Starting an IT career

Toronto10

Hi,

I am currently working abroad and am looking to begin a career in IT in the near future. I have a 2.1 honours degree in a computer science discipline, however I have little to no experience in the IT field.
I worked through college and have years of retail experience in Ireland. I have been in Canada for about 18 months working in general office admin work.
My problem is my lack of experience in IT related field is holding me back from applying for work in that field. I am not confident in my skills learned in college...graduated in 2009 so I have little or no recollection of any of the programming languages etc. I "got through" college rather that earned my degree.
Would love some advice on where I should start whether it be what disciplines I should start brushing up on or tips for securing entry level positions. Having looked at jobs online I have noticed that there are quite a few java developers positions...was thinking maybe I should brush up on my PHP, SQL and HTML also???

I just don't know where to start so help appreciated.

jimoc

Best place to start is to try a free online course in a language you are interested.
Java is a good one to start with as there is a huge amount of resources out there for it.
Once you've got a nice grounding in the language, come up with an idea for a program and write it or get involved in an open source project that you find interesting.

and good luck

Pablo Sanchez

What to do if you have no IT qualifications or experience, what options are available to people who want to study part time?

Gregor Samsa

I got into my current field in IT through a FÁS course. Seeking work experience was an integral part at the end of the course (which was 9 months long), and I think about 5 of the people got permanent jobs from the work experience.

I later did an taught MA in pretty much the same field, and can honestly say that the FÁS course gave a better grounding in the subject than the MA, even though the Masters was designed for people with no background in the subject. Although in fairness, the MA gave those of us with prior experience the chance to excell far beyond the scope of the FÁS course.

Obviously FÁS is only available to the unemployed, but 14 years on, I'm grateful to them for giving me the chance to get a foot in the door of an interesting and rewarding career.

Gregor Samsa

By the way, I'd second Java as a good language to study if you want to become a developer. There's lots of Java jobs out there, loads of online support for learning it, and will give you a good grounding if you want to move on to developing in other languages.

And no, I'm not a Java dev, although I work in a related field.

Pablo Sanchez

Pablo Sanchez wrote: »

What to do if you have no IT qualifications or experience, what options are available to people who want to study part time?

And yes im aware how vague the question is! i suppose what i wanted to ask is 1, what area in IT is in demand 2, what would be the route to working towards a qualification/job in that area.

wexie

Pablo Sanchez wrote: »

And yes im aware how vague the question is! i suppose what i wanted to ask is 1, what area in IT is in demand 2, what would be the route to working towards a qualification/job in that area.

I'm not all that aware of anything happening in the programming world but in my little corner of the IT world (storage/virtualisation consulting) we're seeing quite a skills shortage in networking.

Plenty of free online resources out there on basic networking, but from there on in it will be qualifications I'd say.

I think the big thing would be to decide on what it is you want to do/ have a talent for / like doing. IT is a pretty big concept so you'll have to narrow it down a bit.

If you want to go down the hardware route (which also opens up consulting /sales/design etc) I'd try to get a job with any of the larger IT companies, even if it's just a call center job. Most of these companies have great training resources (online, you'll have to do it in your own time but the resources are there).

Anyway, just my 2 cents.

Toronto10

Some great input there guys thanks.

jethrothe2nd

+1 to wexis - I would highly recommend looking for an entry level position in a call centre environment.This potentially opens up a world of opportunities. Progression can be very fast if you display the attitude and skill level, especially with the big US companies.