Top 3 Tips to Switch to a Technology Career

Date

February 10, 2022

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Top 3 Tips to Switch to a Technology Career

This blog post shares advice on how you can start working in technology-driven industries, regardless of your academic or professional background

Career shifting used to be viewed as something undesirable. Nowadays, with the rapid pace of digitalization and increasing adoption of artificial intelligence in many economic spheres, to shift jobs to the tech sector has become one of the best career moves you can make.

And even if technology careers are not within your radar of desire, technology is becoming more and more a part of even non-tech businesses. A quick look at your online shopping app proves this point.

If you’ve always dreamed of reaching for those highest-paying tech jobs, or simply want to prepare yourself for a rapidly-digitizing world, read on to discover some helpful tips to shift into a tech career.

But first, a short explainer on career development and career growth. This is closely connected to the idea of shifting to a technology career or tech-driven industry.
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Career Growth vs Career Development

Ask the average employee and, chances are, many will complain about getting stuck in a low-paying career.Meanwhile, others don’t like their brains and skill sets to stagnate. For these reasons, career growth and career development has become trending keywords today. And yes, they are different from each other.

Pluralsight explains it well as it differentiates the two. Career development involves expanding skill sets by doing things like attending online learning programs (which we at Eskwelabs offer) or purchasing courses on platforms like Udemy. Career growth, on the other hand, is all about being given more responsibilities or the chance to add more value to a company or organization (for example, promotions).

Career development or career growth has become necessary in a world that is increasingly becoming digital and computer-controlled. According to management consulting firm McKinsey, the increasing use of automation in businesses has led to a shaking up of the job market. Though people working on low-skill jobs (like assembling cars) are losing their employment to robots, jobs involving tech skills have increasingly become available for people who are qualified.

What do all these findings say? Whether or not you want to shift to a tech career, you must at least learn some tech skills in order to remain employed in the workplace of the future.

Now that you know what’s going on in the world of work, it’s time to do the work and learn about how to shift jobs to the tech industry or simply upgrade your skills for a tech-driven future.

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Three Tips Toward Tech Success

Tip 1 - Search for tech companies that need your skill set

Contrary to popular belief, tech companies have room for people from non-technical backgrounds.

According to online tech publication Make Use Of, the tech world accepts job applicants with a background in visual design, sales, writing, or project management. You may be wondering, how is this possible? Sometimes, the perspective of non-tech people has a way of improving the development of tech products. The Urban List explains it well when it mentions that “an outsider’s perspective allows you to bring an innovative lens into a company, and as an outsider you approach these companies as a user, which is always a useful perspective for [the business].” Among the critical characteristics that tech products should have is user-friendliness. For instance, a mobile phone may be the most high tech in the industry. But if it’s not easy to use, or its design looks bad, then it won’t get sold as much as phones that are user-friendly and well-designed. Therefore, a tech manufacturer needs the perspectives of different users, which you may have regardless of your lack of tech background.

Now that you know that tech companies can open their doors to people from different backgrounds, you can now pluck up the courage to knock on office doors or search in online job platforms as you pursue a rewarding career in tech.

Tip 2 - Identify skill gaps and close them by gaining experience

In a world of rapid change, the issue is not about changing careers. It’s how you change careers.

If you’re coming from an entirely non-tech field like sales, marketing or writing, chances are, you have a skill gap with the tech industry. In order to address this gap, you can acquire much-needed tech skills by applying for “bridge jobs”. These types of employment will help you familiarize with basic technical concepts, giving you time to gradually adjust to the demands of the tech industry. Aside from this, you will also gain relevant experience in your resume, making you more employable in large tech firms in the future.

What are some examples of “bridge jobs”?

According to leading job search platform Indeed, one job you can explore is working as a technical support specialist. This usually entails taking calls from customers and helping them with problems like slow Internet connections or inability to use software. This is an especially good “bridge job” for people who are good at oral or written communications (sometimes, you need to answer email questions). And even if you’re not that good at speaking or writing, many online courses are available to help you hone these skills.

Other jobs that Indeed recommends for you to gain credible technical experience include content marketing management and digital strategy. Both of these involve familiarity with both content creation and the basic use of Web tools.

Tip 3 - Find communities going through the same thing and learn with them

If two heads are better than one, can you imagine what a large group of heads can do?

This is as true about solving problems as it is about learning new things. Always remember that you are not alone as you aim to explore the unexplored territory of the tech industry. The power of the Internet has broken down the barriers of time and distance. In the Philippines alone, there are many online communities for those seeking to break into the world of tech. Programming for Beginners, for instance, is a Facebook group for those who are just beginning to take their small steps into technology. Python Philippines Community, on the other hand, is a similar group that welcomes experts and amateur enthusiasts into the widely-useful world of Python programming.

Data science information website KDNuggets also has many links to Facebook groups that are dedicated to data science and data analytics. You may click here if you want to learn more.

A Shortcut to a Tech Career Through Eskwelabs

Did you know that all the three tips we shared with you can come in one neat package?

That’s right. Our unique educational offerings at Eskwelabs allow you to quickly get into tech companies, address your tech skills gap, and gain access to high-quality online support. All these are applicable to our 8-week Data Analytics Bootcamp and 12-week Data Science Fellowship, both of which are conducted fully online.

We help learners transition to a tech role or upskill for the future of work through the following program features:

In-bootcamp industry instructors and mentors
Resume Books to 120+ companies
Job Interview Guarantee and Job Guarantee for select companies
Career workshops
Technical coaching (for technical interviews)
Alumni networks

Instructors and Mentors

In both our 12-week Data Science Fellowship and 8-week Data Analytics Bootcamp, we have mentors aside from instructors. Our mentorship program involves close supervision of learners as they create data projects that aim to tackle business or social problems. Our mentors, who are experts in their respective industries, go beyond merely ensuring that students’ projects are of high quality. They also help our learners cope with other challenges to ensure that no student gets left behind.

Our mentors provide the perfect complement to our instructors, who are in charge of the day-to-day lectures of relevant data concepts and theories.

If you grab the opportunity to upgrade your data skills with us, you will also be assured that our instructors and mentors will provide you with an engaging and job-relevant education. Hence, you can say goodbye to boring and uninteresting lectures that have no connection with the needs of the business world.

Resume Book

Once you graduate from either of our two data upskilling bootcamps, your resume will be seen by the hiring managers of some of the country’s most high-impact companies. Our Resume Book is a compilation of the resumes of all our bootcamp graduates. This Book is given to our network of companies, which increases the chances of our alumni getting hired to fill positions that hundreds of thousands of graduates around the country are aiming for.

Among our many partner employers include high-profile companies like Google, which made it to the 2017 list of Jobstreet’s top 10 most desirable Philippine companies. Other big tech companies who have access to our Resume Book include AboitizPower, DITO Telecommunications, IBM, Lazada, Samsung Philippines, and many others.

And if you’ve always wanted to land tech roles in the booming business process outsourcing (BPO) sector, you might feel happy to know that Concentrix, ePerformax, Teleperformance, Transcom, and other BPO powerhouses are also part of our network. Many of these companies made it to Philpad’s 2021 list of the best BPOs to work for. For those of you who think that the BPO sector is slowing down due to the pandemic, a 2021 article by the Manila Standard mentions that this segment of the economy is projected to grow by 2.7 to 3.2 percent until 2022.

Job Interview Guarantee vs Job Guarantee‍

More features in our data upskilling programs improve the odds of professionals like you landing a tech job.

Closely related to our Resume Book feature are our Job Interview Guarantee and Job Guarantee. For the Job Interview Guarantee, the graduates of our Data Science Fellowship and Data Analytics Bootcamp are guaranteed first interviews with our partner companies. This means that if you graduate from either of our two data bootcamps, your name will be among the first applicants that our partner companies will interview.

Think of the Job Interview Guarantee as our graduates’ “skip-the-line ticket” in job interviews.

For the Job Guarantee, we promise to refund our alumni’s tuition fee if we are unable to help them land a job within 6 months. This is the career safety net that we provide our graduates. If you want to learn more about this and the Job Interview Guarantee, please click the relevant links in the Recommended Section of the bottom of this blog post.

If you’re not yet convinced that Eskwelabs can increase your chances of getting hired for a tech position, there’s more in store.

Career Workshops

Our learning tracks go beyond teaching skills.

With the hundreds of thousands of students who graduate from college yearly in the Philippines, competition is tight. From searching for a job to landing an interview, the initial steps before getting hired are filled with a lot of difficulty.

That is why we at Eskwelabs expose our learners to career workshops. During and after their bootcamps, our students attend enriching events that help them navigate their entry into the job market. For example, one of our workshops deals with how to effectively describe one’s project portfolio so recruiters will be impressed. Other concepts discussed in our past workshops include enhancing one’s LinkedIn profile and forming networks with potential employers.

Aside from career workshops, our learning management system (LMS) features a section called the Career Hub. Learners enrolled in our bootcamps can access this hub to watch the recorded videos of our past career workshops. Our alums can also read about other career development resources asynchronously, anytime they wish.

Best of all, the Career Hub contains up-to-date job openings.

Transitioning to tech or other data-powered roles will be easier if you enroll at Eskwelabs. Through our career workshops and the Career Hub, we guide our learners so they can land their dream career instead of just getting any job available.

Technical Coaching

Many job interviews for tech roles involve what are called technical interviews.

In these interviews, job seekers are asked questions about things like the programming languages applicants know or how they would approach a hypothetical technical problem.

Our mentors at Eskwelabs go beyond guiding our learners in their data projects. These mentors also provide what we call “technical coaching.” In a technical coaching session, our mentors ensure that the resumes of our learners will maximize their chances of getting hired. A mock interview is also conducted within the session, where our mentors ask our learners questions they can expect from actual technical interviews. Lastly, a question-and-answer portion is allotted at the end of a session to give our learners room to ask our mentors any career-related questions they might have.

Technical coaching is available for both our Data Analytics Bootcamp and Data Science Fellowship learners.

Alumni Networks

Birds of a feather flock together, according to a famous saying. This means that people with the same characteristics tend to group together.

The question is, what type of people should you associate with?

If you become a graduate of Eskwelabs, you will be in good company. You will have the privilege to connect with the numerous alumni of our data upskilling school. Formed with passion to use data for good and infused with the growth mindset, many of our graduates have landed rewarding careers in the country’s top companies and organizations. Being part of our alumni network will help you transition better to a tech job or other data-related careers through referrals and other ways like learning from each other’s positive mindsets.

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Warp Speed Journey to the Future of Work

Spaceships in science fiction often travel faster than anything we have on Earth now. They explore galaxies at “warp speed.”

Given that transitioning to a tech-oriented career is difficult for many, our data bootcamps offer a relatively faster approach. Instead of spending time and effort gaining work experience or learning tech concepts on your own, we at Eskwelabs do most of the heavy lifting so you can quickly enjoy the best of both worlds.

The skill set you have now is not the final frontier. With the help of Eskwelabs, you can stretch your level of achievement to greater heights as you quickly upgrade your competencies for the future of work.