IT Careers

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How many of you experienced IT professionals worked in other ares of IT before you found the position you wanted to be in?

I ask this because when I begin to send out my CV (once completed) I want to be sure I am applying for the correct positions.

I enjoy building/upgrading PCs and installing software I could do this all day long, I also enjoy dealing with people but can be left to my own devices. I predominantly work on my own in my current job.

I also enjoy troubleshooting, whilst I understand my first IT job may be sat on a call desk all day long for a while I am more of a hands-on person I would rather someone phone me or get assigned a job and I go and do the job myself.

When I was at uni I setup a basic 10 pc network and set it up for file sharing and the like and I enjoyed that very much too (this was also the subject I scored highest in).

What are your opinions of where I should start? Entry level support?

 

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I think the nature of IT in general means that most people will go through a few jobs before doing what they really want to do, others will go through jobs before they are even experienced enough to do what you want to do

For most folks, the entry steps into a career in IT start in support, move into 'engineer' type roles (which are often glorified, or senior support roles)

For some this is exactly where they want to be, they love working with users, they love solving problems, and that's a good place to be, however due to the nature of the work the pay is never really huge, and lots of people take a pay cut to move into IT, and there's no guarantee that they will be back onto their previous pay level by this point in there career

unlike careers of old, to get pay rises and responsibility increases in IT you generally change jobs, not get internal promotion, unless you work for a large end user who has those kind of requirements, this is partly due to the fact that most techies work for companies whos product is not technology, thus you are providing a support role and there's only so many places you can go within that company without leaving the IT side

By the sounds of it your enjoyments will make the engineer type role (especially field or roaming type engineer roles) a good fit, but you will not often start there, and after a few years you may yearn for another challenge

 

If you can manage to get into something like 1st Line Support, it could be a mix of using basic active directory stuff like resetting passwords etc to more hands on stuff such as looking at PCs, Printers etc... That'd be a great start in my opinion. Of course they're not easy positions to get as alot of people are trying to get into IT, but who knows, with the A+ on board you will hold an advantage over alot of other people.

Most companys wont "build" PCs, as getting them in bulk from somewhere like Dell works out cheaper and a much easier option. Although there may be smaller companys who do PC repair and may offer this service, I wouldn't suggest working for one of them unless you cant get into 1st Line Support elsewhere.

It may also be a big change from working alone if thats what your use to. From my experience there is the individual aspect of going to fix things etc, but on the whole a support team is just that, a team. Things you cant fix, or have problems with, will goto 2nd Line, and in the perfect environment, they'd be largly involved in training you etc.

Im sure once you get your foot in the door, you'll do very well

 

Doing something like a field engineer would be right up my street but obviously I understand that this may not be my first job. I had an interview a while back for a company who manage other companies IT systems and have IT engineers providing support in-house or at the customers base.

I didn't get it but at least it was an interview.

 

Hopefully something will turn up once I get my CV sorted, got to take my exams aswell.

 

I worked as a Volunteer in IT before getting the job i wanted.
Volunteering offered me the chance to gain more experience & above all get 'real' IT hands-on experience.
It also got me known so when a job did come up I knew about & the people I was working for and they knew something about me, still had to go for an interview though.

It’s sometimes not what you know, but who you know!

 

i don't think anyone stays in the same area of IT purely because your ideal job changes. Me i get bored quickly, once i've learnt the job and it doesn't offer me a challenge anymore i move on to new things. Once you've had experience at your ideal job you'll want more. Trust me building computers day in day out might seem like an ideal job now but once you've been doing it for a year the excitement quickly wears off.

Grim

 

For me I got into IT backwards by the sounds of the previous posts. I started in a small Company who sold/repair/built/supported end users and large companies IT stuff and also did component level repair. I found this a good starting out point but quickly tired of it. mostly I was fixing/upgrading home user pc's or building a number of desktop pc's to spec (about 100 at a time all of same spec) trust me that bit can get boring very quickly. near the end of my time there I had amassed a reasonably amount of electronics knowledge which I still use today to repair the flakey dell mobos we have in our older pc's here, and went out to customers sites for various reasons. I had an incling that I would like to support a companies network infrastructure and decided to apply for a helpdesk job at the cop shop (I'd worked for them before and did a little IT work when the areas IT guy was off, although my primary role was vastly different). so i got that and decided thats what I wanted to do, I started studying for the MCDST there then when i passed that I carried on and decided to go for MCSA.

Now Im a job further on and am much closer to where I want to be (although in a weird way its a mix of the first and 2nd job). I am one if 2 IT guys supporting 300 users/50+ servers and remote users. So we do everything from creating users moving/repairing/rolling out pc's to server migrations, pretty much everything to do with pc's. I'm still aiming to be a network admin in an AD environment and dropping the basic pc support stuff but I must say the trip is proving to be a very exciting one.

 

I was actually fairly lucky in my IT career, I must say. Started working in Frontline, and about 8 months later, when I was getting so sick of it I was ready to move on, work offered me an opportunity to move. The role I moved into was more of an admin role, but I managed to be in the right position at the right time, so ended up working closely with the Domain Admins in AD, as well as having a hand in developing and modifying the policies and procedures.

Whilst in this job, I spent my time with the DA sitting next to me, learning VBScript with a view to working with AD. At that point I was torn between going down the server admin route, or moving into programming. My manager was sympathetic, and gave me plenty of opportunity to use and develop my VBScripting. When I mentioned that I'd like to work with the app development team for a while, my manager went out of her way (considering it wasnt in my job spec to be doing this stuff) to arrange and negotiate a 6-week secondment, where I was mentored and worked to develop a web-app.

After that I knew I wanted to do development more. Whilst my manager was sympathetic again, there was a limit to what she could do, so I had to look elsewhere. After a few months of that, I landed my current job, a big payrise, and moved straight away.

I'm fairly happy doing development, but who knows what I might change to in future.

 

Yep. At every step of my career, I gained additional responsibilities over time. But it was still IT. Whether I was a field service tech or a senior network admin, I still provided IT support... one position just had more responsibilities. I didn't really consider it a "different area of IT."

My job now is somewhat different. Would I go back to being a network administrator? Sure. I enjoy doing it. But I enjoy doing what I'm doing much more. The great thing is that I *can* go back to network administration anytime I choose. You can shift around quite a bit in IT, GBL... just keep gaining knowledge and responsibilities and experience, and you'll continue to be employable for the rest of your life.

 

Cheers for that, I have a few tech blogs to watch this weekend and have a friends computer to upgrade all valuable learning aid, once my CV is done tonight I will be posting it back up for everyones comments.

 

I'm exactly the same as you grim - if its not a challenge and interesting, I'm bored and ready to move on.

Before I started on my IT career I really enjoyed doing deskside support/building PCs - I still do - but after doing it now for 14 months, it does become a little tedious and most of what I do is done without really thinking - not a nice place to be in.

That's why as of a week ago I started to volunteer with the server team 3 hours every day after work - been really interesting and they are very welcoming .... will have to wait and see what the future brings.