Career Path Planning

In my last post I wrote about how to get a job in the tech field with no experience. If you’re following along because you’re on this journey to IT then I hope you’ve done some research. This post in the series is all about making a plan to your desired career.

So you’ve decided to become X Engineer. That’s a great first step! You’ve started reading some job descriptions and think this stuff sounds really cool and then feel discouraged when you look at the requirements section. Don’t worry! Everyone in the field of IT had to start somewhere!

There are 3 major tenets to landing a job in IT:

• Your resume and how you market yourself through LinkedIn and social media.
• Experience through certification and work.
• Earned Certifications.

Starting with your resume is one of the most important investments you will make in yourself. Find a reputable professional resume writing company and pay the average cost of $150 USD to have a professional document written. They will most likely have a service to do your LinkedIn profile as well which I would recommend. It may not look like much once it’s finished but you will have a solid foundation to build on once you start gaining experience. Do this after you\’ve gained a bit of experience through volunteering at non profits or other entry level IT work plus certification.

You should be reaching out and connecting to people in your field of interest to gain connections on LinkedIn. A good way to get people to accept your LinkedIn connection request is to be honest. Something along the lines of “I’m interested in your area of expertise and looking to build a network of connections.” You might even get some engagement if you can ask a targeted question like “I see that you worked at Google, would you mind sharing your experience sometime?\”

Experience is a funny thing when you’re trying to land an entry-level IT job. Most people separate experience and certification but I like to keep them together. The key component of this is not studying for a test but truly mastering the material in which the certification is looking to grade you on. What does that mean? You must use the technology through different lab scenarios. Build and break things and use Google to look up errors for countless hours. This will be fun and frustrating!

My next post will cover your first job in IT.