Careers Advice for the IT Professional

I have to admit that I am not at all interested in football, but despite all the bad press some players get, there are many who understand how privileged they are and that they are essentially there to entertain their many loyal fans.  A good example is something that Craig Bellamy said when asked about the best piece of advice he had been given..

“Play every game as if someone in the crowd is watching you for the last time and that performance was their lasting memory of you”

How is that relevant to us in the IT industry?

I think we are all ambassadors for our team, our business and to a certain extent even our industry.  Most of us get pretty well paid for what we do and most of us get to work in warm comfortable offices with little risk of injury and so I would argue that working in IT is a privilege too, though perhaps not in the same league as the premiership.  However we all have bad days, and there are terribly managed projects and organisations out there that we have to work with, and it can be had to be the true professional all of the time. This is especially true if we don’t believe in what we are doing and we aren’t happy in current roles.

However changing roles just because the wheel has come off where you are now is not really the answer,  you need to focus on what you want to do as I discussed in a post earlier in the year about How to find your 'Happy Place', which I hope got you thinking. It got us on the TechNet team thinking as well and we wondered how we could help to get you into a role that you would really enjoy.  The outcome is that we have three pilot careers evenings planned at our London offices. Each of these is themed around a particular group of technologies:

	6th March SQL & SharePoint
	3rd April Infrastructure so Windows and System Center
	1st May Cloud ; Azure and Office 365

We have got some top experts to help advise you each of these.  We’ll have our own HR expert Emma Broadway to provide an employers perspective so that you can properly market yourself and prepare for the role you are looking for. One of our learning partners along to ensure you have the skills and certification you need.  Finally the technology expertise will come from two sources; our MVP’s who have had really interesting careers and have really good insights into what is happening in the industry and where the technology is headed, and from apprentices who are just starting their careers, because actually we are all apprentices whenever we change technologies or there is a revolution like the cloud that changes the way we do things and their insights will give us all a refreshing perspective on our world.

These evenings are open to all, and whatever your IT career aspirations are, we think you’ll pick up some good tips and advice whether or not you are in the transfer market.