You’re really interested in the field of IT and you’ve been eyeing this role for too long, but you don’t have any tech experience. The field is amazingly well-paying, has a truckload of benefits and no dearth of opportunities, ever! How can you transition your career to tech without having any relevant experience? This blog is your answer.
1. Push your Soft Skills to the Forefront
Now, whatever work you’ve done in the past may not be relevant at all to IT or technology, but what you need to actually focus on, are the soft skills. They are very important in the IT industry and such skills will help you land a job quite easily. Skills like communication, leadership, team building, problem-solving, MS Office etc. can be great skills to show off for a start and can give a great boost to your resume. You need to try and sieve through your past experience carefully to pick out many more such skills. Remember to tailor your resume and your LinkedIn profile, accordingly.
2. Get Certified
It may be one of the best ways to break into this field. IT is all about certifications and experience worth years can be learnt theoretically in a few months. Look up entry-level certifications and get started with it. By getting certified, you’re showing your interest and willingness to get into the field. With certifications in your pocket, you’ll be exposed to a couple more job opportunities which will make things easy. Getting certified is no big deal and you can do it online, or you can attend physical classes taken by an expert. Some courses even let you take on a project for experience purposes, and that will help you tremendously by giving you an idea of how IT jobs are really are like.
3. Networking is Everything
You may forget the connections you added on your LinkedIn or Facebook, but you may really be surprised to find how many of them come of use to you. Wouldn’t it a great help if an employer hires someone based on recommendation from known rather than hiring a stranger? Hence, make sure you’re all out there and connecting with people time and again. So one day, if you put up a post saying you’re a fresher looking for technology job roles, you will be filled with people responding to you about opportunities you didn’t know, even existed. Networking is prime for your success nowadays.
4. Accept that you need to Start Over
You’ll have to come to terms with the fact that you will need to start over in IT. Although you may have had a higher position in your old job, since you’re transitioning into a different field, you’ll need to start from the bottom. Early years of experience are mandatory in order to evolve in any field. You will have to take a pay-cut initially, but IT being as vast as it is, you’ll always have opportunities to upskill and move to more prepared positions with better compensation. You just need to have the willingness and the patience to see things through.
5. Embrace your current Job
Yes, you want to switch over to IT as soon as possible, but don’t leave your previous job for that. This transition won’t happen overnight. You can use this time to learn about various software that are used in the IT sector. Your knowledge of Photoshop or Wordpress will really be of great value to the future employer. You can also follow a lot of resources online, both in text and video formats to increase your knowledge and spike your interest. Your current job may teach you quite a lot in terms of soft skills like having patience, dealing with pressurising situations etc. which can be used to your advantage. So, take your time and don’t be hasty.