IT or Accountancy Career/Advice

[Zutz]

Hi, just looking for some career advice. Currently in my mid to late thirties and run my own Chartered Surveying practice (only employee). Due to the downturn in the economy work has dried up and I can’t see any pick up for a long time. I feel that I need to study something new or plan a new career. My original qualifications are BA Finance and Economics and a post graduate Diploma in IT. I worked in the IT industry for about three years as a Business Analyst at the start of my career for some respected multinational companies (11 years ago). I live in a reasonable sized provincial town where there are a few IT companies. I am now considering studying something like JAVA programming or accountancy, but am unsure which one, as I understand from speaking to people there are very few openings in accountancy outside Dublin and the route to qualification would take a considerable length of time. There seems to be reasonable demand for IT staff. I appreciate there is a big difference between the two, but I am just looking for something that will have some prospects down the road. Any advice would be great, thanks.

 

[Patrick2008]

Hi Zutz. Can I ask what area of Surveying you are in? Also, how did you manage to become a Chartered Surveyor if you came from a Business / IT background.

Anyway I am in a similar situation to you as I am a Chartered Quantity Surveyor but thankfully I am still working and busy. I suppose the first question to ask is what area are you really interested in? Also, as you are in your mid thirties you will be a graduate and on a graduate salary if you decide to go back and do a degree. If you decide to do some sort of conversion course and use your existing transferrable skills then you might be able to sell yourself better to potential employers.

I am not an expert on IT courses but I am sure many people will tell you there are loads of unhappy IT professionals out there at the moment who hates their jobs so make sure your heart is in it. It really depends what area of IT you would like to get into; i.e hardware, programming or sales.

 

[skyhigh]

Learning Programming now, and getting an IT programmer job would be tough enough. (I'm not discouraging, if you have the will, then anything is possible).
However you can still try for jobs in Business Analyst or even Project Management areas. look our for the courses on Project Management, which might help you to land a job.

 

[Zutz]

Hi Patrick2008, I 'am a chartered valuation surveyor, I did a one year postgradute in Property economics and then sat my APC's. Enjoy the work, but just not enough to keep me anyway busy. If I was to go back and study it would be part time, for example, I could do a night course in JAVA programming, for a year or so and with my existing IT postgraduate, past experience and current business experience might be enough to get me a job. Similar for the accountancy. I appreciate that there are many unhappy people in the IT industry and the work is demanding, but there are jobs. Maybe, I'am just getting desperate to do something!

 

[regvw]

Hi Zutz,
The IT industry is strong at the moment, it is hard to find experienced developers with skills like Java and .Net. Less experienced developers are far more easily to come by. If you are just starting to learn you will be competing with al large pool. I would not discourage you to take this path but just be advised that it is not that easy for less experienced developers to get contracts right now

Reg

 

[kickstart]

As you are looking into IT, then it would be well worth your time looking at what skills are in demand in your area. If you learn Java, but find that Ruby is all the rage with your most likely employers, then you've wasted money/time.

Also, IT is not just about programming - your experience as a BA will stand to you if you decide to work on retraining in that area. The specifics of the skills and professional qualifications involved have changed over the intervening 11 years, but the general principles seem immutable. The one difficulty that I see is that programming courses are easy to find in further education colleges, but things like project management, or software release management qualifications (eg Prince2) tend to be run as small one/two week private courses, with a hefty price tag for the the exam/qualification.

IT support is also a role that occurs in every company. Entry level positions tend to be quite junior in nature, but this is a challenging area, and if you can stick it through two or three years of helpdesk style work, you'll be very widely experienced, and have a thorough foundation for deciding on any other direction within IT that you want to take.