Tips for a Successful IT Career : by Tee Emm

Information Technology has taken our lives by storm. No matter who you are,you are bound to be affected by the advent of Information Technology. If technologies are about changing human life and improving its quality, noother technology does a better justice to this notion than IT.

We acknowledge the fact that Information Technology has, and will have, a driving - force impact on our lives. By the same token, Information Technology education and training is essential in today's environment.

We will talk about a few tips that can be consumed by young fellows who are either into IT Education or are entering into a professional IT Career. All this also applies equally well for people who are following some other profession 'applying' the Information Technology to their respective professional fields.

Tip 1: Identify yourself.
First off, identify yourself. Ask yourself if you would want to be an IT-Enabled Professional or a pure IT Professional? While apparently simple, this could be a tricky question. You could either be a 'Database Administrator' or a 'Finance Executive who does his Databases on his own'. You could be a 'CAD/CAM Guru' or a 'Mechanical Engineer who does everything on his machine'.

Once you answer this question, you are done with finding the right balance to strike between the endeavors in your professional career (or education) and your IT career (or education). The earlier you identify yourself, the less time you are likely to waste in a wrong direction.

Tip 2: Identify Your Key Technology Area. Information Technology is sort of a Swiss knife with all sorts of stuff bundled under the same label. There is a multitude of areas that can be classified under the IT umbrella and they are as diversified as they could possibly be. (Consider the divide between Computer Graphic Designing and Database Development - all being popularly
bundled under the two-letter magic word! )
One of the most important things you need to decide right in the beginning is the Key Technology Area you would be following in the rest of your foreseeable future. Of course, being dynamic in terms of goals and ambitions is good but there is a lot of difference between being dynamic and being undecided. If you are just getting into IT education, it's okay to take a diet that is a mix of a handful of technologies. But otherwise, you need to decide your key technology area. Nothing is more painful than to see someone into an IT career for tens of months being still undecided on this essential issue.

Tip 3: Don't Forget the Basics:
Whether you are into IT education or pursuing a professional career related to Information Technology, it is of utmost importance that you keep the 'basic rules and principles' of your technology in front of you all the time. Once you know what key technical area you belong to, identify basic rules and principles of that area. You would learn a few from the text books, a few from gurus around you and yet a few more from your own (most bad!) experiences.

If the current trend is to carry on, your 'Inbox' will remain a constant source of buzzwords and jargons that are constantly shot at you. These buzzwords and jargons usually tend to de-focus the activities of an average IT professional. You should be able to filter through this buzzword bombardment, sorting out the essentials from the junk. The mantra is to keep applying new trends and technologies in your respective interest areas as long as they go in-line with the basic rules and principals.

The quality of your day to day work and projects will depend greatly on the fact whether you kept the basics in mind while working on them or not. No amount of money or multitude of expensive equipment can undo the wrongs instigated because basic rules and principals were ignored in the design phase of a project. Learn your basics. And remember them!

Tip 4: Make Smart Use of Internet.
Today's corporate environment (and for that matter, IT Education campus) is extremely competitive. Unless you are the owner of your company, you either move up in the organization, or you move out of it. Remaining ahead of the rest of the crowd is a tricky job and requires a constant effort on your part. If you are pursuing a career in Information Technology, it is almost certain that Internet can be the very
tool you need to achieve this target of being a leader.
Making smart use of Internet sounds rather a trivial idea but just give it a thought and you would be amazed to see how often your class-fellows and co-workers get stuck up - and remain there - with issues answers to which are just a few keystrokes and clicks away. Making smart use of Internet might require some 'forced' practice for a few of us. Every time you face an issue, ask yourself how to address it by making an intelligent use of the Internet. With practice, you will see that making smart use of Internet lifts your efficiency levels up.

People who make smart use of Internet find themselves leading the crowd. Whether you are a student or a worker, remember that whatever you are doing now must have been done by someone out there. Remember that whatever stuff you are looking for, it might already be present on the Internet. Once again, there is a lot of difference between indulging in plagiarism and avoiding re-inventing the wheel every time you need one!

Tip 5: Interact.
As you move ahead in your IT career, you will realize how important it is to consolidate the new information and techniques that you learn everyday. Thanks to Internet, you can remain a student of your related field for as long as you desire. As new information makes its way to you, you would want to absorb all of it. This is a difficult job unless you make sure that you consolidate your existing information load on a regular basis.
A proven technique of strengthening your knowledge is 'Interaction' with others in the same field. What you teach to others is guaranteed to remain fresh in your mind for a very long time. As soon as you learn a new technique that relates to your area, teach it to someone. And this teach-to-learn exercise needs not be a formal one in a conventional class-room style. It can very well be done as you drive you buddy in your car to drop him home.

Like the rest of the things, Internet let you 'interact' in new, more exciting and more efficient ways. Identify your key technology area and then you can either join in an existing interest group or better still, identify people around you who have a potential for it and form a group of your own. Start a small, local mailing list for the group. Use free group-tools such as Yahoo! Groups (http://groups.yahoo.com) or Smartgroups (http://www.smartgroups.com) to build your community. Help people who are
new to the interest group making use of whatever you have learnt in the past.

If you are more confident, you can go even further. Team up with a few more people who are technically sound in your area of interest and organize 'Boot Camps' and short duration 'Workshops' for those who are new to your technology area. If you decide to be helpful, you would be amazed to see how much interested people could get.
You can also consider giving a try to technical writing. Technical writing can take many different shapes. You can write How-To documents for stuff you think you are good at. ('How-tos' are documents that target specific issues within a given technology area describing very precisely how to go about doing any thing). You can also write 'Beginners Guides' on topics that interest you. In the beginning, you can get you write-ups peer reviewed so that they are okay for consumption. Mailing lists could be great for this peer reviewing.

Tip 6: Keep a 'Book of Lessons'.
Try aintaining a small 'Book of Lessons'. A BoL is a set of very specific technical tips that you collect during your educational or professional career. Make a note of every lesson that you learn after an incident. Mistakes that ate up your entire days can be properly cashed if you derive proper lessons from them and then actually apply them afterwards. You can use an Internet blog to keep this BoL so that it is readily available over the Internet. [A blog is a facility that lets you maintain a log about anything off a website. You write your log on a website and when you publish it, it becomes the part of the website. For more information, check out http://www.blogger.com and
http://www.userland.com].

Tip 7: Develop a 'Financial Sense'.
People pursuing an IT career pose a general risk of being labeled as a 'purely technical' entity. People around you, and even you yourself, might end up marking limits around you that force you to remain a techy for the rest of your life. And it is not just about perceptions alone. A technical person who does not have a good financial sense would face problem sooner or later. Whether your job requires it or not, try to develop a financial sense that relates directly to your technology area.

Courtesy:Tee Emm