Tips from the 30+ crowd to "land" that dreamjob?

[Wizard of Wiring]

I am surprised I haven't noticed this forum before. But then again I am kind of a lone wolf garage developer. I made my first post here due and by the time I could hit the page reload button there were five views. Impressed doesn't quite cover it

So I was looking around the forum and decided this would be a good place to get some feedback on this topic. Over a decade ago I can remember trying to figure out how to use ipmasquerade and the like to overcome early limitations in NAT to get that quake, doom, or duke nukem server working with my lan and isdn simultaneously. I can remember spending hours upon hours playing around with flash when it first came out to have the coolest clan web site. Everything tech in my life was always game driven in my twenties. Now that I am approaching middle age I find that I wish I spent a little more time on affiliate marketing, finding a way to contribute to an open source project, or publishing some help related material. I haven't really fired a game up in a couple years and simply spend my spare time experimenting with development and servers in hopes I will be able to monetize my knowledge and vast experience in the small business sector at some point.

I have accumulated a wealth of knowledge and experience in development, servers, etc but it doesn't seem to be good enough for most employers. Nowadays they seem to be interested in younger candidates who have taken some sort of curriculum. I come up short when it comes to experience in the enterprise or a development environment because all of my experience is self induced. Ten years ago I probably would have had a very easy time breaking into an IT career before the certs, etc.

I was just curious on any suggestions some of you might have on how to turn my passions into a career because some of you were probably like me fifteen years ago but managed to get an administrator or developer job somewhere and have grown into IT managers and engineers.

[cluberti]

Hmm, that's tough, and I empathize with you - getting a job later in life with less than adequate "real" experience (at least to employers) is difficult nowadays, with the market somewhat saturated with young, cheap(er) talent and outsourcing. The only real thing I can suggest is to try and get in with a very large company, or a very small one - and avoid job postings that look like buzz-word bingo for certs and experience, as they're usually just fishing to get resumes to have on file "just in case".

Landing a job with a small company will mean you'll have to wow them with your professionalism and breadth of knowledge of everyday things IT, but will afford you more chances to learn and have an impact in the company's direction, which I always found quite rewarding.

Going for a job with a very large company usually means that they'll hire anyone who comes to the interview in a suit, has excellent communications skills and uses appropriate grammar (both in the interview and on the resume), and shows some troubleshooting skills and basic knowledge. While you'll just be a cog in the machine, you'll have a good chance to be exposed to a wide range of technology (old and new), and you'll probably get some regular (basic) training year over year as well.

I can't stress enough what it can mean to have certifications though, when your resume is thin on real-world jobs in the field. Most times I'd say certs are secondary achievements, but when you need to beef up your resume to get in the door to wow them with your personality and skills (and I'm sure you can do that ), certifications mean a vendor has (rightly or wrongly) certified you to a level of expertise commensurate with their testing methods, and you have at least a baseline of competence that an employer can rely on. This can be really key in getting that interview instead of your resume falling into the circular file, but it's always the interview itself that makes or breaks it for most companies.

Good luck, and hopefully you can get some other good tips from the guys and gals here.