# What are employers actually looking for?

- **Episode:** [135](https://agents.truthliesandwork.com/episodes/135.md) (2024-10-10)
- **Type:** panel-interview
- **Tags:** employer-expectations, hiring, skills, job-search
- **Time:** 26:11–29:35 (start 1571s)
- **Listen:** [https://truthliesandwork.com/135?t=1571](https://truthliesandwork.com/135?t=1571)

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[26:11] John White: Yeah, especially when you're going to those communities and seeking them out, it's really good to ask for maybe informational interviews is what I call them. I'm not interviewing for a job, I'm just asking you your view on your role, what the day-to-day looks like, how you get personal satisfaction and career advancement in that role and in that industry. And I think it's another way to describe or to gain insight into a previous question you asked, which is, what are the roles in this industry or in this technology area? Right. So, In this network engineer example, what is a network engineer? What do you do on a daily basis? Is that a physical thing? Is it a software thing? Is it a design thing? Is it an operational thing? Are there aspects to all of those things? Tell me what that looks like and then tell me how you got into it, as Nick mentioned. Depending on the role, there's different entry points. I would say the entry point which requires the most still has a bias towards formal education is programming or software engineering or whatever it's called today. I would say the industry still has a bias for a 4-year degree in computer science when hiring for software engineering. That might be moving a little bit away from that bias, but it's still biased in that direction. So getting as much formal education there towards a 4-year degree is probably going to benefit one. And it might not necessarily even be the 4-year degree, it's just that it's an easy way for somebody to filter and say, well, were you able to go and do this thing and complete it? Most other IT operations types of jobs, there's very few places that actually have formal degree programs. It tends to be a little bit more like an apprentice, journeyman, master type of process without the actual benefit Of a formal apprenticeship journeyman and master certification or process. At least in the United States, for example, journeyman electrician actually means something. It means that you went and got a journeyman certificate in being an electrician, which tends to be regulated. In IT operations, that doesn't actually exist. The very typical path into the industry that we came from, IT operations, is you were not doing IT operations, but you were maybe the most compute savvy or demonstrated the most skills in that area, and then just eventually got asked to do it. That's the weird typical entry point