By employed I mean get a job in the industry either offline or online. Ideally something that would highly likely remain in-demand in the near future.
Entry level networking technician. You can get a bunch of useful Cisco certifications for free on their website. Try to get yourself an old switch from ebay to practice setting up a small network, vlans etc., and you’ve got a solid start.
Try to get yourself an old switch from ebay to practice setting up a small network, vlans etc., and you’ve got a solid start.
This is what (older) millenials had to do when they wanted to play video games with their friends, no broadband internet, we moved the computer, set up a lan. Good old time. But this is how 20-25 years latter, I have basic knowledge of network, and look at puzzled Gen Z kids when I tell them to set their IP adress and ping the hardware
Sure as hell wouldn’t know what port forwarding is if it wasn’t for playing lan games online
Honestly? Pretty much anything. Not a senior level position unless you’re willing to really fudge your resume but entry or mid level - sure. If you put your nose to the grindstone you can learn to do pretty much anything in a year… that’s a long fucking time.
What kind of IT were you looking at? System administration? IT Support/Help Desk? Development? Networking? Ops?
I went in with a 4 year degree, the other grad next to me went in with a 6 month kinda masters. You can pull it off if you try hard enough and know your shit, wish I’d known that before I wasted so long at uni.
6 month kinda masters
What’s that, diploma mill?
It really depends on where you’re coming from. I’ve known several people who made a rather successful transition from a more business oriented position to business intelligence. It’s like data science’s older and less sexy brother :) General domain knowledge of business processes and finances are always a positive and IT knowledge for a junior can consist of as little as SQL knowledge and experience with a reporting and ETL tool.
You don’t get to do a lot of programming, but there’s always demand for people capable of building a proper data warehouse or able to translate an information request in a properly build report. Internal positions are often an option because companies like to retain people with expert knowledge of the inner workings of their information systems.Source: I used to be a BI specialist for ten years or so :)
Thanks for replying with valuable info!
What’s the first step in this direction you’d recommend now?
Learn SQL and data modelling. The Data Warehouse Toolkit by Ralph Kimball is a good introduction to data warehouses and dimensional modelling. It’s not a universal model for data warehouses, but the core concepts remain the same among different implementations. This should give you a good basic understanding of the basic concepts of data warehousing.
I know Reddit isn’t exactly popular here, but their business intelligence community is quite active. It might be a good place to lurk and gain some insights.
Best of luck! :)
Thank you! Is SQL and data modelling the most in-demand IT-related thing I can learn these days to get employed remotely?
Oof, I wouldn’t know about that. I was purely talking from personal experience. I don’t have a good picture of the job market in total, let alone in whichever country you live. If you want to get into the data-related IT fields (data analist, data engineer, business intelligence specialist, etc.) then SQL and data modeling skills are a must-have. But it’s just a small part of a much bigger discipline.
If possible, find some professional career counseling. Someone with better knowledge of the job market where you live might give you some good advice on which steps to take first.
I’ve been in search of a career counselor online but couldn’t find anything worthwhile. Any advice on who I could talk to?
No, I’m sorry. I wish I could help but I’m a bit out of my depth with this one. You might try a local career counselor, but that really depends on where you live and who’s available.
I wish you the best of luck though, I hope you’ll find what you’re looking for.
