[rhubarbcustard]

I have interviewed a fair number of people for different positions over the years, here's my 2p:

1. I would look at your CV and see your narrow focus but I would still be wondering based on your experiences whether you could move to the technology we use.

2. Good/great developers seem to be in short supply, if you can prove your ability to understand code, build robust things and ship you would be just fine in my interview.

3. I think you would find a lot of very similar technology in the Java field and it wouldn't be a huge hurdle for you to pick that up if you have a good and deep understanding of how you currently deliver apps using ASP. If you could show on your portfolio how you have picked up Java/Ruby/Python/whatever based on your 20 years of experience and show you understand "how things work" rather than the nitty gritty of a the language then you would beat a lot of the people we interview.

In short, if you came to an interview for a Java job I would be more interested in how easy you would be able to learn what we do with Spring etc and how much and how deeply you understood the stack you were working with rather than worrying too much about you not have "5 years of Spring MVC" or whatever other blurbs HR stuck on the job description. I've interviewed a lot of people who have no clue whatsoever how MVC works and have no notion about how things fit together to make a system, they just fill in the gaps in the Spring/Hibernate/library config and write a few lines of code and "it just works". If you have the deep knowledge I think you can easily take a senior/architect role in Java-land.

[RefactorCareer]

I guess I wish the positions I applied for had hiring managers as open as you are. To be honest, with the majority of the places I've applied to, I get no response at all.

[qzcx]

Got to watch out for the HR filter. Often at bigger companies, hiring managers don't even see a resume unless it meets the criteria they specify on it. That means people like you with related, but different experience get cut out when you could still be a good match. Broken system.

[JoshM33k]

Any advice for how to get past that filter? Things to put on the resume, specific things to say in a cover letter, etc.?

[mlitchard]

Networking helps here. I've never gotten a job where my resume had to be filtered through HR first. You need to know someone who is or knows a hiring manager. Get out there and make friends!

[qzcx]

echoing what mlitchard said. Networking is a big help. Besides that, look at what is on the job posting. Try to use the same key words in your resume/cover letter. Not sure how well it would work, but addressing differences in the cover letter could work to get it past the HR and into the manger's hands.

[rufius]

Make your resume a little more general. If it looks like you're a one stack guy, they'll assume that's your main skill set.

Focus on the general concepts you've applied to your jobs and the broad strokes of what you bring.

[rue]

The good ones will learn whatever tools are necessary for the job. The good companies know this.

The HR barrier is admittedly present in a lot of places… the best advice there, probably, is to try to network a little to get in through the side door.

[redidas]

That HR barrier is really difficult to understand. There are so many libraries and frameworks these days, and companies are looking for a person with particular experience in a particular combination of things. It doesn't seem to matter if you know similar tech and are willing to switch over.

I wonder how much good talent is never even looked at because of this.

[RefactorCareer]

I know there was the developer agent idea (agent like an entertainment agent) floating around several years back. But this area really seems like an industry ripe for innovation. Starfighters.io has a take on the security world, but anyone out there looking for a business idea: there seems to be a large group of talented engineers out there who are being passed over by HR systems today.

[vonmoltke]

Assuming HR hasn't boarded up all the side doors.