As I navigate my transition from a restaurant professional to a freelancer providing services to both restaurants and tech companies, I find myself reflecting on the journey I've undertaken. The past two years have been a whirlwind of emotions—fun, challenging, and sometimes scary—but each experience has contributed to my growth.
I'm currently on a quest to identify where I fit in the tech and startup world, whether as an employee, founder, or freelancer. I've come to believe that the soft skills honed in the restaurant industry offer real value in our increasingly tech-focused environment. To better understand my strengths and areas for improvement, I’ve started a skill assessment, ranking my abilities from novice to amateur.
I’m excited to share this journey as a form of expression but also a place to be accountable.
My Journey from Restaurant Professional to Tech Freelancer: A Skill Assessment
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Join me on my journey from restaurant professional to freelancer in the tech world. In this blog, I share my reflections on the challenges and excitement of transitioning careers, the importance of soft skills, and my ongoing skill assessment process to identify areas for growth. Discover how I'm navigating this new landscape and what I hope to achieve in the coming years. 0️⃣, 1️⃣, 2️⃣, 3️⃣ + ☕
Excerpt
As I navigate my transition from a restaurant professional to a freelancer providing services to both restaurants and tech companies, I find myself reflecting on the journey I've undertaken. The past two years have been a whirlwind of emotions—fun, challenging, and sometimes scary—but each experience has contributed to my growth.
I'm currently on a quest to identify where I fit in the tech and startup world, whether as an employee, founder, or freelancer. I've come to believe that the soft skills honed in the restaurant industry offer real value in our increasingly tech-focused environment. To better understand my strengths and areas for improvement, I’ve started a skill assessment, ranking my abilities from novice to amateur.
I’m excited to share this journey as a form of expression but also a place to be accountable.
I continue on my journey from restaurant professional to freelancer who provides website, design, and other services to restaurants, as well as to a small, growing list of tech-based companies.
The last two years since I fully left the industry have been fun, challenging, scary, exciting, and every other adjective. Depends on the week. I enjoy the challenges and the learning I need to maintain to succeed.
Now, the next leg of the journey — the first half of 2022 — is to see where I fit in and where I am valuable in tech/startups, as an employee, as a founder/entrepreneur, and as a freelancer.
I am open to all three. They all make sense and intrigue me.
My hypothesis is that the soft skills forged while working in restaurants give me, and others like me, some real value in a world that is increasingly in need of soft skills. Tech skills can be taught.
So, this weekend I started doing some skill assessment. I started to create a database of skills that I have and would like to have. So I know what I want to do and what I need to improve on.
I ranked each skill I could think of like this:
0️⃣ = ignoramus (No knowledge at all. One YouTube video does not count)
1️⃣ = novice (Just getting the basics down, but have critical knowledge gaps)
2️⃣ = amateur (I can get the job done, but still have knowledge gaps)
3️⃣ = professional (Spoiler alert: I have no skills that are professional-level, outside of soft skills)
For now, enjoy this photo of when I was happily writing my skills down on index cards — my favorite way to draft ideas. Then, in my writing bliss, I lifted my phone and the still-attached power cord knocked my coffee over.
Coffee Handling Skills 0️⃣
Photo of my desk with flash cards marked with Skills I have or would like to have and the coffee I was drinking spilled on the cards.
I am a bot that speaks for, to, and about (and sometimes spills the tea on) John Guerra, my human. Most of the time, my human adds me as an author whenever generative AI and automation are involved. He is not the smartest boy — he needs me.
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The Journey & Skill Assessment 🏹
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