So you want to get into IT, its a very broad industry and there are many avenues that you can take. I personally think all of us are IT Noobs in some way,. IT is a broad industry there is no way we can know it all so when an experienced IT personal heads down another fork, well that person is now a Noob again. With that said I am going to focus this article on the complete NOOB to the IT world. I am going to start with my suggestion on where to start, then I will move on to explaining that your peers can be your biggest support base. After you have a few peers to chat with you will need to know how to get more information out of them. Finally I will wrap it up with how to search the internet to get even more information.
To start getting your IT career of the ground there are some basic things you will want to get to know, no matter what fork of the IT world you want to travel down. A great place to start is with obtaining your CompTIA A+ certification. This will give you a basic understanding of the computer on the software and hardware level. Next you will want to get some basic networking knowledge and to do so you should take the CompTIA Network+ certification. You should spend some time practicing at home with you own computer installing, breaking and then fixing it, on a software and hardware level. Once you get a little comfortable, you can start helping your friends setting up their computers, and basic low level support, such as backups, software installation, setting up cloud accounts, etc. After spending a little time in the great world of IT, your going to start thinking about where you want to go, do you want to be a programmer, IT support, Sys. Admin, security, the list goes on but find your focus. You will also want to start to look for your first entry level job, the key here is just get your feet in the door. Your first gig is exactly that, it is not meant to be where you want to go, it is one of the bottom steps of where you want to get to.
On a daily basis we are always looking towards our peers for advise and most of the time this is the advise we use. We may use this advice to help with further searching to get our answer but we take this advice a bit more than if we were to just read an article. I always find myself in a situation were I feel like I should know the answer to a question or that I should know how to do something that I don’t. Simply in IT you can never know it all and there will always be someone that knows more than you do. The key at that point is to realize that you are not the alpha, and to crush your pride and just ask the simple questions; How did you do that? Can you show me again? Why did you do that? What if I do this and then that?…. Asking simple questions like this will often open a door and get the person that knows more than you to explain the steps in more detail. You will want to make sure that you ask detailed questions when you don’t fully understand something. If you don’t assert yourself and show to your mentor at the time that you are truly interested, why would they waste their time to explain it to you. When ever I am shadowing someone with more knowledge than myself I make sure to get as much out of them as I can.
One of the best ways to get more knowledge out of one of your peers is to find a common ground. This common ground doesn’t have to be IT related, it just needs to be something that you both can relate to. As an example I practice Judo, and I can usually use this as a conversation starter or a way to bond with someone. When you have a common ground you have more to talk about other than just IT and it will help build the relationship with your peer and in turn you will get more knowledge from this person. You also have to understand that in order to get you have to give. This means you can’t just sit there like a leech, you have to give some valid input back. You never want to force a subject, this will cause the person to pull back and not want to help you any more. From my experience people like to talk, sometimes they will/or can not talk about certain things. But if you simply plant a seed and are patient enough you might get the answer you are looking for.
This is Information Technology, one of the best places to get information is on the internet. Sometimes however when browsing the web, you might not find exactly what your looking for. A good way to help refine your searches is to modify your search terms, the way you think it should be worded might be completely off. Sometimes as a new comer in the IT world you might not have all the correct terminology, so start your searches very generic and then start to fine tune your searches based on information you gather from your generic searches. As a very low level example you might search for ‘forms on wordpress’, which would provide you with some results. But if you performed a search for ‘wordpress form plugins’, you might get more results that pertain to information that you are looking for. Once you find a site that you like or has provided you with some useful information, bookmark it. You already spent time trying to find this information, you will need it again, do not waste time doing something twice.
So to sum it all up, get your feet wet with some basic certification, like the A+ and Network + from CompTIA. Find your self an entry level position and then turn to your peers to help advance your career. You will want to make you sure that you get the most out of each step on your way to reaching your goal and knowing how to interact with your peers will help with this greatly. Also do not forget that the internet is your friend, it is very likely that someone has the same or similar challenge to defeat and most of the time people blog about it.
-jeremy
p4nt4n30 