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Writer's pictureTim Buchalka

Changing Jobs: How To Transition To A Software Development Career From A Different Field

Today, I want to discuss a way that you can take your existing skills, if you’re already in a career outside of programming, and use those skills to get a better entry level job than you’d normally get starting out as a career or in your career of programming.


As I outlined earlier in the video, I wanna talk about a way that you can take your existing skills, if you’ve got an existing career or if you’ve had some jobs outside of programming, and your considering getting into programming.


Well, the way that you can actually start out and get a better entry level job is to transition into a career in that same field. Now, let’s use an example here of perhaps you were a nurse. So someone who started out as a nurse in the health profession and decided for whatever reason that it wasn’t for them. You know, maybe they’ve done their training, they’ve become qualified, and perhaps they’ve done a few years of work in that field. Eventually, they’ve just decided that that’s not for them.


Look, that’s a very common thing when you’re starting out in a new career, you think this is the career for you. You make a decision and you just find for whatever reasons it’s not for you. Then you are now looking at programming and thinking, yeah, I’d really like to get into that. Well, one way you can do that, is again to take your existing skills and try and get a job within that industry.


So specifically, what I’m talking about is once you’ve got your basic programming skills, look for a company in the health field, within that health profession field. It might be someone who is making imaging equipment, it might be someone who makes software, that makes life easier for nurses to do their job. Or anything relating to the health profession in general.


Now the reason why you can end up getting a better job is you’ve got some fantastic industry skills or demand expertise as we call it in the industry. And in fact, experience, is very valuable in the eyes of a future employer. Now the reason for that is, you obviously know that in many cases, the terminology for that industry. You know the words to use and you obviously got that information relating to the health industry in this particular example. You’ll be more qualified, or I should say more valuable, in the eyes of the employer because you’ve got that extra experience.


So this can be a great way to sort of leapfrog over an entry level job. You might still start out as a junior programmer, but immediately your demand expertise will come to the fore and people will be relying on you. Hopefully to take that expertise, those skills, in your first job. So consider doing that if you’re looking to transition into programming. Don’t ignore the existing skills that you’ve already got in another field. See if you can capitalise those, or capitalize on those, and use those to leapfrog and get a better first entry level job.


I hope that helped. If you’ve got any questions, feel free to leave a comment and I’ll get back to you.

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