A recipe for successful reskilling in IT

I recently attended a great event on reskilling in IT organized by my colleagues from 7N Recruitment Department. The main part of the event was a panel discussion in which three IT people shared their reskilling experience. And they had a lot to share, as each of them had made a profound and successful career change.

Nothing will ever make up for missing out on the 7N event, but I hope the following summary will also be valuable for you. Below, I described the key ideas about reskilling I heard that Wednesday.

What is reskilling and why is it relevant to career planning?

First, let’s focus on topic relevance. In the future, reskilling (or “the process of learning new skills so you can do a different job” – a definition from Cambridge Dictionary) will be experienced by a greater and greater number of employees. Technological, economic, and social change is occurring at such a speed that, assumedly, there are very few occupations today that will be performed in the same way or will exist at all in 10 years' time. Labor market experts may have different opinions on the scale and pace of the change in the future career landscape, but they do agree on one thing: many people will undergo the change (e.g. of profession) every few years.

The motivation behind reskilling varies. It could be

• a desire for a more interesting or simply different new job;
• a desire for financial advancement;
• a desire for a more secure (e.g., automation-proof) profession.
• all of these things together.

The important point here is that in order to be effective and meaningful, reskilling should not be the main goal but should serve the above-mentioned purposes.

So what is the recipe for successful reskilling?

Ingredient 1: familiar environment

All panelists whose experience was discussed had reskilled within the same organizations for which they had previously worked. Not guaranteeing a desired effect, it, however, greatly increased their chance for success. The same company is, after all, the people who know you (or have an opinion of you from those who know you). As a result, they are much more likely to accept some risk associated with an employee who is just entering a new area.

I have not come across any reliable data related to successful reskilling processes done within the same organization (versus involving a company change). However, my quite numerous observations suggest that the chance of successful reskilling within the same company is much higher than when you reskill, changing companies.

Ingredient 2: using pre-existing knowledge/skills

It is much easier to follow the reskilling path when you enter it with a significant resource in the form of pre-existing knowledge and skills. A software developer will be retrained at a faster rate as a system analyst (an authentic example from one of our guests) than if they want to become, say, an audio engineer. Bringing useful resources from previous work into the new professional world will be advantageous both for you and for the inhabitants of that new environment.

Of course, there are situations in which using what you have achieved so far is impossible (or perhaps not even desired). Then, all you can do is enter a new area from scratch, which is likely to flatten the learning curve (delay the moment of being fully competent) and, unfortunately, negatively affect the level of earnings.

Ingredient 3: mentor

Or at least someone you can simply talk to about the role you are interested in. The perfect person would be someone who has already followed a path similar to the one you are planning to follow. However, someone who knows the area you intend to enter from a practical, ‘everyday’ side will often be enough. Such a person can, for example, provide invaluable tips on what to learn and in what order, which could shorten the time of achieving the goal as much as possible. They can also support you by giving realistic, honest feedback on your plans and how far you are in achieving them. In general, conversations and relationships are a good thing – at work and in private life. Loners find it harder.

Ingredient 4: time

IT reskilling is more of a marathon (or at least a middle-distance run) than a sprint. The bigger the leap between what you have been doing so far and what you want to do after reskilling, and the longer you have been doing the former in your career, the longer the run is likely to be. That's why the first two ingredients (a familiar environment and the use of pre-existing knowledge/skills) are so important: they can significantly reduce the run time and the effort put into it. However, the latter is indispensable.

At the same time, it is better to divide the effort into smaller parts and lengthen it over time (running slower and longer) than to tire yourself out quickly with an impressive but short sprint. Persistence and consistency are valuable allies here. It is worth remembering Peter Drucker's thought that people often overestimate what they can accomplish in one year, but they greatly underestimate what they could accomplish in five years. (Although in these hectic times, in order to appeal to somebody and not discourage them with the vision of five long years, you'd probably have to talk about a month and a year...)

Ingredient 5: plan B

Reskilling is not necessarily successful. It always entails some risk. All three of the reskilled participants of the discussion spoke more or less directly of the relative comfort with which they sailed into new waters because they did so being aware that if it didn't work out, they could safely return to the old port – in their case, programming. Their skills hadn't aged, and the tools typically used in their job hadn't rusted to the extent that they couldn’t come back. In the case of one panelist, by the way, they are still developed – he keeps programming after hours. In his case, therefore, it is probably more appropriate to talk about upskilling than reskilling).

A good Plan B means giving up the all-or-nothing thinking, i.e., if you achieve success, it will be great, and if you don't, it will be a total disaster. You’d better keep a calm head. Life will probably bring some stress anyway.

I guess these are all ingredients. Like in the case of any dish, a good recipe and sticking to it make a desired result more probable but do not guarantee it. The stories of our three panel guests were examples of successful reskilling. It is worth being aware, however, that there are probably quite a few stories where the reskilling attempt failed or was only partially successful. But should you be discouraged because of them? By no means. As I have written, more and more often, some form of reskilling will be the rule rather than the exception in our professional lives.

But what would I know about reskilling? I've never gone through it myself. Even in running, I have never achieved a marathon, only meager 15 kilometers, and even that happened by mistake, as I confused the route in a foreign city.