Changing career part 3
Yesterday I received an email from a business person. He wrote: “ I graduated from business school five years ago and have been working in a financial company. I find the job boring and not safe since many financial companies are laying off people. I am looking for something safer and pay more. I consider to switch career to Information Technology (IT). Do you think it is possible? Please give me a direct answer “Yes” or “No”. If “Yes” then what area of IT would you think is good for me?”
Answer: I cannot give you a direct answer. It is your life and you have to make decision for yourself. Every industry has the up and down as well as risks. Few years ago, financial is hot, now it is not. Now IT is hot, what will be next? Nobody know. Please do not just look at other area and wish you could go there because it is promising or paying more. Sometime reality is not what you think. In my opinion, I do believe that IT has a lot of potential and will grow more but it is not a career for everybody. Some people love it, some people hate it, and some feel it is boring too. Without knowing your real reason to change, it is difficult to help you.
Why did you choose financial instead of IT in college? Have your reasons changed after you work in financial industry for few years? What will happen if a good opportunity in your financial company come, maybe you get a promotion, would you accept it or still decide to change into IT? Do you know that you must take training classes in order to work in IT? Would you willing to go back to school? Do you know something about IT and what are reasons that lead you to consider it for your career? Why not something else? Why do you think IT is safer and pay more than your current job? These are questions that you must have an honest answers for yourself and knowing that it is you who must make the decision and NOT somebody else.
In my opinion “Safer” job and “Better pay” are not good choices to select a career. Please distinguish the different between a career and a job. A career is something that you will do for a long time, maybe for the rest of your life. A job is something you do because you get paid. You must have passion for your career than everything will follow. If you do not like what you do, no matter how much you make, no matter how safe it is, your life will not be a happy one. I have seen people who have good jobs, good salary but not happy and they count every minute at work, just to get out. You are still young, you have a lot to look forward in your future. You do not want to get stuck into that kind of life.
However, if you do decide to switch to IT. There are few areas for people who do not have strong technical background but can still do well. First, you may need to take a course in requirements engineering then you can work as business analyst. This job deal with building relationship with customers, understand their needs and document them into requirements. If you have good soft skills like communication, negotiation, and presentation than you can help customers figure out how to improve their business by using IT and what kind of technology that they will need.
You may take a course in software project management. I would recommend that you learn more about Agile approach, especially a method called “Scrum” as it is the most popular. You could work as a “Scrum Master” to facilitate team meetings, remove obstacles and solving issues that may distract the team from reaching their goals. The Scrum Master is not a technical position, you are not a team leader but work as the buffer between the team and people from outside the team. You have to learn enough about agile to ensure that the scrum process is being used as intended.
You may want to enroll in the Information System Management program (ISM) since this field is more management rather than technical. It may suit your business career than other areas. Of course, as you learn more about IT, you can find an area that you want to build your career on. Please remember that IT is a large and complex field with a lot of roles and responsibilities. You have to stay in that field for several years to find what you like. I know many people think IT is about programming and testing which is NOT true. Coding and testing are only small parts in IT but there are much more. Throughout my website, there are many articles about different positions, different areas, different jobs that you could investigate.
In your situation, getting the job you want, in the industry that you want, and with the salary that you want may be a different story. In any case, you need a plan and you need to investigate more.
Sources
- Blogs of Prof. John Vu, Carnegie Mellon University
