HACKER Q&A
📣 brayhite

How to prepare for job search with experience at only one company?


Since graduating college, I've worked at a single company (8 years). It was a local startup that has since been acquired and continued to operate under its name. Given my professional career is limited to this startup and company culture, I fear I don't have much diversified experience with different processes, expectations, general ways of doing things within the tech and software industry. At least no experience beyond however long we tried sprints, agile, kanban, different tools, different third party/outsourced services, etc.

For context, I started as a marketing intern, and over time worked officially in customer support, QA, project manager, and now product manager capacities. No coding experience, for what it's worth.

The company still exists and has local recognition, so I'm confident company reputation could go a long way looking for a gig at another local company within the tech space. And that said, I'm not necessarily actively looking for a new job, but the prospect is appealing to me to say the least.

Is this something I just need to try overcoming by emphasizing other positives? Beyond reading secondary takes or familiarizing myself with industry standards within my current and previous roles, is there more I can do? In practice is this not that big of a deal?


  👤 AnimalMuppet Accepted Answer ✓
I don't think it's that big a deal. (Disclaimer: I'm not a hiring manager.)

It's even something of a plus. If I hire someone, I don't want to hire someone who's going to jump ship in a year. You were at your first job eight years? That puts you a leg up on people who have had five jobs in eight years. I'm not interested in being their sixth job in nine years.