If Not an IT Career, Then What?

Here's a book for professionals tired of working in IT or can't find a good job as an information technologist.

Janice Weinberg's “Debugging Your Information Technology Career” (Elegant Fix Press) identifies 20 other careers that use skills IT professionals offers. While most of them aren't usually thought of as computer jobs, a press release states, computer proficiency is a key qualification for success in each. Among her suggestions:

An architect's knowledge of best practices in systems design would be a strong asset in a technology due diligence position.

A business analyst who guided logistics staff in defining their IT requirements would be a credible candidate for a strategic alliance management position at a company marketing logistics software.

A network operations center manager who upgraded a change-management function would bring a valuable customer's perspective to a role as a change-management software product manager.

A network security administrator could become a broker or underwriter of cyberliability insurance.

A software engineer who supported customer relationship management applications could parlay that experience into a position selling CRM software.

A premise of the book, or at least the press release touting it, is that IT jobs are vanishing in this recession. No doubt, many IT pros find themselves out of work. But government data consistently shows that employment opportunities are greater in IT than in nearly any other occupation class.

If anything, what this book demonstrates is how closely linked IT is with the functioning of business. IT skills are business skills, and this know-how—whether in an IT or some other corporate job—will be needed more than ever.

Real-Life Lesson for IT Job Seekers

Apapito Soto’s story is a lesson that could benefit many IT pros seeking employment. As told in The Wall Street Journal on Monday:

Many workers, especially those out of work, turn to temporary-help firms for jobs. Unlike the past, staffing companies no longer are depositories for dead-end jobs, as they offer higher-paying positions.

"Temporary" is a relative term in staffing. In 2001, Agapito Soto, an Irvine, Calif., information-technology consultant, signed on with Sapphire Technologies, a temp agency that specializes in high-tech work. The agency placed the 55-year-old. Soto in a full-time slot with the Orange County sheriff's department, which continues to this day. Soto says he has notched on-the-job learning in his seven years at the sheriff's department.

He has even passed up permanent jobs that would match his salary because he figures those positions would be vulnerable to cuts that don't affect temps. "With the current climate, employers are looking at spending less," he says.

IT's No. 1 Asset: You

A decade ago, as an editor at InformationWeek, I began to explore information technology employment and workplace trends, and discovered that no one—not even the government—reported an IT unemployment rate. With advice from a Bureau of Labor Statistics and other economists, I developed a formula to determine the IT unemployment rate that served as a basis for many stories I wrote for InformationWeek and later for CIO Insight.

But IT employment (or unemployment) isn’t just about the numbers. IT’s most important assets are the human ones, the executives, managers and staffers who make up the profession. The character of the IT workforce has changed in the past decades, and this blog will track those changes and predict where the profession will head.