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technical background / previous devs

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    #21
    Originally posted by Antman View Post
    What happens when the reference comes back from the previous client with a different title to the one you said that you were doing?
    The candidate looks a fraud, not the agent. Nuff said.
    The greatest trick the devil ever pulled was convincing the world that he didn't exist

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      #22
      Originally posted by Antman View Post
      What happens when the reference comes back from the previous client with a different title to the one you said that you were doing?
      Or bump into another contractor you've worked with who points this out to a client.

      What you have to consider is that any half decent interviewer will be able to spot you are not what you say from your answers. There is blagging and there is just not having the right knowledge and experience to answer the questions without exposing lack of experience. The last role, whatever you want to call yourself, just did not set you up with the knowledge and experience you need to cut it at interview.

      And again... you are gambling with your income. You 'might' pass but if you don't you are back to the bench with no income.
      Last edited by northernladuk; 14 February 2017, 10:21.
      'CUK forum personality of 2011 - Winner - Yes really!!!!

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        #23
        I have seen people become BA's through contracting but that is because a good technical BA is always a decent option and some companies will happily take a techie who has an interest in BA and filling in any missing gaps.

        The odds of doing the same to become a PM is more unlikely as there are specialists who just do PM work - and the noddy PM bits a lot of people do without thinking (chairing meetings, status reports).

        Personally if you are techie the best option is to move towards solution architecture. Yep you will still need to learn about new things but its a breadth of knowledge that's required not depth of knowledge.
        merely at clientco for the entertainment

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          #24
          Originally posted by bubbles View Post
          For example from a development background moving to a technical product/project manager.
          Think of it like this, would you, as a developer apply for a Senior Project Manager (needing 10+ years experience) permie job?

          (Or more precisely, should you?)

          and you might get a junior PM contract, but that is a big might, that would probably be luck more than anything else (really low rate, not many people apply), and you still have to worry about contracts 2 and 3.

          As others have said, find a permie role doing what you are doing now, and get a move sideways into PM there is probably the best way of making that change.

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            #25
            Originally posted by jmo21 View Post
            Think of it like this, would you, as a developer apply for a Senior Project Manager (needing 10+ years experience) permie job?

            (Or more precisely, should you?)

            and you might get a junior PM contract, but that is a big might, that would probably be luck more than anything else (really low rate, not many people apply), and you still have to worry about contracts 2 and 3.

            As others have said, find a permie role doing what you are doing now, and get a move sideways into PM there is probably the best way of making that change.
            I see you're point but I'm not looking to move to a senior PM and I've seen a lot of PMs do many technical errors actually which I feel I can contribute to as I have that tech background.

            Ok another example: let's say product manager. I product manager doesn't even exist without the dev and in smaller companies that role is split between the team. Every team has a dev but not a PM

            Thanks for the advise further up ... I might keep trying and see how it goes. I do think (as mentioned above) going perm and trying to make the switch might work but if you're good at what you do the company won't allow it.

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              #26
              I moved from dev to ba to solution architecture. In all honesty the transitions were not hard due to the development environment I was in before. You had to do elements of these roles as we weren't a huge business to support a full change team.

              I did BA training through bcs and spent 3 years applying that before moving into architecture. I feel having a dev background allows you to understand the finer details of requirements elicitation whilst also giving a business perspective around it.

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                #27
                Originally posted by munkee View Post
                I moved from dev to ba to solution architecture. In all honesty the transitions were not hard due to the development environment I was in before. You had to do elements of these roles as we weren't a huge business to support a full change team.

                I did BA training through bcs and spent 3 years applying that before moving into architecture. I feel having a dev background allows you to understand the finer details of requirements elicitation whilst also giving a business perspective around it.
                cheers, was this all contracts?

                how did you mention on your CV that you had to do those elements in your current role as it was not a huge business. This is what I'm finding hard to explain - especially to recruiters that just look at titles.

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                  #28
                  Originally posted by bubbles View Post
                  cheers, was this all contracts?

                  how did you mention on your CV that you had to do those elements in your current role as it was not a huge business. This is what I'm finding hard to explain - especially to recruiters that just look at titles.
                  You clearly need to put more detail in your CV describing what you have done on every recent project.
                  "You’re just a bad memory who doesn’t know when to go away" JR

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                    #29
                    Sometimes you can get away with describing what the client does rather than what you have done, but you need to have picked up some knowledge along the way. It always helps if it is fairly leading edge because if you have some knowledge you are probably in front of the interviewer.

                    so moving to Agile, Devops, continuous delivery, bigdata, Cloud etc. you can get away with not having being a central part of it as long as you have kept in the cycle and done some self learning, so you have been exposed to the theory and the practice.

                    Moving from one mature role to another is much more difficult as you are likely to be interviewed by someone with an in depth understanding of the new role who expects you to answer questions that you could pick up in 5 mins from Google.

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                      #30
                      My cv is broad. Over the years I've worked on a lot of projects but I tend to focus on what I added to each of them along with the outcome of the project. As eek mentioned it's about having a general understanding of as much as you can rather than depth of knowledge. Over the years I've noticed a trend towards data related projects and data architecture but my background was in Web development (front and backend).

                      Exposure to as many types of work is key. Im no expert on security and infrastructure but I recognise that and therefore know when to either learn more or pick the brains of the sme.

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