My Career Pivot
No distractions. I’ve been WORKING.
Extreme tunnel vision is something a lot of people struggle with. It takes A LOT to drown out everything that’s not the main goal. People have families, friends, obligations, and other things and sometimes (well all of the time).. things get in the way. Knowing how to navigate, delegate, and work around your life is like an extreme sport that takes an insane amount of practice.
This is something I’ve been working on my whole life. I do the most so I can gain the most. I put a lot on my plate because I know I work well under pressure and I enjoy pushing myself.
Currently, I’m pushing myself on 2 different fronts: career + education
My Career
As most of you know, I’ve been a member of the film industry for the last 6 years. Film and being creative has been a dream of mine since I was a little kid. And I made that dream come true. But I feel like my time has come to an end because I have bigger dreams and goals to get to. I’m a busy woman lol. And now is a better time than any because film production has fallen off significantly compared to when I first entered the industry. So I have been aggressively working on using my current skillset to pivot into a more reliable industry.
For those that don’t know, I’m a lighting technician and electrician. I’ve worked in film & television for the most part but I’ve also done commercials, concerts, music videos, standup comedy shows, and reality television. My specialty is power distribution, cabling, electrical wiring, and everything in between. Generators. UPS systems. PDUs. I do it all. If it requires electricity, that’s where I come in. For this career pivot, I’m going deeper into technology. And I’m upping the power. More hardware. More software. More focused on the cloud and the different types of networks that we use daily in production (anything we shoot, we send to the cloud at the end of the day to be stored for editing). More focus on keeping it powered up. Use what you have currently to get where you want to go. I have an extensive amount of skills and knowledge related to electricity that I can transfer into this industry. And after doing a bunch of research, I have found there is actually a shortage of people with this background and knowledge, so it seemed like the PERFECT place to get my start.
Starting out, I knew I wanted to aim at data centers because they require a lot of power, they’re the backbone of everything we know and use now, and they’re not going anywhere anytime soon. So I crafted a game plan:
First, I researched different careers and job titles in data centers. I looked at day in life videos on Youtube of the different roles and wrote down what I already knew, what I could learn on my own, and what I could see myself doing on the job. This is where I narrowed it down to 2 different types of jobs I know I could aim for: Data Center Technician (DCT) OR a role in Data Center Operations (electrical/mechanical/critical infrastructure). Different companies call the 2nd role different names but for the most part Data Center Technician is the same everywhere. DCTs deal with the servers and networks more while Data Center Ops/Facilities deal with the mechanical and electrical aspect of keeping the data center online 24/7.
Next I started looking into all of the different companies I could get hired at. Reddit came in handy here; I was able to find a ton of information there including full lists of all data centers in the US and how to find more (from the large, big named ones down to smaller, local ones), what companies hire newbies, who had the best employee benefits packages, and INTERVIEW TIPS AND STRATEGIES.
Then I got on LinkedIn and started searching for these job titles. I started connecting with people that actually work at these companies in roles that I was looking to get into. A lot of them were pretty helpful. Some even connected me with the recruiter they worked with to get hired. To me, this was like back up ammo to the information I found on Reddit. This was actually where I hit the jackpot. I connected with an individual that works for a large network of data centers. He’s a recruiter and specializes in finding people with skills that transfer over into the data center space. His job is to literally help people transition into this industry using their current skills. He provided me with a 200+ page PDF that he gives to everyone to help them get acquainted with data centers, how they operate, the different roles, and the basics of what you need to know. I read it front to back and anything I didn’t know, I was able to get on Youtube and get everything broken down to me at the most basic level.
Then.. I made a spreadsheet and GOT TO WORK. I applied to well over 200 data center roles across maybe 40 companies in about 2 months. I added a column for any contacts I had within the organization like the people I met on LinkedIn or any recruiters I met along the way like the gentleman that sent me that PDF. A lot of companies had multiple job listings for the same city but different locations and multiple job listings within one location. For example, AWS (Amazon Web Services) had like 15 different DCT roles open across 4 cities in one state and the job description said "continuously taking applications and doing interviews for this position as we have multiple openings that needed to be filled”. After talking to the recruiter, they had 3 data centers that needed people and another that was under construction.
Conclusion: After all of that research, connections, and applications put in… MY PHONE AND EMAIL AND LINKEDIN started buzzing like CRAZY. (I will not be naming names for privacy reasons) Two GIANTS in the data center space contacted me within 48hrs of applying. Both had internal recruiters reach out to me for pre-screening. Both referred me to interview rounds. Both interview loops went well.
Tech Giant #1: offered me a position out of state with signing bonus + relocation money, no roles available in-state at the moment
Tech Giant #2: in review (just finished this interview loop this week, still in the review part of timeline but it was overall positive)
Lesser known companies/Colocations (when multiple companies lease space in one data centers essentially sharing the data center)
#3: upcoming interview next week
#4: app reviewed but position not offered, holding my resume for review for further positions
#5: offer with signing bonus
All of the rest of them (not as big as the giants or the medium sized centers and colocation spaces but still GREAT places to start)
3 offers, 2 rejections and the rest I haven’t heard anything from… YET. I was told this process could be as quick as 2 weeks, and as long as 2-3 months so I’m not discouraged.
*NOTE: I applied to all of these places between July 15th & August 31. Interviews were completed between August 27th & September 10. Offers & rejections are still rolling in.
I haven’t made a decision yet. My decision will be based on pay, benefits like healthcare and tuition reimbursement (I refuse to pay for my degree lol, didn’t pay for my last one, my job did), signing bonus, location relative to me (no long commutes), shifts (day or night, A shift vs B shift), workload, work environment (good team fit), and opportunity for upward mobility within the company (do they hire from within or off the street?). All of this matters. One company offers full benefits from day 1 as well as $10k per year towards tuition and certs but only has night shift available on weekends. Another has a $5k signing bonus, day shift available, but only $2k per year to pay for certs and tuition. It’s going to come down to pay, health and tuition benefits, and work life balance for me.
I put this together because I wanted to give everyone a realistic view of what it looks like for someone pivoting into a new lane but with transferable skills. I’m not a newbie to the equipment they use, just a newbie to what they use it for. This helped me a lot in my interviews when they asked me certain questions about the infrastructure. They wanted to know that I had a basic understanding of what they had going on and that it wasn’t going to be hard to train me. For example, they don’t have to teach me Ohm’s Law or the difference between watts, amps, and volts. This will make it easier for them to teach me THEIR setup and what needs to get connected to what. They don’t have to teach me the dangers of high voltage electricity or about proper PPE in these environments, I’m familiar with it. I believe this made it easier for the conversation flow in the interviews.
Self education is one way to build up your confidence in these interviews. I spent hours every day researching these roles, what their day to day tasks looked like, and how I could bridge the gap between what I already knew and what I needed to know. For example, I’m familiar with distribution boxes from the film industry. In data centers they have PDUs which are Power Distribution Units. They essentially operate similarly but PDUs have a bit more features and that is what I focused on for my interviews. I made sure I knew the ins and outs of them. A lot of the equipment that I got familiar with, I had already used before but it had different names and different uses in film. My interviews didn’t feel like interviews, just causal conversations where they got to know me. The information flowed naturally because I was confident in my abilities.
My Education
I’m back in school working on my bachelor’s degree in Cloud and Network Engineering at WGU. I originally started out as a Network Engineering and Security major. Back in January, I let my program mentor know I would be pursuing a 2nd degree in Cloud Computing after I was done with the Network Engineering and Security track. To my surprise, she let me know that WGU was working on joining the majors together. This cut down my timeline by like TWO WHOLE YEARS. Look at how things come together:)... At this rate, I should have my degree in 2-3 terms max.
I plan on leveraging this degree + new job to learn more about the industry I’m aiming at: the cloud and everything that comes with it.
I’m still only 5 Oracle certs in and still working on #6 (had to pause for all of these interviews and data center studies). BUT those Oracle certs gave me A LOT of confidence in my interviews. In 2 of the interviews, they actually applauded me for doing the Oracle Race and told me that it showed initiative and a hunger to learn more about cloud technology. Even though they would be considered Oracle’s competition, they informed me that knowing more than one is a bonus, AND knowing the basics of ANY cloud platform is a bonus as well because it is easier to learn them all once you learn the basics of one of them.
Pro tip: Again, self education will build up your confidence. Like reading a lot of books exercises your brain. I spent most of my time this summer studying data centers, lurking the /datacenter sub on Reddit, lurking the forums/blogs that are provided by most cloud platforms and learning more about how everything worked. I completely immersed myself into a whole new world. This act alone made me feel like less of a rookie and more like a 2nd year player in the industry. By the time I got to my interviews, the abbreviations and other jargon felt natural to me. A lot of the equipment was the same to me, it just had a different name in this industry.
This is where I’m at right now. I will more than likely make a decision in the next 2 weeks and start my onboarding and training process. THE PIVOT IS UNDERWAY. I will keep you guys updated every step of the way, from this career pivot to getting my Cloud and Network Engineering degree to becoming a Cloud/Network Security Engineer. STACK ON.