10 Steps To IT Success

1. Choose a IT career that's in demand
It is essential to choose a career path in IT which has sufficient demand. There are hundreds of career paths in IT but NOT all offer the same levels of opportunity.

IT careers in demand can have lower entry requirements simply because there aren't enough people to fill the vacant roles resulting from skill shortages. These shortages can also fuel higher salaries to entice more people.

Technology can change quite rapidly so choosing the wrong database technology for example, could lead to less opportunity in securing work due to opportunities being few and far between than choosing a database technology which is in demand.

2. Avoid saturated IT career paths
If there's too many people vying for opportunities in a particular IT area, then there will be too much competition to get a job. This gives employers the opportunity to pick and choose only the best candidates, those who have the most experience.

Saturated IT careers can also bring down salaries on offer, as employers know that they can pay less and still get suitably qualified staff.

A recruiter colleague of mine, regularly runs job ads on several very popular internet job search sites. He told me that he can get over a 1000 applicants for each role he advertises, with roles involving Microsoft Windows and Cisco technology, generally having the most applicants.

He said that this is great because he can pick and choose only the best candidates for the jobs, generally those with a lot of experience.

On the flip side, when employers recruit in the IT sector I'm in, they get a lot less applicants, so it can sometimes be tough to find candidates, resulting in employers lowering their entry requirements and increasing salaries.

3. Avoid Dead End IT careers
Dead Ends are IT careers which may look like a good opportunity to the uninitiated but in reality offer very little in terms of career advancement. Dead end IT careers generally include working long and unsociable hours in jobs which can be quite stressful.

Helpdesk and support roles can be dead end jobs which offer little in career advancement. If you work too many hours then your real pay per hour could be very little.

So if a job pays $30,000 a year but involves working 70 hours a week with no payment for overtime, the real hourly payment is actually less than $9 an hour instead of $16 per hour.

Worse still some dead end jobs include the dreaded being on-call, where the employer can contact you, outside of work if there's a problem. This could mean your weekend is ruined by a call from the office, to fix a problem that takes several hours to fix. On-call payments can be very poor, sometimes around the $20 a day mark.

When I first started looking for a career in IT, I was offered a computer support engineer role which paid a lot more than I was on in my non IT job at the time. But when I delved deeper, it wasn't the dream move into IT that I longed for. There was absolutely no opportunity for career advancement and the hours involved were long, spending day after day travelling between many customer sites.

4. Forget Certification as the backdoor to IT success!
Relying solely on certifications to get into IT won't make you more employable. Employers look for experience and candidates who are 'paper qualified' that is, have a IT certification but no experience, will not be looked upon favourably.

It's become too easy to gain many certifications through the likes of braindumps, whereby the actual certification exam answers are posted on various internet websites.

Certifications such as Microsoft's MCSE, Cisco's CCNA and the like are only for those who already have experience in that particular certification's field. More and more employers look at certifications as a desirable and not as an essential part of their job requirements.

Some of the work I do, involves working with HP/Compaq Servers, Windows 2003, Citrix Presentation Server and Exchange 2003 and I've never been asked to provide any evidence of HP/Compaq, MCSE or Citrix CCA certification, because my experience validates the fact that I know how to work with these types of servers and systems in a variety of environments.

5. Choose a IT career with a low TTL
By choosing an IT career with a low Time To Learn (TTL), you can get onto the career ladder quickly instead of being bogged down by trying to attain the skills necessary for a career which has a longer time to learn (TTL).

Consider a career working in J2EE (Java 2 Enterprise Edition) whilst this is definitely a career in demand, the TTL is quite high, as not only is a good grasp of Java required, but there may be a requirement for IBM Websphere, Tomcat, Apache and whole host of other technologies. So unless you've worked in this field for a number of years and been able to build up a steady exposure to these technologies, it's going to take an age to learn these technologies from scratch, during which time you could lose out on earning good money.

6. Use Special skills
I find it incredibly easy to get work in retail banks even when my technology skills aren't up to date. Why? Because I have other special skills which the world of retail banking holds in high esteem, these special skills have also helped me work in the health, telecommunications and pharmaceutical sectors.

When I apply for a job, I make sure that my skills in appreciating Change Management and working in project orientated roles, aswell as document preparation are prominent. Too many people spend too much time focusing on their technological skills instead of harnessing the power of their special skills.

7. Use Inside Information and avoid the hype
By knowing someone who already works in IT or even better works in the same area in IT as you would like to, can provide enormous benefit. Mainly allowing you to sort fact from fiction by being able to get quality unbiased advice.

When I started looking at a career in IT, I was able to quickly dismiss the notion of "When I get my MCSE certification, I'll be on $500 a day" because my friend who already worked in IT told me that doing an MCSE without any experience wouldn't get me a job and only those consultants who have years of experience along with an MCSE, are the ones who would most likely earn $500 a day or more.

Yet, many of the people I met at the time who were also trying to get into IT, still believed this notion and spent thousands of pounds trying to get MCSE certified.

Training companies can all too often be guilty of starting the hype bandwagon rolling, with the only objective in mind is to make as much money as possible from IT wannabes who don't know how to distinguish fact from fiction.

8. Forget about education qualifications
As long as you can read and write, then a career in IT could be for you. A lot of people think just because they don't have a degree, they won't be able to get a good job in IT. The truth of the matter is that the majority of employers don't give a hoot about whether you have a degree (unless it's a graduate program). All they care about is whether you have the experience and skills to get the job done.

I don't have a degree and it certainly hasn't hampered my career aspirations. I don't even bother mentioning my educational details when I apply for jobs and have never been asked about my education from any of the employers I've worked for and most of my employers have been large multinational corporations.

Experience is the key in attaining well paid IT work with prospects and it isn't too difficult getting the right level of experience. I used an 'experience driven training' program which allowed me not only to understand the technology I was learning but, actually put it to practice in the workplace.

9. Be flexible
The days of fat salary cheques with a job for life are long gone but there is still plenty of opportunity to earn well by being flexible. More and more employers are looking for IT specialists who are flexible in their work requirements.

Employers may have projects involving only a few months work, which will prove difficult to hire a full time person for. What happens when the works finished, do they just fire the person hired? This could hit them with a load of legal problems such as unfair dismissal. So enter the freelancer, who works on a contracted freelance basis.

I work on a freelance basis as I found it can be easier to find work as more and more employers are looking for freelancers, therefore finding work is never a challenge. I can also earn as much as 3 times more as I would if I was hired directly by the employer as an employee, and better still I pay less tax, so I can take a lot more money home.

10. Be found
If no one knows you exist then no one will find you. To be successful in any career, people need to know you exist. People must be made aware of your presence and this is easily achieved by preparing a good résumé (CV) which gets noticed.

I spent months perfecting my résumé (CV) making sure that it contained relevant information. I treat my résumé (CV) as an advert in which I have at least four pages to attract the attention of the reader and make sure they carry on reading my résumé (CV). Instead of putting it in the bin because it’s difficult to read, irrelevant or difficult to understand.

When I send my résumé (CV) off to a potential employers, eight times out of ten, I get a call. Many people applying for IT jobs can’t get past this first hurdle, simply because their résumés (CV) are very poor. My chances of securing an interview from my résumé (CV) runs at around 50%, which is well above average. So before choosing my next assignment, I generally can have several job offers to consider.

I spend as much effort on making myself known as I do in learning the technologies of my trade. Marketing myself is very important in getting a well paid job. I've set up a web site to provide more information: www.best-it-career.com.

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