Are you stuck in your IT career because you haven’t chosen a specialty yet? Don’t worry, here’s a 3-step process to help you advance:
How to Advance in Your IT Career:
- Choose a specialty
- Learn that specialty while you’re in L1/helpdesk
- Start applying for jobs in that specialty once you feel ready
Why Choosing a Specialty is Crucial:
It’s a simple formula, but so many people are still missing it. Helpdesk is an entry-level role with opportunities to move to areas like networking, systems administration, DBA, BI, devops, and more. But it all starts with choosing a specialty.
Don’t wait for someone to hand you your specialty – take charge of your career and make it happen.
But how can we add this specialty in the resume if we dont use this specialty at current workplace. Lets say we only have the specialty certification?
If lets say we do home labs or projects, do employers look into it or will ignore it?
I’m going for the support —> sys admin skill tree but no idea what I want to do after that
I’m in a network/ hybrid cloud support role now but I literally spent 2 years self studying, went back to a tech college and then got the CCNA..from this job I got a chance to work with vsphere and the company paid for me to do the VCP. Now I’m studying for the AWS solutions architect exam while pushing out resumes. You have to treat your progress like life depends on it because nobody cares if you can’t afford your bills and want to get paid more. I have no tickets to work on so I’m on udemy all day today. No job is safe so you can’t stop learning.
I’d like to get more into servers; not just maintenance, but migration, configuration, disaster recovery, etc…what would you call that within the IT sphere? Networking? Server support?
>This is not an automatic process – unless you’re lucky enough to be in a company with a formal technical development program, no one will come to you after you’ve been on the helpdesk for a couple of years and say, “well, you’re ready to move up. Here’s your specialty!”
It’s generally important to prioritize good culture over compensation in early career for this reason as well. They aren’t necessarily exclusive of each other, but companies with good culture will provide one solid professional development and learning opportunities. One can always seek higher comp later.
It is also important to understand how everything works together—the big picture. For example, enterprise software solutions like document management and ERP all have similar components: database, data storage, authentication, and network performance. If your help desk tasks also include troubleshooting applications, that opens up new doors and opportunities, in my opinion.
I literally parrot this on every post I make in this sub. Sooo many people make posts like “3.5 years at help desk, should I ask for a raise?” Or “help desk for 5 years, pay is stagnant, what do???” It’s bizarre to see people ignore the wiki, ignore the advice of people in the industry, and just carry on with the thought process that after 6 years at help desk you’re “senior” and worth $100k USD.
That’s not how it works. Almost every person in this sub who works in a specialty area can perform all the duties of a T3 help desk tech, in addition to having deep knowledge in their particular area, product, or tech stack. It’s frustrating to see people flounder when the solution is so obvious and readily available.
Is it easy to get there? No, not at all. When I worked help desk for a year, I spent my down time studying and learning. I spent nights and weekends upskilling. I got my security+. I got my GCLD and GPCS. I worked really hard for 3 years. Now, I’m riding a gravy train, putting in a relaxing 40 hours a week working in highly automated and complex enterprise storage systems. The up front work was totally worth it.
Over a decade in, my take is:
* pick something to get good in so you can add value to a team. Windows Admin, Networking, Linux, Cloud, whatever. Lean in on one thing and become that person.
* Apply to lots of jobs, talk to lots of people, attend lots of career fairs. Don’t be picky with your first job as it is easier to move around once you are in tech.
* Spend a year or two getting even better at your job. Don’t coast just because you landed your first job. Honestly, the first 3-5 years in IT are going to be the most impactful for your overall career as you make a name for yourself.
* If you want to move specialties, always jump on work that is aligned with that specialty. If you are a networker who wants to go security, pick up every firewall, certificate, and security incident ticket you can.
In IT we get paid for what we know, but we are only as good as what we can get done. If you have a CompTIA trifecta, but never physically touched any gear, you are useless as you can’t get anything done. If you are modding game consoles, building your own computer, and able to talk about hosting Minecraft servers you are 100x the candidate of the no-experience trifecta holder. If you are a hybrid of both of these, you are solid candidate that should be able to outdo the others and ace an interview.
100% agree
DBA/DBE is a great role to grow into if you have the technical chops. Combine that with storage and you will be very marketable.
So – and maybe this is just my experience
SysAdmin market is much more difficult these days. Lots of saturation bleeding from HD + a huge plethora of older workers especially on the windows sysadmin side. Even with full blown labs(basically a fleshed out SMB virtualized in proxmox), 1yr 2 mo exp as a jr sys admin in a small windows shop, scripting experience, etc – I am hearing basically a fraction of what I was 3-4 months ago. Best I got was T3 MSPs in NYC paying max like 80k to run around the city to clients.
So I am going to recommend people look at other stuff. I am currently in the process in looking for a job in the data field because of all of this and am using a connection to get through.
Any tips from Helpdesk to junior cloud? Azure?
Many get ahead as being a generalist. My career advice for anyone is to not pigeon-hole yourself. Be less fixated on job titles and more on roles, tasks, and ability to learn. Those L1 skills will carry you throughout your career.
Agreed. I started into IT helpdesk and quickly realized I needed a niche skill on my small team. Studied/labbed for CCNA and that opened doors. Did same for a sec cert and that opened more doors. Did same for security auditing which led to pentesting/offsec consulting.
With that, networking, relationships, and reputation were established and new opps are ever present.
I can’t learn a specialty while working help desk if someone’s breathing down my neck any time I want to spend a free couple minutes reading or watching something about it. Either you want me to grow and learn or be a task master. Pick one.
I’m ready to be out of step 1 so damn bad, but I struggle with what specialty I want. I constantly bounce around to try and figure it out and haven’t yet. I’ve looked at job descriptions to try to see what they generally do and my brain always goes “yes! Yes! YES!” to every fking job description lol. Needless to say I have ADHD and it’s not well medicated right now. I’m just about 4 years into hell desk and I’m so ready to bounce.