Does choosing a career seem to be challenging in our world of endless choices and possibilities? Are the expectations of family and friends shaping your mental image of an ideal career? Or the financial reward tagged with certain popular “millionaire careers” get your eyes turning into currency signs and gets you daydreaming of similar career paths?
Be it sports, engineering, medicine, agriculture, entrepreneurial or business, our decisions (irrespective of how small or big) play a collective major role in our career path and where we will find ourselves five, ten or fifteen years from now.
Considering a career in tech? Well, find below simple but helpful tips that could aid you on your path to being the next Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos or simply the first YOU in the tech world…Read on!!!
Get a good formal “basic” education!
Yes, though this seems anticlimactic to our topic of discussion, getting a good high school or tertiary education is one good stepping stone that could propel your career in Tech. The popular theory of being famous after dropping out of school surrounding names like Bill Gates and Mark may not be the whole story. These Tech giants learnt a lot in their respective colleges that staring at computer screens could never teach them, like people skills. Also, a school is a good place to meet colleagues of similar passion and vision to kick start your career through good networks.
Find a field of interest!
Technology is broad, probably as broad as the universe with its diverse fields. It spans across business and commerce, social media and networking, finance, health and medicine, engineering, entertainment, education and so much more. Every facet of human everyday living is yelling for technological innovation. Choosing a particular field helps narrow your energies and concentration in order to be more effective and help solve problems in a particular area of life.
Keep on Learning!
Sign up for boot camps. There are many programs available today that train on tech, some for free, others for a small fee. From programming to machine learning and robotics, be rest assured you may meet experts in such fields at such programs to ask all the questions you want. You could also meet people you could partner with having similar interests and goals at such meetings to kick-start your career. Don’t stop learning. There exists a vast wealth of knowledge online from credible sources. In tech, if you stop learning and improving, you quickly cease to be relevant due to the fast pace Tech evolves.
Find a mentor!
Mentors are hard to come by, especially if your field of interest is rare. But that shouldn’t stop you from connecting with experts worldwide and signing up on tech forums that could answer some of your questions. It is better to stand on the shoulders of giants to succeed rather than wasting a lot of time trying to reinvent the wheel due to lack of good mentorship
Dive right in!
Do not hesitate to “start” irrespective of how small an opportunity may seem. Do not let fears of making mistakes prevent you from launching out. You can either find a job in Tech or start a Tech firm that gives solutions in a field of your interest. Mistakes are meant to teach us about ideas, options and decisions that do not work as well as expected. Dive right in, start small, but think big.