Reinvent Yourself

How do you get a ".com job" if you've never seen Silicon Valley?

It starts with understanding what the job actually involves. Most people are ill informed about the jobs that they're going after. Who are the people who typically have jobs like the one you want? What are their backgrounds? Finding someone in a company who can answer those questions is ideal.

Is the idea to find the perfect job right away?

Your main objective should be just to get the employee badge that gets you beyond the front door every day. As long as it's something that interests you and something you think you'd be good at, then that's the perfect job to start with.

Isn't it hard, once you're in, not to feel like an impostor?

If you are street-smart, keep your mouth shut, and do an awful lot of listening, you'll quickly pick up your company's culture and how successful people do business there. If you want to understand the technical aspects of the job, though, you can't keep your mouth shut. You can't be afraid to ask questions, and you have to seek out the right people to ask. That's just as true for a manager as it is for someone who's not in a supervisory position.

But isn't it hard for people used to low-tech rhythms to keep up with the pace of change in the digital world?

To survive in the digital field, you have to be good at identifying trends, predicting how your company is going to respond, and then positioning yourself to be essential to your organization's success. That's hard for programmers to do. They can certainly keep up with technology, but most of them will never be marketing or pr people. If you're smart and agile, even if you're from a low-tech field, you might have a better chance of surviving. After all, if you've already changed radically once to get into this industry, you can probably do it again to stay there and advance.

Are there certain attitudes that are special to the .com world?

You have to be able to work amid total chaos. You have to be able to throw out lots of knowledge regularly, since much of what you know quickly becomes obsolete. You also need to be a self-starter. There is very little real management in high tech. And there's not a lot of training for the managers who are around. So be forewarned.

Contact Bill Schaffer by email (bill@hightechcareers.net).