Hello Fellow Monks,

I have recently become unemployed. I come to you seeking advice, and perhaps a little solace. There have been many "what should I do with my life" posts before, and I have read most of them and participated in many, as I tend to always have an opinion. When it comes to my own life, though, it seems that I am in need of a little guidance.

I have spent the last three years doing bioinformatics. That is to say, writing lots of Perl parsers, glue, and db connectivity tools, in addition to scientific analysis. Really, if you where to take the word "bioinformatics" out of my resume, it might look any other developer/low level manager (I ran a small group: me and two other programmers). So the question is this: do you think it will work for me to do just that (remove bioinformatics from my resume) and get a job as a group leader doing development work in another field? It's not that I don't enjoy bioinformatics; I do. It's just that I am not ready to leave Ohio right now, and there is precious little need for bioinformatisists here.

Things potentially working against me are that I have a PhD in Chemical Engineering. Plenty of prospective employers may look at that and toss my resume. Also there is the very scientific bent to all the coding I've done until now. Sure I can use DBI and design databases, but they have all been for a scientific purpose. A general business employer may look at that experience and not see how it applies to his situation.

Things working in my favor are that I have experience coding in several languages and with big databases, as well as some experience managing a small group.

So, what do you think? Can I "refactor" my resume to look like a more general developer/manager?

Thanks for your insights,
Scott

In reply to (OT) What should I do with my life (career advice sought)? by scain

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