A career in Information Technology?

You could try out some techy things to see if they appeal to you.

There's lots of beginner free courses online for programming and/or web development, so you could try some of them out and see if you find yourself enjoying it. You could also look at things like the computer forums here on Boards, or other tech support forums around the web and see if the idea of building and repairing PCs or doing troubleshooting and tech support holds any appeal to you.

If none of the techy things appeal to you, there's still lots of non-techy or soft-techy roles in the IT field. There's always a need for business/process analysts, project managers etc. You business degree will be a big help there, but it would also help a lot to have some type of IT knowledge or skillset so you could look for IT or Computing or possibly MIS courses to help make you more IT focused.

Brion wrote: »

What areas/languages would you recommend focusing on?

Like Michael Jackson suggests above, that's a question that can be loaded with controversy

What I would suggest is that you first decide if you want to either A) Try software development in general, or Try a particular type of software development (i.e. Windows applications, Web development, phone applications etc).

In general I'd suggest A) to people. It will give you the best grounding in the basics, and you can focus on building on them rather than having to worry about the specific nuances of say web development or phone development. It will also mean you can then easily specialise in different branches down the line, or jump between them easily. If you're going to go this route I'd recommend learning either C# or Java. They're both widely used, modern languages that support all the features you could want. They're both flexible, they can be used for windows apps, web sites, web services, phone apps etc. And both have a load of tutorials available. I personally prefer C# because it allows for development with the Microsoft suite of products, and there's always plenty of work in that. But Java is hard to argue against, and there's always plenty of work there too. You really can't go wrong with either of them.

The benefit of going the route is that it may be more interesting. Some people will pick a project, say a website or a phone app, and learn through building that. That can be a great way to keep yourself motivated, but it can be harder, because you have to deal with extra stuff. For e.g. if you wanted to build a website you would typically also have to learn some amount of HTML, Javascript, CSS and some type of database, all on top of whatever server side programming language you choose. Like with anything else, trying to learn too much at once, can often mean you take shortcuts and miss important bits of understanding that will hinder you down the line. But with that said, having a particular project or goal to work towards is powerful motivation, and if you break it down right and go about it step by step it can be a good way to learn too. If you do go this route, the technology/languages etc to learn will very much depend on what it is you are trying to achieve.

Like many careers, IT isn't a tough career if it's one you've chosen out of a genuine interest for the subject. If people are doing it because 'it's a good career' then they will probably find it harder.

Unfortunately, many now fall into the latter group. Where people used to be told to get a job in the civil service, or work for a bank, they're now being directed towards IT.