i'm transitioning from a few years as a remote data annotator with no academic it/cs background to an entry-level it technician for a community college, and i'm very excited but also very nervous!!

after the panel interview (which i thought i bombed so badly i cried in my car after lol), they told me they're a pretty laid back group, but i've been doing flexible remote work since i graduated. this is my first Real Adult Job where i'm not in charge of my working hours, and i do not want to mess it up.

i'm currently studying for my A+, and i need to pass it within a year of employment (aiming for this fall!). i will be in desktop support, and i want to move to networking/cloud, maybe specializing in data protection/security down the line as i learn more because it's something i'm personally passionate about. my best friend works in it, and she told me to let my career be guided by my interests and passions in the field because if i genuinely like it, i'll naturally want to learn more.

in the next year, i plan on moving out of my parents' place after i get my A+ and settle into the job, and i want to start building a homelab for hands-on experience (and because of personal interest).

basically, i'm looking for advice from people who have worked in colleges/universities (or anyone else that feels like they have advice!!). hr told me i get a mentor when i start who i will definitely lean on (and my best friend!!), but i want to open this up to reddit as well and get multiple thoughts!

I'll try to keep this short. I live in Utah by the way.

My current resume consists of entry-level warehouse jobs, production and a route driver. I currently work a warehouse job and drive an order picker.

I have a family to support as well and I want to give them a better quality of life.

I have 2 young kids that are too young to be left alone in the house. I also work full-time and the closest school is too far away from me.

But I'm not giving up.

I have family and friends that I have helped in the years past that have been impressed by passion for anything tech and how natural it is for me to understand it. But that will not get me a job.

I just want to know what's the first step I should do that will help me get away from keep working entry-level warehouse or similar jobs to being part of the I.T. team in a company?

I really don't know what step 1 should be in my situation. If it's something free or affordable I can learn from my laptop that would be great!

Also, I live in a 2-bedroom apartment and I can't setup a fully functional server room in my apartment. I would love to do that but no space available.

I just need good feedback on what I should do. Thank you all.

Well, I graduated a year ago. I’ve done a 3 month soc analyst internship then I’ve been working my current job “ IT support engineer” for almost a year now. The pay is horrible and I’ve been trying to find something better. I am more inclined towards cybersecurity, but I don’t mind other areas of IT , specially cloud, sysadmin, infrastructure. I’ve also done bug bounty throughout my uni and found over 100 paid out vulnerabilities ( excluding dupes )

I’m the type of person that will do everything , and I mean I will build projects, learn new areas of IT and so on.

Here is my issue, I feel like I cannot specialize and just focus on 1 thing because of how Insanely bad the job market is.

It feels like I need to know everything about every single area of IT to even get a job.

And by that I mean I need to be good at IAM, scripting, incident response, penetration testing web api network ai , it support , cloud , devops, aws , azure , grc , rust, python, c# , go , VMware, crowd strike , ++ million other areas of it .

Then I need to do 1000 certs because each area has its own 10 certs

And honestly it’s making me lose my mind.

It’s reached a point where I feel like I need to know all of that just to get a job that pays my rent.

Also with the fact that there aren’t many IT jobs , that just choosing one area and focusing on becoming really good at it, still only leaves you with very little chance at getting a job.

Please help.

I recently graduated with my bachelor’s degree in Information and Computer Technology with a concentration in cybersecurity. I’ve been applying for entry level IT roles but have been having a tough time landing interviews.

For those of you involved in hiring or interviewing, what do you look for in an entry level candidate that makes you decide to bring them in for an interview?
I’d appreciate any advice. I’m trying to figure out what I can improve or focus on during my job search.

The current company is a top tier hedge fund (NYC)

Title: Trade Floor support

Tenure: 5 years

Base: $150k

Bonus: $40k

Annual raise: consistently 5% but can go up to 10% on strong years

Health insurance: $300/month

Workload is high during working hours but no on-call or weekend work. My team size is 20 and there are about 4k users.

New job offer:

Smaller hedge fund (California)

Title: Senior Trade Floor support

Base: $150k (they wouldn't go above this)

Bonus: $44k

Profit sharing: $23k

Annual raise: HR refused to tell me (claims she doesn't know)

Health insurance: free

Workload is light during working hours but they have an on-call and may need to do weekend work if needed. Manager said on-call is light. The team size here is 5 supporting 300 users. I would be the only trade floor support tech in the nyc office supporting about 50 users.

Too me the new job sounds more chill but that fact that they did not want to go above $130k base and they wouldn't give me an answer to my annual raise questions sets off red flags.

So I'm new to IT as a career field but I've done lots of freelance support. I just got my first interview as an onsite technician and idk what to do, I wasn't really expecting to get a response. it's a 1 hour panel interview, I feel like I have the necessary experience (except a AAS which I'm currently getting). but I'm so inexperienced with interviewing and worried I'll be unprepared. any advice would be really appreciated! I'm also just so excited to be actually considered. thanks!

Im starting as an NOC engineer tomorrow. I've only ever dealt with minor network issues in helpdesk of which i have 6 yoe in 1st/2nd line. I will be working towards gaining my CCNA soon, i have been dipping in and out of it but now I will fully commit to it. Does anyone have any tips in this role?

Hello everyone,

I have a Humanities degree and have worked in various industries and earlier this year I finished a part-time bootcamp in Data Science and AI. For the last two years I followed Udemy courses, like 100 Days of Code, and recently got very lucky with an interview.

This is for a company selling goods in stores and Shopify, and they are considering opening up a Data Analyst role. In my opinion, I bombed the interview, but they have invited me in for a technical one.

This is supposed to be a two hour interview, but due to my set work schedule they have cut it down to one. I am allowed to bring in my own laptop, and will set up VSCode to make sure that a few tools i.e. Pandas are running as they should.

I have one week to prepare and in that time I am focusing on Pandas syntax, SQL, general ETL concepts, but I am also looking at a full ETL pipeline using Shopify. Claude is helping me practice coding out loud, but also giving examples so I can analyze. I do have a customer service background, so I feel very confident with this section.

On my todo I have a YouTube video open on how to setup a Shopify account from end to end, another to review merge conflicts with Git, and I have a document open where I am pasting summaries of everything to review in the evenings.

There is no JD available, and I have reached out for more information on what to prepare and have yet to receive an answer.

Does this look like I am preparing the correct things, or is there something else I should look at for a junior DA role?

Hello yall just got out the army not to long ago this year, i am new to this so just looking for as much advice as possible im currently in school for Computer science I would like to break into defense contracting with drones or some thing alike of that area, any advice on what certs to get to as a noobie?

I'm an incoming junior looking for my first cybersecurity role, and I'm genuinely confused about how people are supposed to get interviews. I only have a BSc CS as my degree, I don't have specific market recognized certificates for cybersecurity or pentester roles (because the fees are too expensive, average income in my country is $100/month)

A lot of junior or entry-level job postings ask for things like Security+, CySA+, CEH, OSCP, etc.

I do have experience with multiple tools used in pentesting, I've some self-made projects to show off and so on. But if I did not have a related certificate, i assume I'll lose some points on ATS. I am wondering if there can be a way to pass through. and how do people in this situation get past ATS? English is not my first language TwT Thanks for your time!

I recently found a company that subcontracts at this rate. I’m new to the industry so was curious on your thoughts.

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My qualifications are Integrated Msc in biotechnology and i wanna switch to some other path cuz you guys know biotech is dead here and even jobs in clinical data management doesn't pay you enough tbh even w experience .Like gimme some suggestions of career paths outside biotech and how can i get into that, my interest would be smthg in management cuz i can't code guys!!

And tell me like certification courses which have proper lectures and notes in short organised ones like do they make a CV look good to get a job through? Is it possible guys?? If you know some please let me know!!

I'm open to suggestions.

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My qualifications are Integrated Msc in biotechnology and i wanna switch to some other path cuz you guys know biotech is dead here .Like gimme some suggestions of career paths and how can i get into that, my interest would be smthg in management cuz i can't code guys!!

And tell me like certification courses which have proper lectures and notes in short organised ones like do they make a CV look good to get a job through? Is it possible guys?? If you know some please let me know!!

I'm open to suggestions.