Getting Started in the I.T. Industry

You just graduated from college and you're ready to find your new job in the IT industry. Great. Now what? You diligently search help wanted, Craigslist, all the job boards you can think of and maybe even submit your resume to several places. You find you get very little interviews after months. What do you need to do to finally get your foot in the door?

Keep up to date on what is taking place with technology as a whole.
This can be done by reading trade magazines in your genre of technology. You can also keep up with reputable blogs and studying company trends of those that manufacture or work with information technology.

Study the companies you want to work for.
AsktheHeadhunter.com is one resource you don't want to be without. The author of this site is a professional headhunter and basically blows the lid off most corporate hiring procedures. Studying the company you want to work for is just one way of getting a job. The author of this site goes into a lot of detail on the subject. I highly recommend reading his work.

Change your attitude on job hunting.
You can spend hours and weeks working off the internet hunting for jobs. I can tell you from experience that most corporate entities are required to work this way now, pushing your paperwork through various software systems for legal and compliance purposes. The bottom line, however is that people are still people and working in Recruiting, we often scheduled those that called or stopped by in person interviews before we got to our "electronic" candidates. You would simply be amazed at how many people do not bother to make that personal connection with Recruiting or HR.

Get lots of hands on practice.
For one person I knew who was trying to break into networking and fixing the physical aspect of things, this meant buying old computer parts or getting them free from neighbors and relatives, and then putting everything together again. He would use these old models to practice networking, wiping hard drives clean, and more. For programmers that means learning as many languages as you can and learning how to integrate them into successfully working web and desktop applications, complete with a working database system. Yes, if you cannot afford to purchase more schooling, you will need to do all of these things in your spare time.

Keep your skills fresh.
This means all your skills, technology and otherwise. Brush up on corporate ethics and culture. Practice your people and customer service skills wherever you go, whether it's to the grocery store or over the phone.

Keep up the persistence.
Don't throw in the towel before your time. No one ever got a job in the IT industry because they quit trying.