Inexperienced in experience

As an adult, we more often than not end up spending the majority of our waking time at work. It’s been said before, and will continue to be said for the foreseeable future but it is still an important thing to think about. We require an income to survive, which means we must work in some way or another and usually we start at a young age.

When I had my son at 18, I’d only worked casual jobs before and hadn’t completed any sort of qualification besides graduating high school. I was fortunate enough to have supportive parents so I didn’t need to work for my sons first year of life. By the time I was ready to begin working, I was 20 and unqualified and wanted to work in child care. It took me months to find a job, and when I did I only earned about $800 a fortnight.

That wouldn’t have been to bad, but by then I was living with my then-husband who was financially controlling to say the least. I barely had any money left after buying groceries and paying for child care and our loan repayments. It was tight and eventually I decided I needed to go out of my comfort zone and start applying for jobs to better support myself if I wanted to leave.

So I did.

And I was lucky enough to get a call centre role with a child care software company, who was willing to take a leap of faith on me because I was confident and put myself forward. It was a low salary, but almost $20k a year more than I’d ever earned - so at $46k a year I was stoked.

I worked hard, I worked smart and eventually proved my worth to be offered a temp position doing BA work for the new software development. No change in pay - but experience in a field I hadn’t ever thought of before. I worked hard at that too - and eventually I rose to become a Team Leader for support - and that did earn me a pay rise! They asked my expectations and I bluntly said “I’m not that fussed about money - ive made do before and any pay rise is exciting!” Rookie mistake.

By this time I’d well left my ex-husband and was supporting my son and myself on our own in our own place. It was hard, it was expensive and we cut costs where we could - but we managed. I met a new partner not long into this and we eventually moved in together.

With his support I eventually then transitioned into an Application Support Specialist - another role is never even dreamed of being able to do. I had to take a pay cut - but that’s fine I said! I’m doing something more fun! I was still unqualified so I expected the lower pay - but I worked hard and showed interest in these new areas and was offered the chance to apply for these roles I thought I was woefully inexperienced for.

But you know what? I did just fine. And I got the experience and I learned more and more about the industry and how a software house functions - what it needs to survive and how to work with your clients to get a working product that they need.

I was satisfied with my place.

Until the inevitable happened. Our parent company bought our biggest rival, and named their CEO as the CEO of both our businesses. You can guess what happened from there. Work was shut down on our project. Our software went into maintenance mode and plans began to push our customers (of which we had the market share) onto their platform. They had specific “values” that you needed to abide by and an almost cult like attitude towards their CEO and business.

The depression sank in - not just for my self but for the whole business. All that hard work, that effort and experience was reduced to nothing overnight.

I couldn’t stay - but where could I go? My experience was limited and related solely to child care. I took a leap of faith and dived into an Adminsitration job at a child care centre - not something I’d ever done before. Once again the topic of pay came up and I was content with what was offered and one more time I said “oh that’s fine, I’m just excited to be here!” Another error.

I had the experience and the knowledge - but I hated it. I loved my colleagues and families but the work itself I found draining. So I chugged along again to another software house, similar type of software previously. As a simple customer service rep, they offered me the same salary as my old Team Leader wage - which apparently was woefully poor and is only barely standard for a CSR. I knew my friend was offered $10k more because he asked for it but once again I said nothing. “I don’t care about the money, I just want to be content at work” I told my partner.

But was I content? No. I was bored. I didn’t have enough work to keep me busy, and in my spare time I did data entry to a spreadsheet - my god I could feel myself aging.

But then - an old colleague reached out and showed me a job ad. It was with a prestigious organisation in the child care industry - and was an business role I would never have dreamed of applying for. I had no qualifications and no experience with this role.

But my colleague told me “you’d be great. You’ve used these programs, you know the legislation and the rules - I think you can do it.” I sat there and thought - I’ll just send a resume. I won’t bother with a cover letter as I doubt they’ll want me anyway. So I sent off the resume and went to bed without another thought of it.

It took one day. After one day I received that call - the call that said “we liked your resume and we’d like to interview.” I was nervous and excited but when she mentioned the starting salary I nearly threw up or choked - one of the two. I had never been offered that much money in my life. When she asked if that was acceptable I nearly bit my tongue.

“We’re open to negotiating on that.”

And for the first time i said “I’m happy to negotiate from that starting point”.

The interview is next week and I am studying like mad.

Am I inexperienced in the position?

Yes.

Am I qualified?

Probably not.

Do I have relevant experience that can be linked to the role?

Fuck yeah I do.

I’m not qualified and maybe I never will be. Maybe I’ll never have that degree to go with the job I want to do. But I am done with belittling myself and I urge everyone to do the same.

Who cares if you didn’t do university or haven’t worked in the industry before?

Pick apart your skills that can be transferred to the role and know your worth. Bite the bullet and go for something new.

With any luck - I’ll have gone from an unqualified assistant educator on $28k per year to a key part of a business on $80k a year. But god dam I will try.