Atomic.edu - Getting into the IT Industry

Want to get ahead in the industry you love? Chris Taylor's got the good oil.

So, you’re giving thought to studying IT at a tertiary level, but one thing is holding you back – the fear that maybe there won’t be any jobs available for you. Or that there will be, only they’ll pay you the sort of wage you’d get as a checkout chick to work in the shittiest of conditions. The promotional literature handed out by the universities you’re looking at no doubt promises that by doing their degree you’ll end up in a world of opportunity, but can you really trust that? After all, a university is a business. And you’re just another potential customer. And so, this month in atomic.edu we’ve decided to investigate how easy it is to get a job in the IT industry. Once again we’ve turned to our own forums to get comments, feedback and advice from the people most qualified to answer your questions about getting into the computing business-those who already work in it.

Will I be able to get a job?
We’re pleased to report that the resounding answer is yes. “The IT market in Australia seems to be very open at the moment,” says Slace. Are there jobs for those fresh out of TAFE or university, though? If you’ve looked at sites like www.seek.com.au and www.careerone.com.au – which we really suggest you do, by the way – you may have noticed that a lot of the jobs out there are only being pitched for those who’ve been working on ‘nix servers since they were six. But never fear, there are plenty of jobs available for newcomers to the industry.

As MrInsaneBuff says, “Where I am currently, as long as you’re not a retard and have decent customer service skills, we’ll take you on. It’s first level help desk. We generally bring in about six to eight new people each month, as we have a high churn rate. Generally it’s more to do with working nights than anything else.”

Will I need a degree or diploma to get a job?
Now, whether you need a degree or not to get a job depends entirely on what field you’re looking at, as well as the workplace, your experience, who you know and the alignment of the planets. “A degree will look really good on your resume,” says RaYdeX. “Should you be up against someone with the same skills as you, only you have a degree and they don’t, you’ll more than likely get the job.”

These sentiments were echoed by MrInsaneBuff. “Having a degree gives you options. It’s not, however, a get-a-job-in-IT card. If you’re unable to communicate effectively and aren’t some super genius, you’ll find it hard to get a role.”

Worth considering, though, are these words by zephyr. “As the IT industry matures, there’s going to be more of a divergence between which roles do need degrees and which ones don’t.” Chaos.Lady had this warning for those who intend on not studying, but working their way up from an entry-level technical support position. “As you get older and try to go higher up the tree, you start to go up against people who have qualifications and experience. Only having experience will lose you the position in most cases.” Beyond your degree or diploma, you may want to look into what RayDeX terms ‘non-government’ training courses and certificates – MCSE, Cisco and the like. “Courses can cost several thousand dollars, but [they’re] almost a necessity to get into network administration.” kikz noted that a cheaper alternative would be to purchase the books from www.amazon.com and study at your own pace.

Basically, what our forum-goers say is this – certainly, it’s possible to get a job in computing without a degree, but to get a decent job you’re probably going to need a degree of some sort. There are exceptions; yes, there are quite a number of people posting on our forums who’ve managed to score well-paying IT gigs without having finished university or, as in at least one case, secondary school, but in general you’re going to want to be qualified. “You can’t assume that because you can go from hell desk to network manager that you could go the same path and end up an enterprise architect,” says zephyr. “It can happen, but to tell people ‘no, you don’t need to know anything about it, just figure it out on the job’ is giving people a sense of false hope.”

What about pay, location and the like?
One point that did pop up a number of times in my discussions was that the ability to find employment depends greatly on where you live. Indeed, it was possibly the only piece of advice on which all participants in our survey agreed upon. Canberra, Melbourne and Sydney were branded the places to be by Gharphield. Chaos.Lady backed him up, saying that “[getting] a job in IT is almost impossible unless you live in or near a major centre. Telecommuting is still not as widespread as it should be.” Finally, there is the matter of income. Now, we didn’t get as many responses to this part of our survey as we’d hoped, but kikz – although he’s talking purely from the perspective of someone involved in coding – reckons that the “average student graduating from IT into an average software development job should see an average $40,000 straight out. If they keep learning they should be on $60,000 or more in two years.” In summing up, yes, you should be able to get a job – entry-level tech support being the most realistic for a newcomer – in IT. Once you have that job, you may be able to move up the ladder without any qualifications whatsoever. However, and this is a very big however, don’t rely on that.

Do yourself a favour and get a qualification of some description from TAFE or university. After that, look into some of the vendor-specific certificates available. Getting your hands dirty is important, yes, but as noted numerous times in the thread, not everything can be learnt by simply playing around on the job. Note: If you are looking at getting into IT and found some of the points raised in this month’s atomic.edu interesting, we recommend checking out the thread here. There’s a lot of stuff we had to leave out due to space restrictions.