How to Get IT or Computer Jobs

Thursday, February 12th, 2009 John

If you are surviving job loss and are now looking for a new job, you can get a job in the IT or computer industry even if you have never had any training. Your job will be sweeping the floor. Joking aside, in the world out there, to become a Certified Public Accountant, you must graduate from an Accounting and Finance Degree, then pass the state examinations. But to become a computer expert, there is no specific exam to pass, and no particular “certification” needed for you to be an expert. But to really become a top computer expert, you must study heavily, day and night. You should read lots of computer manuals, textbooks, guidebooks, magazines, newspapers, and even watch useful videos at Youtube. Practice using many kinds of computers, operating systems, languages, word-processing programs, spreadsheets, database systems, graphics packages, and telecommunications programs. Also explore the many educational programs for kids. Use many kinds of printers, disk drives, and modems. Study the human problems of dealing with computers. No matter how much you already know, learn further.

The average computer expert still spends two hours per day reading about computers. This is to fill holes in the expert’s background and learn what happened in the computer industry that day! In addition to those two hours, the expert spends many more hours practicing what was read and swapping ideas by chatting with other people in the same field of expertise. As a computer expert, you can choose your own hours, but you must alot plenty of time. To break into the computer field, you can explore possible paths:

Utilizing Company’s Training Benefits
If you are looking for your next new job, one practical way to break into the field is to get a job in a computer company, as a janitor, clerk or any other menial job, and step by step move up by using the company’s policy of free training for employees. Another option or twist to this idea is to take a non-computer job and gradually enlarge its responsibilities, so that it involves computers. For example, if you are a typist, urge your boss to let you use a word processor. If you are a clerk, ask permission to use spreadsheet and data-management programs to manage your work more efficiently. If you are a math teacher, ask the principal to let you teach a computer course or help run the school’s computer club.

Personal Touch
The speediest way to break into the field is to spend your weekends and evenings helping your neighbors, friends, and colleagues learn about computers. Help them buy hardware and software. Then customize the software to meet their own personal needs. Then train them in how to use it all. Remember the saying: ‘the best way to learn something is to teach it’? At first, do it all for free while you are still surviving your job loss. After you have become an experienced expert and developed a list of happy clients who will vouch for your brilliance, start requesting money from new clients. Start cheaply, at about $10 per hour, then gradually raise your rates over the next few years.

Traditional Approach
Of course, the most traditional way to get a computer job is to go to college and get a Ph.D. or M.A. in computer science. Unfortunately, that takes a lot of time and money.

Coding from Home
You can write computer programs or software at home to sell to friends and software publishers. Make sure your programs serve a real need and do not duplicate what’s already on the market. Be creative. You don’t have to write elaborate programs, but think of widgets or plug-ins that people can find very useful.

Want to Sell?
For a more agile career path, learn enough about microcomputers to get a job selling them in a store. As a salesperson, you will be helping people decide which hardware and software to buy. You will be acting as a consultant. The store will probably give you permission to take hardware, software, and literature home with you, so you can study and practice new computer techniques every evening and become brilliant. You can even moonlight by helping your customers use the software they bought and designing your own customized programs for them. After working in the store for sometime, you will have the knowledge, experience, contacts, and reputation to establish yourself as an independent consultant. You can call your former customers and become their advisor, trainer, and programmer, or even set up your own store.

Once you get into any of the paths mentioned above, be humble and charge very little because your first job’s main goal should not be money. Your main goal should be to gain experience, enhance your reputation, and find somebody you can use as a reference and who will give you a good recommendation. Convince your first employer that you are the best bargain he ever got, so that he will be wildly enthusiastic about you and give you a totally glowing recommendation when you go seek your second job. After several months on the job, when you have thoroughly demonstrated that you are much more than you are being paid, and your employer is soundly thrilled with your performance, gently ask your employer for a slight raise. If he declines, continue working at that job, but also keep your eyes open for a better alternative. When you need to do contract negotiation, do not make a large commitment. Suppose somebody offers to pay you $10,000 if you write a fancy computer program, do not accept the offer. That commitment is oversized for you. Why not counter-offer for say $2,000, for coding a stripped-down version of the program? After writing the stripped-down version, wait and see whether you get the $2,000. If you get it without any troubles, then agree to make the version somewhat fancier, for a few thousand dollars more. That is the safer way to scale your job scope.

Good luck!