportunities. As you get deeper into your learning, you may need to course-correct toward better learning structures.

Using your network to both contribute and act as a sounding board will help you make decisions on where to look deeper.

Land The Opportunity, Find Experience To Fill The Gap

Identify an opportunity that fits your criteria and commit to working it for a trial period. You should be working only a few months to get the experience, and then be able to remove yourself from the engagement after that period. During this period, you may get low or minimal pay, but only for the amount of time required for the experience. Anything additional should be deepening your skillset or be leading to full-time employment with that company.

At this point, you should be getting the experience that allows you to tell a great story. It should feel like growth. If it doesn’t, it’s not the right opportunity.

Capstone The Experience and Tell Your Story

After you’ve completed your work, write the experience in your resume as a full work experience. Frame it as an internship, research project, or whatever is appropriate, but make sure to show it as your work experience. If you can, include documentation and projects along the way to show your work openly.

These line items should directly connect with your experience and talk about how you now just accomplished the work but struggled along the way. Talk to your network about your experience to see if the experience works.

Starting Anew

And then, once you’ve completed this cycle, you’re ready to either start again with a different skill set or to move into looking at the market again.

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With this framework, you'll be able to identify what areas you wish to move into, and then have a continual path to learn and renew your skills. It's also intended to be small enough to give you a taste of a new industry without committing you to a long-standing commitment. Compared to the current process, which would commit you to the industry before you really understand it, you can try out a new industry in as little as six months (and even less if it’s a compounding experience).

By the end of each cycle, you will have gotten the following:

• New learning in a field that covers gaps in your current resume

• A demonstrable skill set that will lead to experiential knowledge in interviews

• Connections to industry professionals and building working relationships with people in your industry

• A community of people to dive deeper with and eventually start contributing to

• The ability to redo this process and move into more and more diverse and interesting industries

Where Do We Go From Here?

If you're motivated, I hope this gives you an idea of where you can start. While I've been unconsciously using this framework and recommending it for years, I am in the process of formalizing it into something more substantial.

If you are interested in a more hands-on approach, I am currently planning on developing a workshop to help people who feel they need additional support. If this is something that's interesting to you, you can fill out this (no obligation) interest form when details become available:

In the meantime, I will continue to flesh out this framework for everyone to see, here first on my substack and through my various other channels. If you're interested in hearing more, please subscribe for more details. Thank you!