In order to move up the ladder in the IT world, it is necessary to hone your skills with a holistic approach, says Pradipto Chakrabarty
Careers in the IT sector still entails the four building blocks of a digital organisation — applications, infrastructure, database and security. The IT continues to transform the way we live our lives, entertain ourselves and do business. It is a broad term that encompasses everything computer-related, and more synonymously, everything technology-related, is still the fastest growing career field. To support and implement the development of digitalisation across industries, network technicians, administrators and security experts play a crucial role.
How to choose the right IT path: One must be very careful when choosing an IT certification because many courses are vendor-specific and have their limitations when an employee needs to change jobs and discovers a different system at work.
The basics: It is always wise to choose a career that hones your most natural skills. Next, the most basic certification one needs to be useful to any employer is a general ability to fix and install and troubleshoot computer systems. This will help a prospective job-searcher get a foot in the door. The CompTIA IT Fundamentals+ exposes the candidate to the above mentioned blocks and imparts knowledge on each of these disciplines, thereby setting a platform from where the candidate can choose their respective areas of interests. The course then builds on that credential and covers IT Infrastructure in details. This program goes in depth to explain the concepts of devices, how the connected world looks like, practical trouble shooting, all varieties of operating systems, peripherals and information security. These two programmes are currently the most industry relevant and comprehensive assessments in this direction.
IT security path: One of the most sought after skills in today's era of massive data availability and ease of access to unsecured systems is the implementation of security protocols. But there are many levels of IT security professionals. To become a cyber security analyst, for example, one needs to be able to perform data analysis, interpret the results and identify vulnerabilities, threats and risks to an organisation. The Security+ course meticulously validates these skills for a first level security professional.
IT administrators: Similarly, novice system administrators need to be able to implement vendor-neutral servers and open operating systems like Linux. They also need to be able to versatile enough to pre-empt shifts to virtual servers including cloud systems. Cloud+, Linux+ and Server+ are great places to start and cover each aspect of IT administration at working-knowledge depth. Business users and non-IT staffs that need to get familiar with aspects of managing a project for an organisational purpose may also opt for vendor-neutral certifications like Project+ or Cloud Essentials.
The IT career extends to various domains. To sustain oneself through changing times and technologies, one needs to constantly upgrade relevant skills through an intelligent choice of certifications to cover the broadest ground.
