Choose your IT career early

By Adam Gifford

Students wanting a career in information technology need to have the end in sight before they graduate.

"Clarity of perception leads to superior performance," says Andy Mardell, contracting manager at Morgan and Banks Technology.

Mr Mardell gives lectures to about 900 Auckland University students doing IT-related courses, and finds that generally fewer than 200 know what they want to do when they graduate.

"It's important to choose early if you want to be a programmer, consultant, network engineer or whatever," Mr Mardell says.

"What I am trying to do is give information so people know what questions to ask. If you want to be a consultant you need a degree to provide the building blocks into management.

"After getting a degree, you have to look at MCSE (Microsoft certified systems engineer) or similar qualifications so you can get hands-on experience and go from there.

"Employers like certification exam results like MCSE for bench marking."

Such qualifications can be gained from commercial training companies or through free tutorials from web sites such as www.techcourses.com, www.developer.com, www.tekmetrics.com or www.cramsession.com.

Mr Mardell says most entry-level jobs, paying $30,000 or more a year, will be on telephone help desks, requiring people to have a practical grasp of networks, applications and operating systems.

Many graduates find themselves caught in a Catch 22 situation where employers are looking for commercial experience they are unlikely to have.

Attitude will outweigh experience, however, he says.

"Employers are looking for people with a good attitude who don't mind wearing a suit and going with the flow."

There are fashions in IT jobs, Mr Mardell says, and the big demand in Auckland now is help desk support, NT network engineers, Visual Basic and SQL Server developers, people able to develop in the various enterprise resource planning products, and Oracle and SAP consultants, analysts and administrators.

"SQL Visual Basic is in fashion because it downloads on the internet fast.

"We encourage people to get into that rather than C++ and other legacy system development languages."

Developers and designers using Cold Fusion and Java are also in demand.

He says the next major shortage will be skilled, experienced consultants able build electronic commerce systems.

"Knowledge of the finance industry is enough to get into a job. Consultants who know about secure connections to transfer money can get more work than they can handle."

Y2K work is all but over, he says, as far as big private companies are concerned.

Much of what Mr Mardell tells students is basic advice about resumes and interview techniques, a lot of which is up at www.morgan&banks.co.nz.

"We get a 25 per cent better hit rate if we tell people how to interview, how to scope the job and take notes, how to set out their relevant experience, and then to ask for the job if they find it appropriate.

"You'd be surprised how many people go for a job and then forget to ask for it during the interview."