Except for few, most of us have made career choices right out of the college (Engineering, Commerce, and MBA) without much thought or little thought.
The pressure to get a job ASAP would gravitate us to the quickest job or highest paying job offered.
Today, I would like to touch on career choices available for the fresh graduates and career progression for these choices.
IT industry can be broadly broken down to 3 areas, Software Engineering, Application Development and Infrastructure Management/Administration.
Software Engineering – Software Engineering involves developing core products.
Companies like Microsoft, Cisco comes to mind.
My analogy is, Building a car so people can drive it. Only you know, what goes in there.
The driver doesn’t know what is beneath the hood.
If you want to pursue this option, your core skills would be Java, J2EE, TCP/IP protocols, and ability to write and alter algorithms at high end.
This option can be very lucrative compensation wise and can lead to very specialized knowledge in the field.
Jobs are plenty in this area but you need to put in long hours and ability to absorb lot of knowledge in short time.
You can start as a Software Engineer, progress to Team lead, Product Manager Etc.
Application Development – This is where lot of jobs are available.
SAP, Oracle, ASP, Java skills comes to mind.
These technologies are easy to handle for a beginner. Compensation wise, very good starting salaries and relaxed atmosphere except for go-live or Production environment.
These technologies are not taught in college, so your best option is to get hands on training and jump into the job.
This is the bread and butter of IT industry.
The analogy I apply is, driving a car. You can add some features to the product; you maintain the product and upgrade the product.
Sounds simple but that is the truth.
More and more companies are opting for ERP (Enterprise Resource Planning) packages like SAP, Oracle so that they don’t have to hire lot of Developer to develop the products. This was the trend in 70 and 80’s where Companies use to develop their own customized products and had huge IT development departments to maintain the product.
You can start as an Application Developer, progress thru the ranks to Team lead, Application manager and director. You can shoot for CIO position.
Infrastructure Management: This group falls between the above two in terms of the jobs and the complexity of the jobs.
DBA’s, System Admin and Network admin falls into this category.
Again, the skills are not taught in college but the concepts are taught extensively.
Most of the jobs in this area are support jobs so you can expect to be on call in after-hours.
Minimal program skills needed but having skills in scripting language would greatly add to you profile.
These jobs are vital for any corporate IT department. With the advent of Internet and security threats, these jobs are in great demand if you are a security expert.