Experiences over Experience

Part of the Careering into the Future Series

I as many others have been frequently asked about my ‘experience’. What do I know? How much of it do I know? Then they ask themselves, is she good enough? The list of years experience required is often shown, but is it the most important thing?

When we look at the definition and context of the different uses of the word experience — we go from pragmatic to contextual stories in a very swift swoop. In terms of our careers, the term experience can be determined thus:

Practical contact with and observation of facts or events

Definitions from Oxford Languages

We would use this in our story such as ‘she had 10 years experience in PHP’. It tells you that I have used that language for a decade, what it doesn’t tell you is what I did with it or if I was any good. However if we use the more contextual definition:

An event or occurrence which leaves an impression on someone.

Definitions from Oxford Languages

We can begin to frame our stories around experiences, and the tools with which we used in them. For example, ‘she has spent the last 6 months creating microservices to integrate with the eCommerce platform, Magento, that have allowed more efficient use of product data and reducing load time substantially both for the front end website and product import/export from the ERP.’

When you tell the story behind the tools, you can gain insight into the successes and skills utilised rather than assuming time equals progress.

Finding the experiences

When writing your next CV or preparing for your next interview, concentrate on the stories rather than the tool list. The following questions should help in defining these key moments. You can always keep coming back to add more but concentrate on one for each question — it’s ok to have an experience that answers multiple.

1. When have I had the most impact on my colleagues?
2. When have I proven benefit or learning towards my work?
3. What am I most proud of?
4. When have I learned some valuable lessons?

By answering these questions, you can work on the experiences in your career where you can tangibly show your skills both direct and transferable. Once you have a list, ask yourself some more questions about each experience.

1. What made this experience important to me?
2. What did I learn?
3. What impact did it have on the product/team?
4. What skills did I use during it?

From here we can create the holistic view of your skills, where you have used them and it gives you the stories with which to talk to others about so that they may learn about and from you. By communicating in this way, it is far more likely that you can share these experiences with confidence and understanding.