How to Get an IT Job without a Computer Degree and/or without IT Experience
18 August 2006You don’t have a computer degree (Computer Science, MIS, etc), your college major is something like, let’s say, Political Science; You don’t have actual IT working experience at all (of course, but how to get some?). Can you get a real IT job (by real means paid, full time, permanent with all common benefits)?
YES, even in economic downturn, you CAN. IT is the most open market with diversified workforce and great growth potentials. If you are interested in IT, and know how to break in, you’ll do well in your career no matter what background you are from. In fact, over 60% of IT professionals come from non computer science background, and obviously, ALL of them started without IT experience.
So, in this case, what can you do to get the job? You just need three things -
(1) Some basic IT skills,
(3) Self-made experience, and
(3) A solid IT resume.
Of course there are soft materials such as attitude, desire, inspiration that are all important and would be very help.
Obtaining Skills
You don’t have to have a computer degree, but you do need to have some IT skills to start and get the job done. You must convince recruiters and hiring managers that you are capable and trainable in IT field. To get IT skills, you need to train yourself. There are tons of free or almost free resources you can use for self-training, but you need a plan and time to do it.
You can build the latest IT skills from knowledge and information which are always overloaded in IT industry. Here are a few practical approaches you can take:
1. Read technical books online and offline. There are at least ten books available for each IT topic and sub-topic. A lot of them are for beginners. Pick up one of your interest and start to read.
2. Take free online tutorials. All IT vendors provide tutorials with sample code and instructions. A lot of tutorials are also provided by third parties. They are all free. Use them to learn a specific skill, such as programming, database, web design, etc.
3. Go to top IT vendors’ websites to get knowledge for their systems and products. These vendors offer excellent online knowledgebase. For instance, if you want to get java skill, just go to Sun’s website, you’ll find any Java related information you need, from installation, coding, to creating complicated Java components.
4. Study manuals and documentations, most of them are available free online from vendors. Nothing would give you more detailed and accurate knowledge than the manuals and documentations by the product’s vendor. For instance, if you plan to build skills on Oracle database, you need to get the full set documentation from Oracle website. It’s free and everything is covered.
5. Join user groups and mailing lists for a specific area. You’ll get all sorts of tips and tactics there, and you can ask questions. That will speed up your process in gaining latest IT skills.
6. Take online training courses, a lot of them are free. These courses may be offered by vendors or training companies. Some of courses are designed for IT certifications. They usually give you the first course for free. Online registration may be required.
7. Subscribe technical based ezines and newsletters. As always, they are free. you get them delivered to your email box with the latest information about technologies and development trends on systems, tools, and platforms.
8. Subscribe IT magazines. They are free from publishers and vendors. For instance, you can have a free copy of Oracle Magazine which covers DBA skills, PL/SQL coding, database tuning, and a lot more.
9. Go to technical seminars in your local area. These seminars are organized or sponsored by IT vendors to offer new product overview and brief training. You don’t get in-depth skills from them, but it is a quick way to get basic concepts and directions on a technology, and it is a good opportunity to meet people and build your career network.
10. Download trail software tools to play and gain hands-on experience. That’s the most important. In fact, a lot of trail versions are fully functional, and a lot of software systems are fully free for developers to use. Playing them and using them personally would make no difference from actually working on paid projects to gain experience.
Self-Made Experience
Even though you don’t have a full time job in IT field, you can still make real, practical, and countable IT experience by yourself. your self-made experience would be served for two purposes: (1) prove the skills that you claim to have; (2) provide credible materials for your resume to land the job. You’ll find practical tips on self-make experience in the following paragraphs.
1. Using whatever the resources you’ve already have. If you have a Windows PC, you can start to work on Windows system administration issues. If you have Microsoft Office installed, you can use Access to experience SQL and database technology. You can learn to write HTML and design a website. All you need to get started is a test editor like Notepad.
2. Programming experience is the most wanted, and is the easiest one to obtain. All you need is a PC and a compiler tool that you can get for free. for instance, to get Java programming experience, you can download Java SDK from Sun’s website, install it, code, compile, and run!
3. Database experience is essential in IT. To have some, you can play with Microsoft Access if you have it installed in your PC. You can download a free database system called MySQL to learn SQL and database structures.
4. If you are a college student or graduate student, you’ll take some courses that require group projects. If you have to do a project as part of the course work, try to put some programming and database tasks into the design so you can make it a IT project.
5. If you work on engineering or administration projects in your job, think of that if you can use some computer skills and knowledge to help your task. Can you use a desktop database to assist data collection? Can you build a web page for presentation? Anything as small as this would be a good experience.
6. As every career mentor recommended, you can offer volunteer work for non-profit organizations such as churches and charity associations. Create a website for them; build a membership database; setup the computer network, etc. That’s a good opportunity to build close-to-real-work experience.
7. Get internship with IT or consulting companies and participate in their IT projects, even if it is unpaid. There are enough information online regarding how to get an internship.
8. Build a software - a shareware or freeware. for instance, You can write a mortgage calculation software, or a card collection management system. You can submit your software to website such as download.com and let people download and use them. A lot of technical books come with example codes of small applications that you can start with. You should count this type of small work as big accomplishment.
Create a Solid Resume
Your resume is the stone you throw to knock the door and break in. Make it a strong, solid, and powerful one. Put a lot of IT stuff in. You say IT stuff? Without a degree and no experience, where to get these IT stuff? Easy, make some. Here let me give the following power tips:
1. Learn only the hottest IT skills - Java, .NET, database, CISCO network, TCP/IP, etc. Go to a local bookstore, find books on these topics, read the first three chapters. If you can make yourself understand the technical concepts and feel confident to implement the technologies in work, you should list these skills in the “Sills Summary/Inventory” section in your resume.
2. Show your IT work and experience with organizations where you offered volunteer work. Describe your accomplishment in the resume. You don’t have to emphasize that it is unpaid, part time, small, volunteer.
3. Describe the project and the work you did in internship. Focus on the technology and your accomplishment, instead of the internship itself.
4. If you developed a shareware software, list it and describe it as an experience in your resume. Be proud of it even if it is small.
5. Take one or two free online training classes and list them in the ‘Education and Training’ section in your resume.
6. If you obtained skills and knowledge through self-study, say so in the ‘Education and Training’ section in the resume. For instance, “Microsoft SQLServer 2000 Database Administration - Self-training”. Since you don’t have a IT related college degree, you need a little bit more material in the ‘Education’ section to make your resume IT balanced.
7. Join an IT professional association and list it under ‘Professional Activities’ section in the resume. For instance, ‘Member of Association of Information Technology Professionals ‘. Look for ‘IT Professional Associations’ in this website for more information. The membership is NOT free, but it does show you are serious in IT career.
8. Try to get one IT certification so you can list it in the ‘Education’ section in the résumé, i.e., ‘Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP)’. Take one of Microsoft exams or Sun’s Java programming exam, they both require only one passed exam to give you the certification.
If you followed some of the tips listed above, you should have had a solid resume with strong IT muscles. You are in a good shape to land the job. The next thing is about self-empowerment in job interview. I’ll discuss interview strategies next week in another article.
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