Career change into I.T. - any advice from people working in this field?

[sterlingcooper]

I have an Arts degree and since then have worked in office management type jobs for small companies. The part of my job I have always most enjoyed is to do with using IT to improve efficiency and insight, mostly Excel, databases etc. I've been able to dabble as have worked for small co.s and taught myself some stuff like basic SQL, lots of Excel stuff, the ins and outs of various databases that have been used. B I have no formal IT equals or training.

I'd really like to refocus my career on IT proper, the bit that most interests me is data analysis / BI. But I have no idea how to go about making this move. I'm mid 30s as well, it concerns me that Id be seen as too old.

Do any mumsnetters have any advice? I'm currently trying to teach myself more SQL in my spare time, but apart from that I don't know where to start. Are there any part time qualifications I should take? Are there any companies who would train me on the job? Given that my only work based IT experience is with Excel and mostly front end database stuff, everything else like the SQL has just been dabbling...I need some kind of solid plan and focus ! What should it be?

Our company wouldn't see you as too old. We might be concerned about maths/logic ability - what's your GCSE maths result like?

The roles that would be open would be apprentice level jobs though with pay under £20k, you would get paid more in a support role but that's not where you'd want to be. Would that work?

Thanks for your reply.

Part of what has prompted this is that I've inherited some money, so can afford to do some retraining and/or take a short term cut in pay. As it is I earn less than £30k now.

I was actually looking at IT apprenticeships on Monster the other day and thinking they sounded great. But didn't know a) if they are really the best way in and b)if I'm too old to be considered or if the fact I already have a degree rules me out.

I also got the idea (again from Monster) that IT support roles seemed like the easiest way in, but not really what I want to do long term. I'd be happy to do that short term if it led somewhere else though, but does it?

Getting onto an IT Graduate scheme will be difficult, but getting a role in some manner of IT Support shouldn't be too difficult as long as you have some basic IT knowledge, a willingness to learn and a good telephone manner.

From there, over a few years you can usually work your way up to becoming second, third, fourth line support... Then eventually move into development if that's what you want. It took me about five years to go from front line support to back office development, but I did have some prior coding experience.

Knowing and enhancing your SQL is good - in the north of the UK I know there is a desperate shortage of SQL Developers, particularly in BI (Business Intelligence).

My BTEC and Degree are sort of in the right area if you squint, but I don't have any of the 'official' Microsoft qualifications for SQL or similar. Generally it's the years of experience that count more than the qualifications in IT.

Try looking at PluralSight - I think they run a free 30 day trial - and watching some of the training videos on there.

One thing with IT is that is is massively male dominated; it's rare that I'm not the only female on the team. Covert sexism is rife and there are glass ceilings for women, though they are slowing coming down. So you will need a thick skin and be prepared to stand up for yourself.

Benefits of being in the development area of IT usually include a good salary, standard office hours, not too much travel and the ability to work from home when you need to.

Spirael - thanks. I keep seeing things about how there is only going to be more and more demand for people work in areas of IT to do with data analysis, big data etc, which is part of what prompted me to think seriously about all this, so good to hear confirmation that this area is in demand!

RE: the glass ceiling - again, in a weird way this sort of appeals to me. I don't have children, and as it stands I don't think I want them. I feel like I owe it to myself to do more with my career than I have been doing so far, and as someone who considers themselves a feminist, I kind of like the idea of getting out there into a male dominated industry and doing my part for womankind. Though I'm sure it's easy to look at it idealistically that way but harder to deal with the reality...

Will definitely look into Pluralsight, thanks for the tip.

Need to give the I.T. support idea a bit more though and do some more research re: that possibility I think.

I'm not convinced IT support is the route for you. I did a research project a couple of years ago on skills gaps in IT for the financial sector. The preference for employers was to hire people with science or law degrees (because it demonstrated structured thinking and forensic ability) or straight from school into apprenticeship schemes. Apparently these are the groups who quickly pick up on coding and systems.

Where there was a gap was in IT project management. The preference here was not for specific IT backgrounds, but an understanding of the pragmatic application of IT, the ability to lead people and the ability to implement projects. Apparently a lot of IT programmers/support/network/testers don't want to move into management roles which is a headache for many companies.

I'm not too up in IT PM, but maybe something like ITIL or Prince2 might be more useful than limiting yourself to a technology?

I got an A in maths GCSE, but didn't take it at A Level. I admit I am a bit worried about the maths side, maths is the kind of thing that gets harder as I get older...

Project Management doesn't appeal all that much to be honest. I don't really like managing people / telling them what to do.

I'm a software engineer. Most programming jobs nowadays involve developing web pages, and you need to show that you can:

• design web pages (HTML, css)
• manage a database, which you already have some experience of
• write stuff in the programming language they use

Companies don't always require formal IT qualifications (I have got no IT qualifications, I have a life sciences degree) but they will want you to have some experience. I would try and teach yourself a popular language like Java, and the basics of web page design. There is a shortage of programmers, so with some home based experience you never know..

I got into programming by moving sideways in my old company from a lab based position to a programming team, who trained me up. Would this be an option for you?

PP is correct that it is a very male dominated industry. I'm a man, and I've never met a female programmer in my professional life (I have outside of work).

Not all programmers are good at maths btw, but you need to be able to think logically.

I do have a basic knowledge of HTML...back in the late 90s as a teenager I made a few websites for various TV shows/bands I was a fan of, using a combination of HTML coding and front page express. So I know the basics but from years ago...

I am kind of kicking myself that I didn't go down the IT route with my studies first time around. I was good at arts subjects and everyone just assumed that was what I would do a degree in, including me, but I was never bad at maths/sciences either. They just seemed less interesting at the time. More well paid job opportunities seem to come from them though!

Yes you are likely to earn more if you did STEM subjects.

You're not too old, despite all the fuss about millenia. I don't think IT support is the best place for you. It might be a way in, but you don't have much formal experience, so the competition will be hard. Also, IT support often comes with shift work or on-call - but can be very flexible, too. Depends on the employer.

The employer is a big consideration - in a small company, you might have to be a Jill of all trades so get a broad experience, but in large corporations, there are more opportunities for changing roles once you've got your feet under the desk, and the money can be better. But roles can be narrower and there's a risk of getting stuck, especially if you have managers who tell you that to get a promotion you'd have to walk on water. (Oddly, haven't noticed that ability in male colleagues who've been promoted...) I would look at companies which offer things like "returnships" for women, because they're more likely to be woman-friendly. Overt sexism isn't such an issue, IME, but unconscious bias and so on is, the belief that women can't do IT properly, despite all the evidence to the contrary, and that women have been involved in IT from the very outset.

A lot of women in IT have come from non-IT and even non-STEM backgrounds - and I think a broader background is an asset - but I would, as my first degree is history. Sell your non-IT background as an asset, a broader range of experience and so on. Having office management experience should definitely be helpful.

I did an MSc conversion, designed for people whose backgrounds are non-IT. I figured it was a year of my life, and if it turned out I hated it, the knowledge would still be useful for any other jobs. So maybe that's an option, if it's financially feasible.

I have met plenty of female programmers - more of them than Unix sys admin as I am. But it is true you are likely to be in a minority - I'm currently on a secondment to another department, and it's the first all woman team I've been in. Being the only one in a department of 40 was more usual. It's not a coincidence that I go to quite a few women in IT events. It might be worth looking at BCS Women (a lot of content is available to non-members.) Make sure you're on LinkedIn (every job I've been for in the last 15 years has been via LinkedIn), and look at the various groups for women in technology. We Are The City has a technology group, too, and I've been to a couple of useful networking events for that. There are lots of companies actively trying to improve the number of women in IT, so make the most of any efforts there.

I also have an arts degree and now work in Technology, def agree with PP that IT Support may not be quite right (you could get in at an entry level role and work your way up, though it mightn't utilise the area you are interested in and can be quite limiting). I would look at more analytics type roles, especially if you have SQL skills, it is a bit growth area and you don't necessarily need to come into that area from a techie background. As others mentioned, ITIL and project management might be better, also Business Analyst (BA) roles as you need writing ability as well as technical skills.

Feel free to PM me about it.

Agile is also big at the moment.

Good one EBearhug. Also Six Sigma, Lean, anything related to Big Data- you're interested in BI, so Cognos, Qlikview, SQL are all big at the moment and relatively easy to learn yourself.

My DH is very senior in Tech, he has lousy maths GCSE results and an art degree. He's completely self taught. When he's recruiting he wants passion and a willingness to learn above everything. Salary wise the sky is the limit, he earns 6 figures ++++ and hit £100k about 8 years ago with no management responsibilities.

I wonder if you might be more suited to more of an analyst route rather than IT/development?

I'm a business analyst by title but my role is quite data focused so lots of excel / sql / SAS but I definitely wouldnt describe myself as an IT person! My husband is a BI developer, does contract work.

For either type of role i think any potential employee will want to see some sort of maths / physics / IT strength in your education. Do you have any A levels in those types of role?

Do you think you have the kind of brain where you can pick up / teach yourself new programming languages easily? Have you any experience of proper IT development type stuff? Would have thought you'd need a bit of that to want to go into a IT career.. Excel and Sql aren't really the same thing.

If not and you are a bit more business focussed but enjoy the technical / analytical side then analyst route would be good. I work for a small company who hire a lot of graduates into both analyst and development roles. I think they are more interested in finding bright people who have to right kind of brain to learn on the job than actual experience.

All my A levels are in Arts subjects. I guess I could probably do a Maths A Level via distance learning fairly easily (in terms of there being distance learning options available where it should be possible to complete in a year). But again, I'd only want to commit to this if it would genuinely be useful - not just in terms of being 'required' by an employer, but if it would really teach me stuff that would be useful to a future IT career.

EBear -your MSc conversion sounds interesting, can you tell me what it was exactly?

buckyou - can you tell me more about what the Business Analyst role entails? Like some concrete examples so I can get my head around it a bit. Is it the type of thing that tends to be done on a consultancy basis ie working for a consulting company for various clients, or do companies employ people internally in this role?

Aware that Excel and SQL aren't the same thing! I became interested in SQL because we had an external consultant guy who would populate the Excel workbooks we used for BI with data from the database via SQL queries. I started to wonder how it worked and taught myself some of the basics and I find it really interesting. Though I can see how it might get quite 'mathematical' after a certain level, which I don't know if I'm necessarily suited to.

Another conversion MSc. Graduate here [waves to bearhug] who ended up in PM.

I would encourage you to apply for anything you can find where you will get on the job training. There is no harm in doing some training in a particular language, but on the job will be much more realistic, as you will most likely be with a team if people. One good place to look for who is providing schemes is Women in Science & Engineering WISE , who keep a register of companies encouraging new entrants and give awards to good schemes.

Another place to look is as a tester. You hardly hear about this role outside the industry, but we employ many, many more testers than developers. In the consumer electronics world, It takes one person to develop something, (or a new version say of windows comes along) then it has to be tested against all the existing devices in order to make sure there are no issues. There are entry level positions and there is lots and lots of scope for becoming a specialist and very, very valuable to the organisation. You will always be involved in the new things coming along and, with experience. Testing is much more sociable than developing, have a look at the curriculum for ISEB (which we use, there are bound to be many others, including a section in what used to be the british computer society). All the best...

No I mean excel and sql aren't really the same as what I'd call IT development, not the same as each other.

So it's not just business analyst roles, that might be a bit misleading actually, but roles might be called data / risk / marketing / insight analyst, that kind of thing, depending on industry.

If you were a risk analyst for a bank for example you might be responsible for using sql/Excel to developing reports to monitor collections strategy, you might be involved in presenting the results from these reports to the wider business and then doing ad hoc analysis on any additional requests. Could be quite focused on analysis / coding or could be more business focused.

similar to what a BI or Sql developer might do but an analyst is a bit more interested in the data and what it is saying where as a developer is more focused on coding / efficiency etc. To be a developer you've got to really be interested in coding.

For both I think you need a mathsy brain to a extent. You need the same kind of logical thinking to write code as you do to solve maths problems, hence why employers normally look for this sort of background.

I'm an MSc information management person (waves to everyone!)

My first roles in IT were

Information and Comms analyst which was a bit of a hotchpotch mainly business Process Improvement

Business Analyst

IT Service owner for one system I was the liaison between business user community and IT

My suggestion would be to start with ISEB Business Analysis Essentials for a good grounding in all BA principles. Use the Internet to research good reading materials on BA

Would advise you take a gradual approach rather than run before you can walk.

You could practice creating dashboards to display data effectively YouTube is good for that. I don't get time in my job to mess around creating beautiful visual indicators I would love to because they are highly valued in companies

I'm a female software engineer.

I wouldn't worry about the maths too much. It helps, but if you have a logical mind, then you will be fine. You can get the computer to do the basic maths for you. I don't have a maths a level.

I don't know too much about IT support, other than I phone them when I have issues with my computer or the network. I doubt you'd be doing much data analysis in that sort of role, which is what it sounds like you're interested in.

Watching this with interest - a good mate of mine is helping me to learn Javascript (we both come from life sciences background) - he successfully made the jump out of academia into programming...

EBear -your MSc conversion sounds interesting, can you tell me what it was exactly?

Mine is from 20 years ago, but I did Google to check they still do them, which they do at various locations. I had funding, too, because they were encouraging people into tech, and there's certainly still a need for people in tech rules, so worth checking if there is any and you're eligible if you apply, if such things as funding still exist.

It was most of a 3 year degree condensed it to one year with a summer project. I should think the syllabus will have changed a fair bit, but we covered 3 or 4 programming languages - and the basic logic is still the same, even if specific syntax changes. We looked at low level architecture, networking (OSI 7 Layer model), graphics, formal logic, syntax diagrams, testing theories, things like sorting algorithms, human computer interaction. There was a group project, where we basically took the various roles of a project team and had to plan, analyse, code and test whatever it was (can't remember now.) And endless analysis of network packets and what the different bits mean... I would assume these days there's more internet content, html, security. Java was literally brand new back then (don't think it existed publicly at the start of the academic year.)

There were a couple of assignments I struggled with initially - one early one about programming a knight's move round a chessboard. Unlike everyone else in IT (apparently), I have never learnt to play chess, and had no idea how a knight moved (it's quite an easy programming exercise once you know that bit.) I only have GCSE maths and we had to program a differential curve for graphics, and I'd never touched differentials, as it wasn't on the syllabus. I assume it had been on O-level - I was the first year of GCSEs, and it's possible they've changed entry requirements because they found GCSEs isn't quite enough. Although it probably is with a good grade and they change some of the assignments to things which are covered, unless you're planning on becoming a scientific programmer. It was lack of knowledge that caused me minor problems, rather than lack of ability, and I was fine once it had been explained.

It's hard work - much more intense than a first degree. But worth it. We had historians, linguists, philosophers, mathematicians, all sorts, and I do think it makes more rounded employees, because there are more perspectives and diversity of thought and ideas. (Although not all IT managers appreciate that!)

This is all so useful, it has my head spinning a bit but in a good way.

It's true I probably need to take more time and do more experimentation to find out what really interests me rather than just thinking 'I want to move into an IT role'. I think that I'm more interested in setting up the systems to analyse data than I am in the data itself to be honest, but not sure. I do enjoy coding to the small extent I have done it ie HTML, SQL, but I have obviously only just skimmed the surface...

Quite excited by the idea of an MSC conversion though, I didn't realise it was possible. I see Queen Mary's does a 1 year full time MSC in IT and Computer Science for people with a non-IT degree...

I enjoy coding to a small extent. Debugging and hunting down syntax errors because of a single missed semi-colon drives me insane with frustration (which I was surprised about - I can be a really pedantic proofreader, and I'm quite good at spotting other people's errors.) I do the odd bit of scripting these days, which is enough to be fun, but it's far from being the main bulk of my job.

I've also had careers coaching in the past which I posted about on another thread recently. I'll see if I can hunt down a link.