



One of the hardest things right now for young people is getting your first job in your career. A lot of people that I know that are the same age as me are still working part time jobs that aren’t in their chosen field. This seems like an epidemic, young people don’t have experience and jobs only want people with experience. So how can young people gain skills that will help them get jobs? I have seen people join and leave companies and I myself have interviewed for positions so I feel like I have a pretty good, albeit not as good as people with more experience, grasp on required skillsets for entry/mid-level technicians. All of the knowledge I have is from my own experience and speaking with others in the field, I have not directly taken part in the hiring process.

First I will start by giving you a background on me. I started working in the IT world when I was seventeen years old. I started working at a consulting firm doing level one work, this is how everyone starts but I started earlier than most. I was going to school for Computer Science and I remember thinking why go into IT when I could be a software engineer? Now I am glad that I did not pursue that field. At first the work that I was doing wasn’t appealing but I stuck with it and it did start to pay off. Eventually after I was actually useful to the company I switched from an intern to an actual employee and I started receiving pay, this was my first job ever so getting my first paycheck was a big moment for me. I was a seventeen-year-old kid in the business world surrounded by people ten years my senior, this made me take a big step back and I realized that if I wanted people to consider me their peer even though I was so much younger than them I would need to put in a lot of extra work. I worked very hard to learn as much as I could, I was always trying to find out what key technologies I would need to learn not only to excel at my current job but that I could use anywhere in the industry. I was still going to school at the time, I was attending a local two-year college for computer science but I eventually switched my degree to Information Systems with a focus on network administration. I took a lot of useful classes that taught me a lot about TCP/IP, Cisco iOS, Windows Desktop and Server 2012R2. None of these classes came anywhere close to the knowledge I gained from work and the people that I worked with. The engineers at my first job are some of the most knowledgeable people I have ever worked with including vendors, other consulting firms, clients, etc. The time I spent working with them taught me some of the most valuable skills that I possess but most importantly the main skill for any consultant, client interaction. Without client interaction or people skills in general you will not get very far anywhere doing any job. You could be the best technician in the world but if the client says that they don’t want you to come to their office ever again because they don’t like you that doesn’t matter. And that brings me to what I think are the necessary skills for any young person trying to break into the IT world.

When you are applying for your first job you are going to need a resume that stands out, especially if you are straight out of college or do not have a degree like myself. Since you aren’t able to get work experience you need to teach yourself important skills. The technical skills that I think are the most important if you want to go into the field are: VMWare, TCP/IP, Cisco, Windows Server, ADDS, and Exchange. Now obviously these skills can vary depending on where you are working but I think that these skills will give you a solid foundation to build from and will make your resume look better instantly. That being said, technical skills can only get you so far. An employer will want to see you apply these skills, the best place would be in production but not everyone has that opportunity so setting up a home lab would be good also. There are a lot of good programs to use for home labs, you can use VMWARE Workstation for virtualization, or GNS3 for networking. Microsoft Imagine is a great tool for students and allows you to use Microsoft software for free to learn. VMWare and Cisco also offer similar services for students to take advantage of. Something that I think more people should take advantage of to get experience is volunteering for charities or non-profits, they need assistance with IT issues and you can use them on your resume and you get to help them out. There are a lot of ways to help build up your resume, but you should make sure to make it a strong combination of your skillset and proving how you have and can apply it to better their company.

I really hope that this is helpful to anyone that is trying to break into the field. Although I do not have as many years of experience as others I hope that I can help some people that are new to the industry. I plan to write more about my experiences in the future and I hope that others can relate and share their experience with me. Thanks everyone for reading and have a great day!