If you are starting in the world of work and enjoy problem-solving and helping people, whilst committing to a philosophy of lifelong learning, then you may have already considered working in the field of information technology.
In America alone, approximately three million people work in the IT industry in a diverse range of roles and specialities, from the support desk staff to IT consultants. Almost every medium and large-sized organization will have a dedicated IT department, which has the responsibility for ensuring that systems, software, and hardware continue to function at optimum levels, so that employees can work to high levels of productivity.
Today, IT professionals are in high demand and in some roles, demand for staff outstrips supply, which allows the potential for extremely attractive remuneration packages. It is a startling statistic that globally, approximately 1 million IT roles are unfilled, which has created a huge skills shortage and pushed up salary ranges across many roles. In this article, five key reasons why you should consider a career in IT will be discussed in detail.
Learn a Range of Skills
IT staff across all roles will be required to learn a diverse range of skills to enable them to work effectively in their occupations. A help desk support technician will need to have exceptionally high levels of critical thinking and problem solving to deal with issues and problems raised by employees or customers.
In addition, they must have well-developed conflict resolution and interpersonal skills as they may be helping people whose IT knowledge is not well developed.
Another example is that of senior programming staff, who have risen the career ladder and are now in charge of implementing enterprise-level software solutions.
Key skills in this field include the ability to accurately determine complex system requirements, plan each stage of implementation, and roll out so large programmes of work can be undertaken to timescale and budget. In these senior roles, having a thorough working knowledge of togaf is a valuable and often required asset.
High Levels of Remuneration
Few industries compare to the IT industry in terms of attractive salaries and remuneration packages for staff.
Whilst it can be difficult to factor in an overall average IT salary, due to the immense variety of roles that encompass the profession, estimates suggest that an average IT salary is around $100k per annum. This depends on the role and the organization that you work for. However, IT roles offer attractive salaries in many of the available roles.
Today, the role of a cyber security IT professional is gaining dominance, both in the number of job roles and the attractive remuneration packages that employees receive. This is due to the recognition that cyber attacks can wreak havoc on an organization and can cause financial, reputational, and infrastructural damage that can be hugely costly for any organization.
Work-Life Balance
Many roles within the IT sector offer standard working week hours from Monday to Friday. Few roles require IT staff to work longer than normal hours to meet deadlines for projects.
The video games sector occasionally asks its teams of coders, testers, and designers to work longer than normal working patterns to coincide with the impending release of a big budget game, but this tends to be the exception rather than the rule.
In addition, some IT roles, like web design or data analyst roles, may even allow the post holder to work remotely as they may just require a laptop and internet connection to undertake tasks.
Today, many IT roles are top choices of career for digital nomads, who can travel the world on their terms whilst still generating substantial incomes.
Opportunities for Progression
Many IT professions offer signposted routes to progression and personal development. It is a case of becoming proficient in your field of work before undertaking training to develop new skills or enhance existing competencies.
A programmer can start on a base salary with a solid knowledge of programming languages such as C++ and HTML before building on these skills and adding to a growing portfolio of successful projects completed.
This can result in progression to lead programmer or head programmer where responsibilities will be geared towards delivering the finished application and managing the team of coders beneath them.
You Will Be Helping People
As a final point, it is worth considering that the IT industry offers many ways to help other people. From solving IT issues to developing apps and software that allows people to be more productive or learn a new skill, IT has the potential to help solve problems in a way that few other industries can hope to.
The essence of most IT projects is to find efficient ways of working that are improvements on what has gone before.
To work in this type of industry where change is embraced, and improvements are continuous and geared toward helping people can be an extremely satisfying experience. It can also make for an exceptionally fulfilling career.
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