10 Tips on How To Improve Your IT Career

So you work in IT, and you need to know how to improve your IT career? You’d wish to know how you can stick out from all of the other people who work in the IT industry? Well, here are a few ways you can do this. Have a read of some methods you can increase your IT career.

Set Career Goals

One of many quotes I hear on a regular basis is by Earl Nightingale - “People with goals succeed because they know where they are going”. It means that by setting goals, you can realise where you’re seeking to go - in this case, where you’re going with your work. Take a moment to take into account what your objectives are for your IT career. This will likely involve

What exactly do you enjoy doing?
What would you like to be doing in the next one, five, or ten years?
Do you desire to be managing people or a team?
Would you like to be doing a technical role (e.g. developer), a people role (e.g. business analyst), or something different?
If you haven’t made a long term career plan, have a read of my article on Why You Need a Long Term Career Plan in IT.

Don’t just think of them - write them down. Write them in a place that you’ll remember them and also look back on them down the road. This is in order to see if you’re on track or not, which brings me to the next point.

Regular Self-Reviews

Many businesses complete regular reviews with their staff. This isn’t used only for pay raises, it’s to help with their development and then determine how they’re going with their job.

It’s smart to do your own self-reviews frequently. Take a look at goals for your career, both long and short term, and then determine how your advancement is matching up to that. In case you have several goals, work out how you’re going against each of those goals. You can do this regularly, depending on how long or short term the goals are - perhaps every several months for short term goals, and every couple of years for long term goals.

Don’t be afraid to be tough with your review. The more sensible and unbiased you are, more suitable the review process will be. If you feel you haven’t improved your communication skills in the last several months, for instance, you might like to take some action with that by getting training or obtaining experience.

Make Yourself Known

Your supervisor will probably know how you work and how good you are at your job. They should - as they’re the one you’re performing it for. However, a terrific way to improve your IT career is to get yourself seen to other people in the company:

Your boss’s boss. Make them aware of who you are, what work you’re doing and how well you’re doing it. This will assist with identification and any future promotions.
People in HR - it can be hard for human resources to know each and every person in the organization, especially if it’s so big. Make yourself known to them, then when they’re discussing your file or your progress amongst themselves, they understand more about you.
Other supervisors - get yourself and your work known among other teams and other managers. This can be done if you’re also doing work for other teams, but if you’re only concentrating on the one project, it can be a little harder. Try talking to them and getting them to know you if you see them around the workplace.

Find a Mentor

One of the better techniques for getting where you strive to be in your career is to have someone who’s’ followed the same road to give you tips on how to get there. This is most probably someone senior in your organization or your industry, who’s doing the same thing that you want to do in your IT career - whether it’s a senior project manager, senior developer, support team lead, or something different.

Introduce yourself to them, question them queries about their role, mention you’re interested in progressing your job. Ask them for advice for what you can do to improve your IT career. Depending on the individual, their level of co-operation may vary. Buying them a coffee to talk about it is a big help!

Cause of Procrastination

We can’t all be successful for every minute of the day. Nevertheless, at times when we have work to do, we mentally distract ourselves, delaying the job until we feel like doing it. This is called procrastination. It’s pretty typical, and there might be times when you do it as well.

The main element to getting beyond the procrastination is to figure out why you’re doing it in the first place. Why are you putting off doing something that should be done? Is it too difficult? Are you not the best person to do it?

For me, I noticed one of the factors behind my procrastination is where I had to ask a question to someone, but didn’t quite learn how to word the question. Instead of spending a few minutes working out what I wanted to know and work out the question, I would just procrastinate. As I realised this, I worked on improving it and figuring out when it happens.

Know Your Value Outside The Company

It’s useful to determine what your value is in the IT industry - that is, outside your own organization. Being aware of what other companies think of you is an effective way of realizing your own value. There are a few ways you can do this:

Uncover what others with similar experience and skills to you are being paid. This can be done by searching job websites (not at your work though!) or asking job forums.
Getting job interviews with other companies. This may be hard to do while you have a job, and may not always work, but it might be a good way to understand what other businesses are able to pay you.
Also, if you’re an Australian IT worker, the job website Seek has a great tool that you can use to work out your expected pay range and benefits.

Make Lists to Keep Organised

How can you ever understand what you should do, if you don’t have a record of it somewhere? It could be a good idea early on to go by a few emails you receive or what your manager asks you to do. But the top IT employees use their own personal organisational system or set of lists to manage what they need to do.

The kind of lists you use would depend on your preference and your job, but a basic To Do list should be enough to start. Many email programs possess a list system (such as Tasks in Microsoft Outlook) which can be used. Even a notepad or an Excel file can work.

Join LinkedIn

Social networks are a big thing currently. You may be on Facebook, or Twitter. One more great social networking site for professionals is LinkedIn. Essentially, it’s like Facebook but for professionals. You set up your profile, add your education and work experience, and connect with others. Reasons to do this include:

You can keep up to date with your current and former co-workers
It’s like an online cv - prospective employers can find you depending on your experience
You can find jobs via LinkedIn as well
Other people can offer you recommendations - publicly writing how wonderful you are at your job. Which you are! Or, you will hopefully be if you’ve been reading the articles on my site!

Join A Group Or Association

A lot of industries and sub-industries in the IT world have associations or interest groups that people can join. They could be groups based on specific technologies (e.g. Microsoft SharePoint), based on specific sub-industries (Business Analysis), or workers of a certain region (IT Workers in Chicago). Joining such groups won't just connect you with like-minded individuals, but you’ll gain access to a lot of information, from both the organisation and the people inside it. This can be a big benefit to your career.

Personally, I’ve joined a few newsletters/groups that I’m enthusiastic about, such as Oracle developers and Project Management groups. There are tons out there - have a look around!

Get Additional Qualifications

Probably the best tip on how to improve your IT career is to acquire more qualifications. These should really be in the industry that you’re trying to improve in, but general qualifications can help. Project managers, security and networking professionals, and even specific technology developers all have a choice of qualifications they can obtain.

They often involve studying the course material, signing up for an exam, paying a fee, and then (hopefully) passing the exam. Dependant upon the courses, the fees may vary. But, eventually, you should make that money back, both in benefits to your employer and future pay rises. People with extra qualifications usually get paid more - both from their current employer, and if they decide to change employers.