How have you gained experience in new skills?

[GJABS]

Many of us have experienced the problem of not being put forward for roles due to not having commercial work experience with technologies, but being therefore unable to obtain that experience because we can't get the job.
Of course many of us have also got around this problem, as evidenced by many of us having developed our skills into new areas over the course of our contracting careers.

What I would like to know, is how in practice this has happened for you over the years?

I imagine there are five primary approaches:

1. You went perm.

2. You did a contract on the basis of an existing skill you had. And then over the course of the contract other unforseen tasks came up with different skills that the client allowed you to work on, allowing you to gain experience in those new skills.

3. You applied for a contract that required some or all skills where you didn't have the experience. You said this to the agent/client but they hired you anyway.

4. You applied for a contract that required some or all skills where you didn't have the experience. The client/agent didn't ask you whether you had the experience, or you fudged an answer that didn't address the point, but they hired you anyway.

5. You applied for a contract that required some or all skills where you did't have the experience. You were dishonest, and said you did have the experience.


The reason I ask is that I am looking to up-skill, having fallen behind somewhat, and I want to do it in a way that other folks have found works.
Thanks

[hobnob]

In my case, it's mainly been a combination of 2 and 3.

For option 2, it helps if your contract is inside IR35, because that gives more flexibility to take on extra tasks.

For option 3, the client won't always get someone who matches their wish list exactly, but it will depend on what the market's like.

There's also a difference between "I have the skills but no commercial experience" (e.g. from self-study) vs "I don't have the skill". If you just need the experience, you might be able to do some freebies, e.g. volunteering for a charity or helping out a friend who runs a small business.

[courtg9000]

When I left IT proper I went full time with my tech brokerage.
When I moved onto general brokerage, dealmaking, investing and my odd bit of UHNWI strategy I was massively surprised at how much I learned and how quickly I learned it.
Sink or swim I guess.
I will say this I seemed to pick the business stuff a lot quicker at times than I would have perhaps picked up a new programming language for example. Example: Nearly 4 years on i'm still saying I will get proficient in Python! - To be fair that one is a bit of another story in itself with its own problems!

[ladymuck]

I'm a mix of 2,3,4

I've been hired on jobs because I knew the person doing the hiring and they knew I'd pick stuff up quickly. I've gone for jobs where I don't meet the entire wish list and have gotten lucky (that's not happening again any time soon as the market now requires 100% matches to the spec plus skills they haven't thought of).

One thing I have done is look at each role and think, what else could I get out of it if I described the work in a different way? It's not lying, it's applying a different viewpoint to the skills you used.

Where I've done training courses but not actually used what I've learnt, I will always find a way to put the buzzwords from those courses into each role. At the very least I'll include them in the 'skills' section of my CV.

[PerfectStorm]

2,3,4 and 5. Good contractors can get the skills together before the start date - just watch a few videos, be conversant in the language and ask questions when you get there.

[northernladuk]

Mainly 3 and 4 for me. I tend to do a gig and move on rather than get bounced around so I'd say much less 2.

I've been contracting doing exactly the same thing for 15 years and the principles haven't changed so a decent client will see this as more important that knowing a particular platform with only a few years experience. Obviously the odd agent will say 'Oh must have Oracle knowledge' (for example). I tell them to get my CV in front of the client and we will see about that. Sometimes it works, sometimes it doesn't but only really with massive tech like SAP.

I'm fairly clear about what I do and don't know and I'll still quote experience even if I've only touched or seen it hoping they don't ask technical questions but won't outright lie. For me it doesn't matter that much what it does, the service principles are usually broadly the same.

I'd imagine it's not too different for PM's, BA's to an extent but key for other roles.

[Ketto]

Best ways to learn for me are moving around clients and moving around industries. Every client does things differently so you can see what works and what doesn’t work and nearly always learn something useful from each one.

Moving between industries is the most helpful in my view. You can feel a bit clueless at first so it can be stressful, but once you get to grips with a new industry beyond a basic level it often opens up a whole new business sector which you can target for future work.

[GJABS]

Thanks all, that's very useful.
It looks like item 3. is the most used, so that's where I'll address my efforts.
I'll try and avoid 5.

[cojak]

I made a really old video on this many moons ago (you can see the old versions of this website looking very similar to the current version.. )

Searching Part Deux (youtube.com)

[oliverson]

I tend to be pretty good at manipulating situations to acquire new skills to add to the ones I was commissioned for. Spotting opportunities and promoting myself for them. I've used this technique to pick up all sorts (WPF, Angular, Node.js, React, AWS, Azure, k8s, etc, etc., the list goes on). I guess I'm pretty good at learning things quickly, which helps. So, in summary I'd say always having an ear open to opportunities on the project you're working on.