Concrete Skills
This pattern is something I’m personally invested in, as the feeling of imposter syndrome is incredibly hard to shake. Depending on the career path I eventually go down, I plan to get as familiar with whatever basic techniques and software that the project will be using. I’ll undoubtedly be inexperienced and unprepared, but to demonstrate a basic level of competency with the most basic of the workload, I want to be as proficient as possible with the fundamentals. My biggest fear would be what the pattern refers to as “day care,” as I would loathe to be babysat in such a professional setting. On top of this, I thought the comment that one’s concrete skills are basically what get your foot in the door was quite insightful for someone like me lacking any sort of hiring experience. I’m also very grateful that the pattern lists a few of the concrete skills with examples like understanding of open source frameworks or basic web design.
In addition to stressing the importance of the concrete fundamentals, the pattern also goes on to explain how your reputation can be based on the credibility of your portfolio. As you grow from being the new guy into a successful developer, your work will speak for itself and shatter that initial requirement for consistent fundamentals. While the former is still important, you won’t have to work nearly as hard to prove your utility to a team.
For the Action portion of this pattern, I’m certainly on board and will implement this in my future job searches. While considering a few different professionals, there may be consistently noted discrete skills in the CVs, so that could be a great skill to implement regardless of the career path. On the other hand, some of those skills may be niche, but hyper specific to the type of job you’d like to apply to in the future. The pattern recommends regularly examining your own CV and implementing a similar kind of honed skill set for the specific position you may be applying to. On top of this, I would say that engaging with professionals or colleagues in this manner would work to bolster professional relationships, which could lead to advances down the road if they reflect on your tenacity.
From the blog CS@worcester – Dummies that Code by howbrash and used with permission of the author. All other rights reserved by the author.