You have to be realistic, this is not going to be easy and will require a lot of planning and research, hard work and a sprinkle of good luck.
In this post, I will share with my recommended plan and approach to maximise your chances and eventually switch to tech career and secure an entry level position, from which will hopefully progress, evolve and change your life for the best.
How to chose what to switch to
Tech is very broad and ranges from security, Cloud, network, S/W development, datacenter, DevOps, system administration. The list is long and daunting. It is up to you to figure out where do you have to best chances to get in, and what suites your personality and current skill sets.
For example, if you enjoy playing detective and have a good sense of protection, then maybe security is your field. If you are good at organising in a systematic way, documenting and monitoring. Then maybe system administration or monitoring is your kind of work.
And if you like tech, but don’t like to be trapped in an office, then perhaps your line of work should be field engineer or technician. Driving around, fixing equipment or deploying new gear.
So the advice here is to research the different tech fields, soul search and figure out what appeals to you the most.
Technical skills
Once you zoomed in or short listed one or two fields, you must find out what are the requirements and profiles employers are looking for. So how exactly do you do this ?
A start could be to lookup entry level job adverts. From there, extract and list the technical requirements and skill sets.
There could be skills you already have, such as knowledge of Microsoft office products, broad IT support or hardware maintenance, such as changing hard disk, patching cables, basically something you may have done in your own home or as unofficial tasks in your current job.
But very likely, there will skills you perhaps never heard of before, certifications, industry terms and acronyms such as PHP, Python, AWS, ACLs, BGP. Here again you have to research and find out which of these skills are the low hanging grapes. Which ones are the easiest and quickest to learn, which are the most used and in demand.
These days, learning a programming language like python is an excellent step and will open up opportunities not only in Software development, but also in DevOps or Cybersecurity.
Study and Learn
By now, you would have a good idea on which tech field you want to be in, what skills are required and which of them you have and which you lack.
How do you close the gap, start learning and pilling up knowledge and skills and make yourself more attractive to potential employers. The options are to either take courses, or buy books and watch videos and teach yourself or possibly both.
Do not go all in and spend all your savings on courses, before you are sure you really like the topics, have what it takes to get through the course and learn what is necessary to hold your own during interviews and skill tests.
You have to be brutally honest with yourself, and make a good assessment on how good you are.
Certifications
Taking courses is one thing, certifying at the end of a course is another. I am talking about proper recognised certifications and not that printout you get for showing up after 5 lessons. By certifications, I mean something like CEPP for python, vendors certifications such as Cisco and Juniper.
Certifications not only gives the validation you need to prove to employers that you are serious about this, but also the self confidence that you are ready.
For passing some certifications, you also need to have a certain amount of hands on knowledge. This is priceless and will cement your theoretical knowledge and give you credibility as a tech. Certifications are by no means a guarantee to get a job or even an interview, but it is a huge step in the right direction.
Final step
This is where you actively work towards securing your 1st interview and build your confidence to showcase your skills and knowledge.
Working on your resume is a must. As you will be applying for something different from your current line of work, you have to tweak your work history to reflect what makes you interesting to recruiters and employers.
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