Getting more involved in Firmware world

[sanka1p]

Hi All,
I am a power electronic firmware engineer with 2.5 years of experience. I mainly worked with AVR MCU and its core peripheral. The industry I work in doesn't use RTOS,CAN/MOD bus. Now when i am trying to change jobs, I am finding it difficult to get interview call here in US as I don't have RTOS and CAN bus experience. I did some hobby projects in RTOS and CAN bus but everybody seems to want industry experience. What to do in this case?  My sample size has been small. I had managerial level talks with 5 companies till now. But haven't been selected for next level. Open to suggestion, how to level up my skill base.

[linux-works]

do an open source project, post to github (etc) and do good docs for it.

in the past, I've even brought a 3d printed CAN bus traffic generator I designed to the interview.  gave us something to talk about.  of course that didn't help GET the interview.

start with open source and have a few things on your github.  it can only help.

[Smokey]

Start a company and develop a widget with both rtos and can.  If it's successful, then don't worry about the job interviews. 

[linux-works]

another idea: see if you can find a job in 'test' (called many things, but I call it just 'test').  its often looked at as a lower level than 'pure engineering' but its not really, and in fact good test guys are kind of rare.

anyway, the interview process for a test job tends to be less intense than product dev.  and once in the company, after a few years (maybe 1-2?) you can try to move to the dev style groups.

have done that myself, in fact.

[YTusername]

Out of the context of your question a little bit, but in my opinion you need to seek help from your network of friends and colleagues to refer you to the HR in their companies. In most cases, the HRs are non-technical and doesn't understand that if you did not mention CAN or RTOS in your resume that does not mean you can not learn and master it in the position. Don't waste your time applying to start-ups because they will not have the patience to wait your until you learn new things.

Otherwise, I agree with linux-works open source projects and published content on technical blogs in a way that you can refer in the resume and the interview.