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imagine you went to school for four
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years to get a computer science degree
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you graduate then you get a job at a
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consulting firm for a software
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engineering position you're on that job
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for four months you're doing a great job
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then all of a sudden you get a notice
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that you're being laid off now you work
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to get a new job you literally submit
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hundreds and hundreds of resumes and
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you're getting little to no call backs
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you're in a conundrum because you got to
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figure out how do I keep the lights on
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get some form of money generating job
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and at the same time you feel as though
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okay if these recruiters aren't calling
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me back there may be a skills gap in
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this video I'm going to walk you through
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how I would go from being a software
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engineer junior software engineer from
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being laid off to trying to pivot and
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transition into something else in a
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rough job market now if you're new here
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I'm Greg the creator of Thoughtful Tech
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Cloud and each week I create a video to
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help you navigate your AWS cloud and
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tech journey if you haven't already go
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ahead and subscribe right now okay so
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you have that computer science degree so
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you're already coming in with a strong
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technical background but recruiters
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aren't calling you back one thing that
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you may have working against you is that
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you are in a junior role and there's a
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lot of recruiters right now looking for
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more senior roles the other thing which
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you may not have taken into account is
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that you're also in competition not only
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with other software engineers but also
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AI not to mention you got laid off which
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means other people probably got laid off
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as well including people that may have 5
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10 or even more years of experience so
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now you are competing against a huge
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talent pool and it's going to be very
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tough so if you're not getting call
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backs don't take it personal it's just a
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lot of great talent out there and the
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jobs are just shrinking but I'm going to
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help you work through how to rise above
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what I call that level of obscurity and
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give yourself more visibility now if you
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haven't got many callbacks we want to
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troubleshoot and take a look at uh a few
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things the first thing is what is the
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resume looking like right take a look at
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the jobs that you've been applying to
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and then figure out are there some
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skills that those jobs were asking for
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and be honest with yourself and say
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actually you know what uh I'm seeing a
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trend in these two to three skills and I
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don't have these on my resume okay and
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then take a look at going after those
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the other thing is yes you could go
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after another software engineering role
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but keep in mind if you've been at this
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for a while and nothing is happening
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you're going to have to change something
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up because uh you just can't go
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indefinitely waiting and keeping your
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fingers crossed that somebody's going to
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hire you so what you what can you do all
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right so you can take that great
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software engineering background and
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there's a few different avenues that you
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could go i'm going to give you a couple
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that you could consider so if you are
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lacking cloud skills one of the next
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things to figure out is how can I take
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my software engineering background and
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then combine that with some cloud skills
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for example so I I definitely recommend
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AWS so there's two
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certifications that I would suggest just
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as a at a foundational level to get your
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cloud knowledge I would say at a at a
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great starter baseline so that's going
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to be the AWS certified cloud
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practitioner that's a foundational AWS
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certification requires no technical
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background that teaches you uh the
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basics and fundamentals of AWS once
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you've gotten that up under your belt I
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suggest moving on to the AWS solutions
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architect associate this is going to be
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uh beyond the uh fundamental level get
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you at uh the associate level which
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would teach you uh well architected best
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practices on AWS this is going to be
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highly advantageous for you with that
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software engineering background so this
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is going to cover things on AWS such as
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how to build cost optimized
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operationally excellent reliable uh
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performant and uh sustainable
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architectures and secure architectures
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on the AWS cloud so after that that
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gives you your nice baseline what are
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some of the roles that you could combine
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with your software engineering skills
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and your cloud background one of the
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ways uh things that you could do is
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considered a cloud support engineer role
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so you're already technical right you
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could go the support route so let's say
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you don't want to be directly uh
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customerf facing where you're like you
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know going in front of meetings and
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traveling to go visit customers but
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maybe you want to be a maybe you want to
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work with customers but be a little bit
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more behind the scenes you could do
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something like a cloud support engineer
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role so let's say if you wanted to do
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something like that at AWS you would
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pick uh a certain product or service
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that you would align to then you would
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be taking inbound calls and or tickets
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you would be aligned to a queue and then
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you would be within a certain domain of
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expertise within that role and then
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you're going to become really good with
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that over time now from that cloud
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support engineer role the pathway is
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that you could evolve into u a more
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complex or more responsibility role in
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the future based on that cloud support
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engineer background in which you could
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go into a technical account manager role
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now a technical account manager role is
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going to be uh it's going to be a
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support role but you're not just going
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to be working off of tickets now you're
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going to directly have uh a customer
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could be one customer if it's a very
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huge enterprise customer or you could
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have you know a handful of customers
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maybe two to four something like that
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where now you are their
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go-to support contact not just when
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something breaks but you're also working
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proactively to make sure that uh
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everything in operations is looking good
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and keeping their their architecture
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stable another position that you could
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do as you learn more with cloud skills
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and combined with your software
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engineering background you could decide
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you know what maybe I'll take a look at
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that solutions architecture role now
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I've been a solution architect for many
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years at AWS and essentially what a
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solution architect does is you work with
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uh a business which are your customers
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you learn what business outcomes that
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they're looking to achieve then you work
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backwards from there to figure out okay
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what is the underlying architecture
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products services and best practices
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that we need to put together to help
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that business deliver their business
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outcome now our solution architect would
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need to be deeply technical as well as
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have business skills and a lot of people
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skills and a very high degree of being
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able to communicate at a high level so
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you could be talking to other software
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engineers and you could also be talking
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to CTOs CEOs and that whole seuite now
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let's back up to your software
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engineering background uh in any of
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these roles that I mentioned support
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engineer or technical account manager or
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solution architect your software
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engineering background is going to be
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very vital because guess what chances
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are you're going to be interacting with
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other software engineers and developers
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so you've been down there in the
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trenches you know what it feels like you
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know what it feels like to you know to
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uh do CI/CD pipelines deploy code all
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that type of stuff so your ability to
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relate be empathetic and uh be able to
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help guide a software engineer or a dev
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team into the cloud or into the best
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practices is going to be extremely great
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something else I wanted to tell you
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about is something called what I call
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the skills stack now keep in mind let's
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say you're in a situation where you've
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sent a ton of resumes you're not getting
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a lot of call backs you got to
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troubleshoot like I was saying earlier
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about why that is so the good thing
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about having submitted a lot of jobs is
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that you've read a lot of job
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descriptions you've read a lot of job
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requirements and you're going to start
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seeing trends form one of the number one
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areas that you want to take a look at is
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what are the employers asking for and
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then match that to the skills you're
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bringing to the table and then be honest
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with yourself to say you know what I got
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some skills gaps here right so if you've
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been deep into software engineering and
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you realize okay I don't have much cloud
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uh I haven't really deployed much to
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production then those are the areas that
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we have to address which again I was
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saying the AWS cloud practitioner is
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going to help you out big time and
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solutions architect associate at the
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same rate I don't want you to get stuck
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and just think or have the misconception
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that you get a certification and then
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after you put that on your resume wham
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all of a sudden recruiters are going to
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start throwing themselves at you because
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that typically doesn't happen while
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you're getting that theoretical
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knowledge and while you're working on
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those couple oferts that I mentioned you
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also want to make sure that you're
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gaining hands-on experience this can be
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through doing labs and or cloud projects
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if you would like for me to give you a
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recommendation of a place where you can
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go you can check out AWS Skillbuilder
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okay they have a number of different
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training programs they also have uh
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builder labs which are hands-on labs
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that you can do in a real AWS
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environment that spin up for you and
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then you can solve a particular problem
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this is a great area for you to start
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now I've given you a lot of information
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here and the last thing I want to give
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you that's important which a lot of
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people skip okay so you're gaining all
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these certifications you're getting the
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hands-on skills but there's one area
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which is missing and that area is we got
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to know we we have to come up with a way
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of how people know you so there's a
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saying about uh it's not what you know
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it's who you know i would extend that a
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little bit further and say it's not it's
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not only is it who you know but it's who
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knows you and what we need to do here is
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uh while you are going on the search
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what I recommend and this this is not
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going to be instant gratification this
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is going to be something that um you're
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going to need to invest some time in you
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need to become more visible how can you
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do that well one of the ways you can do
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it you can show up physically at
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conferences and stuff like that but you
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can't go to conferences every day but
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something you can do every day is you
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can increase your presence online let me
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ask you a question where do you think
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most of the recruiters live one of the
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areas that they live and they can see
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you is LinkedIn so you could literally
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carry people on your learning journey
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right you could talk about what you're
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learning do post on that videos on that
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teach people what you're learning uh
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demonstrate some of your projects uh
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write a blog on something that you've
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created post this on a LinkedIn for
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example videos you could do screen
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shares and walk people through your
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GitHub repo your technical portfolio do
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these videos put this on YouTube and
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just try to figure out how to lift
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yourself up from uh the unknown to the
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known so these are some areas that uh I
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would recommend for you i've given you
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some some areas at a high level if you
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want to get more specific based on your
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background I am now doing one- on-one
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mentorship sessions i have a link in the
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description below and feel free to sign
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up for one of my one-on- ons where we'll
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sit down together on a call you can walk
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me through your background and some of
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the constraints that you're under and
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then I can take all of my years of
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experience all of my insights and we can
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come up with next steps forward for your
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own situation so if you're tired of
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guessing around and trying to figure out
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you know what should I do this should I
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do that bounce off what you're thinking
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with with an expert i hope you enjoyed
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this video and I look forward to seeing
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you in the next
