Why Choose a Career in Information Technology
During times of economic uncertainty like these, people often choose or are forced to change careers. Despite the reasons (layoffs, recent college graduate, tired of dead-end jobs that you’re looking at other career options. One thing to keep in mind is that you’re looking for a “career”. Webster gives the following as a definition of the word career;
A: a field for or pursuit of consecutive progressive achievement especially in public, professional, or business life career as a soldier>
B: a profession for which one trains and which is undertaken as a permanent calling career in medicine> career diplomat>
A career offers much more than a job in that it is an area you enjoy and progress in, and that offers continual opportunities.
For anyone who is looking for a fun, exciting and growing career field, I would recommend careers in the Information Technology (IT) field. Virtually, every business relies on technology and computers systems. From retail companies like Wal-Mart and Starbucks to manufacturing firms like Boeing, pharmaceutical giants like Pfizer and your local hospital, financial firms like Chase and your local credit union. They all need people to support, manage, assist in creating competitive advantage and protect their information systems and data. The positions that provide all of those services to business compose the many career choices of IT.
Your career choices can range from a computer operator (31k – 44k a year), to a web developer (55k – 94k a year), to network engineer (71k – 101k a year), to IT project manager (76k – 113k a year) or CIO (134k – 217k a year). All of which have growth potential that could ultimately lead to a “C” level position (CIO, CISO, CTO, etc.). Whether a “C” level position is your goal or not all of these jobs offer middle and upper-middle class salaries. The other amazing thing about these careers is that a college education is not mandatory. Don’t get me wrong a bachelor’s or masters degree will definitely set you apart in many of these careers, but they are not mandatory if your skills are reputable and you can communicate effectively.
If you do have a college degree, you will have a leg up on those without one. One area that will give folks looking forward to transition into this career track is good communication skills both verbal and written and knowledge and willingness to learn how the prospective business works so that you can add value. So regardless if you’re working on the Service Desk or testing web applications, these are skills that will take you far.
The benefits of this career are great. I have been employed by fortune 100 company that paid for my Master’s program and training for industry certifications. I had the opportunity to travel around the US and abroad (Canada & UK) even living in one of the most beautiful and vibrant cities in the world, San Francisco, rent and expenses free for a year while working for a fortune 1000 company. Now the traveling was my choice, since I enjoy it but a major benefit from most IT careers is being able to work regular business hours with weekends off. Now that is a splendid thing. Don’t misunderstand me many IT careers do involve off hours, weekend and on-call shifts. Believe me, I did my share of late nights and on-call shifts, but as I progressed in my career I was able to steer my career path toward positions that offered evening and weekends off.
Ok, so you’re sold, you’re ready to leave the food service industry to start an IT career. Well how do you actually go about it? First you do need computer skills. I recommend you take the CompTIA’s A+ and Network+ certification programs. You can find free training material for both of these online you can take paid course for both. Many colleges and community colleges offer these and well as paid training companies like Global Knowledge and Learning Tree. If your more into the development of database side of things take a into to programming language such as Perl, Java or C+. Again you can find free and pay (Lynda.com is an affordable online training site) training resources for all of these online.
The next step would be to create a resume that reflects your new skill set and other work experience. Then I advise applying to temp agencies like Robert Half and Manpower. These are agencies that many companies use to hire entry level IT positions. These agencies will also help you with your resume as they are familiar with the format, terminology and skills that employers are looking for. One thing to keep in mind is that building a career is very different than getting a job and therefore, does take more time. So I don’t recommend you just quit your day job while transitioning to an IT career. The learning curve of a new programming language or computer hardware takes years to master but just a short time to get the basics. So take it slow and don’t give up. Also don’t give in to the worries that IT jobs will all be shipped overseas. Once you ramp up your skill set you’ll become a player in that same global market. With remote working arrangement becoming the norm you could at some point be working for a global company with offices in multiple countries, but we’ll leave that discussion for another article.
If you enjoyed this article and would like more tips and advice on IT careers, please check out www.uncomplexed.com.
*Salary information was derived from the Robert Half Salary Guide 20011.