If you’re just starting out in your IT career, there are a few things you need to know. IT can be an incredible career, but it’s also one of the toughest employment markets in the world. Skills and qualifications are everything. You need certifications and you must also develop the reflexes and instincts required in core business practices. It’s important even at entry level to have recognized customer service training and other measurable skills.

This is a very demanding job market. It’s highly competitive, and any and all added value you can show on job applications can be the difference between getting a job or not. Fortunately for entry level IT people, there are some very good fundamental training courses, which can provide these very valuable broad-spectrum skill sets.

Entry level IT customer support

Perhaps the most underrated of all IT support functions is the help desk job. This may at first glance seem to be one of the more mundane IT tasks, and can involve some pretty basic work. However, a close look at the role will show you in detail exactly what is involved in the most critical areas of IT management.

Consider for a moment:

1. Who are your customers?
2. What are their demands?
3. What are their needs?
4. How does your work relate to their productivity?
5. What are the problems in terms of managing IT resources to meet their needs?

Whether this is your first day on the job at an IT helpdesk, or you’re managing a large IT corporate service, these are the basic business issues in IT customer support. This is what the job is all about, and it’s what IT is all about. IT and business are inseparable. If the IT systems have problems, the business has problems.

These requirements impact directly on your career choices. Given the situation outlined above, would you say you need service desk training? Would you expect an employer to prefer someone with accredited training in this field?

That’s exactly how important training is, for any IT career, at any level.

Planning your training to plan your career

When planning your training you need to consider long-term career requirements. The two types of training illustrated in the links above are essential first steps. The next stage, however, is more complex and requires considerable thought.

There are various obvious career pathways and possibilities for certifications, but when you get to IT system management skills, training requirements get a lot more complicated. IT management at some level is the likely career path that you will follow, and you need to acquire high quality qualifications. To be competitive in this field and for job mobility purposes, it is advisable to consider the top of the range qualifications as primary goals.

Consider for example ITIL, which includes the industry best practice IT service management qualifications. ITIL qualifications have very high value to employers and are internationally recognized standards. This type of qualification is exactly what you need for career development.

It is strongly advised that even at the earliest stages of your career you begin planning ahead and looking at these advance qualifications in detail. As you will remember from your training, every certification at every level of qualification opens up new doors. The sooner you open those doors, the better.