There are many options available when it comes to choosing a career, but there's very little available which can offer as much potential as IT.
Not only can the right IT career offer excellent salaries and fees (for those freelancing) but I found changing to a career in IT, didn't set me back with years of studying and exam taking.
Better still I didn't have to build up years and years of experience whilst slowly working my way up the career ladder.
I attained a consultants position in my IT field in just over 6 months and my earnings trebled along the way! Then from being a consultant, I worked my way to becoming a Solutions Architect.
I don't think any other career, could have brought me so much success as IT has and in such a short period of time too!
Before looking at career change to IT, I thought of undertaking a career in accounting but the thought of spending a few nights a week at night school and losing my free time to studying for exams, put me right off the idea.
The starting salaries in accountancy didn't seem to be worth the effort and when I looked at the higher paying accounting jobs. They required a monstrous level of experience, which would take me years to get. So I decided to turn my options towards IT, as I'd heard there were a lot of opportunities.
Before landing my first job in IT, I got to the point where nearly every job I was applying for, was ending in nothing, not even an acknowledgement letter, thanking me for applying for the job.
It was all a bit disheartening at the time and I felt as though a career in IT was beyond me. But on reflection, I now know the reason why I wasn't initially getting anywhere. It was due to me having to compete with hundreds of other candidates for the same jobs in the dead end IT career paths.
With most of my competition having vastly more experience than my non-existent experience at the time. This gave me very little chance of even getting an interview.
What I needed was help in deciding what career path in IT to choose and fortunately a friend of mine who already worked in IT, helped me immensely.
To me, as an outsider looking in, I only knew what I'd heard or read, which generally was hype, started by the training companies to sell their courses at inflated prices.
My friend has been in IT for quite a while and quickly advised me against taking steps to enter the IT careers which he described as being saturated and having falling salaries.
Which is funny because most of the training companies were saying the opposite about how these dead end IT careers were great. BUT they needed to say this, so they could carry on selling their overvalued and overpriced training.
My friends advice was spot on, as was right about the common career paths that most people take in IT, which lead to dead end careers. So I decided to go for a career in one of the 'in demand' career paths at the time.
This was around Thin Client and Citrix technologies and was a sector of IT that had skill shortages and hence higher salaries on offer. Better still I managed to get a few months voluntary work using this technology and this improved my chances of getting my first job.