IT Career Path

Let us start by understanding the typical “IT” career path in any big organization.

When you get out of your college and decide to pursue a career in Information Technology; you start as a Trainee.

At this stage you focus your efforts on gaining more and more knowledge about your chosen technology; and you take roles that expect you to do; code development, programming or exhibit other technical skills; like testing or documenting.

In next stage of IT career you broaden yourtechnical expertise; and you start gaining depth in many technologies. Here you grow into roles demanding; technical design, technical analysis; or project implementation;. At this level you start getting exposure to project management and IT leadership concepts. 

As you grow further, professionals start expanding outside their technical domain; and learn functional and business alignment. You start becoming more accountable and; take people management & organization development roles. This is the entry stage to senior leadership roles; demanding cross-business and cross domain exposure. You are expected to do business development; change management; and lead many concurrent projects. 

The next levels from here take you to “IT” Leadership roles. You are expected to exhibit thought leadership in technical domains, help setting “I T” direction for department or your business unit; and do technology selection & application. You start becoming responsible for major projects & change efforts. Your cross-business and cross functional skills, are in more demand at this stage. 

Next roles are the “CIO” or “CTO” roles that are responsible for overall technical strategy of the entire company. You decide and manage outsourcing and;vendor partnerships. You represent your organization in technical industry networks. You are expected to strategize and lead large organizational technology drivenchanges. Here you are in partnership with business and generally report to the CEO of the company and need to create IT value proposition. 

Great; Now how do I plan my career so that I can move from one stage to another. How do I travel the path from stage 1 to the final stage. In this tutorial we will expose you to some skills that you can acquire to continue your career growth.