Quiet On the Homefront...Not Really

So although its been a little quiet over here, my life hasn't! Let's just say I've been trying to get a handle on my next career move. What I'm finding is, this current job market is not so great. I'm still working at my current job but our team is getting smaller and the project that I'm on is starting to see the sunset on the horizon within the next year or so. How do I get ahead of it?

I would love to stay with my current employer, however they may or may not have work for me after this project is closed up. So being the proactive person that I am, I started looking at the job market, and to what I'm finding is almost all of the jobs out there are saying Bachelor Degree or equivalent experience. I have the experience, just not the bachelors. I figured since this is an OR statement it should be treated with one or the other.

However I'm personally finding out after submitting applications and not getting any responses has me thinking that its more of a filter more than and OR.

Since I don't have a bachelor's degree, I'm in the second bucket and candidates that do have a bachelor's degree are put into the first bucket. Although my experience may trump bachelor degree candidates my resume isn't being looked at because the employer is able to find a match within the first bucket of candidates.

It may also be that being in the technology sector as of right now is flooded with layoffs from big corporations to government. AI and automation is also a large factor that jobs are being cut. So yeah... not a great time to be looking. 🤔

So I jumped on my ATV and took off on a trail for a bit, thinking about my next move... I find it silly, but I'm looking towards working on a bachelor's degree with the idea that I'll at least be put into the first bucket of candidates. It's kind of dumb, because although I hear all the time that experience outweighs a degree, at this point in time it seems to be filtered. I have appeared to hit the ceiling and if I want to move up in my career this maybe the only way to at least get noticed. It's not a guarantee either, I'm not expecting my inbox to have thousands of offers once I get a bachelor degree, however it will "check the box" and that's closer than being put into the second bucket.