EVERYTHING You Need to Know About Information Technology (incl. Survey)

The ever-growing digital world has resulted in the emergence of several career opportunities in the field of IT. However, this also means that there is a shortage of IT professionals because the job market is growing really fast. Therefore, these jobs are up for grabs for anyone with the relevant qualifications.

Well, how exactly do you seize these opportunities? It is simple; start by becoming an information technologist.

Education

How do you become an Information Technologist?

A degree in IT will certainly get your foot in the door but you have to keep yourself updated with the current and emerging trends in order to remain relevant. This is because IT is a very dynamic field where technology can change in a very short time.

Therefore, whether you decide to keep yourself updated through postgraduate studies, online courses or short courses, you must have a curious mind that is eager to learn new things. Additionally, you must have the passion for IT. Do not get into the field because of the money.

The importance of passion and an eager to learn mind cannot be stressed enough because these are what separate the successful people in IT from the rest.

If you consider people like Mark Zuckerberg and Bill Gates, these guys dropped out of university but still made it big. Their success stories show passion for technology as the motivation towards becoming successful information technologists.

Therefore, regardless of which IT field you decide to specialise in, remember that passion and eagerness to learn about emerging trends is what will make you a successful information technologist.

The possibility of a distance learning

Once you have the passion and eagerness to learn, Bachelors, Masters, and PhD degrees will come easily. However, this does not mean that you will earn these awards quickly. You might find yourself working on different projects for different companies before completing your studies.

This is actually a huge advantage especially if you are good at writing code. Most application development, web development or other types of coding jobs are usually given based on your skill set as opposed to having papers.

The good thing is that with the current trend of distance learning, you can earn your degree while still working. This will give you flexible hours to finish your education and proceed with your career at the same time.

How difficult is the study of Information Technology?

The difficulty level of studying IT is dependent on first and foremost, your passion for technology. That aside, you must be good at mathematics.

Whichever IT course you intend to pursue, you will encounter programming at some point. Programming is all about logic and abstract concepts. You must be able to visualise logic flow in your mind so that you can translate it into an actual problem-solving formula.

You will also need a creative mind so that you can be able to develop solutions to real-world problems. While in school, the importance of creativity comes into play when working on your school project because you must come up with something unique.

If you are good at all these, studying Information Technology will not be that hard.

General course requirement

IT course requirements usually vary depending on the institution. Of course, you will need to have completed high school and have an A-levels certificate. Most top-ranked institutions require A*AA for you to qualify for an undergraduate course in IT.

Some universities have an International Baccalaureate diploma requirement while others require English tests such as IELTS if English is not your first language.

For a Master’s Degree, you must have a Bachelor’s degree (generally a first class or an upper second class honours) in an IT related course. For a PhD, most universities require you to have successfully completed a Master’s degree in an IT related program.

However, these are just the minimum requirements for UK students. If you are from outside the UK, the application process is usually harder because you will be asked for more documents.

How long does the study period last?

Most undergraduate degrees take 3 – 4 years to complete if you study full time. This is a reasonable amount of time to learn all the units in that course. It is also a reasonable amount of time to grow your beard and look like a real IT guru.

IT Master’s programs go for about 1 – 2 years while PhD programs go for 2 – 4 years.

This timing is dependent on whether you study full-time or part-time and thus, it might take longer.

What do you study in Information Technology?

Regardless of the IT field that you intend to pursue, there are some units that are common to all. You will find units such as:

• Mathematics
• Data structures and algorithms
• Programming principles
• Fundamentals in networking
• Web development
• Database administration
• Computer graphics

However, for shorter courses in universities and technical colleges, what you study will be more specialised towards the course itself. For instance, if you pick a networking course, you will find that unnecessary units such as data structures and algorithms will not feature in your study guide.

Where can I study Information Technology?

The highest-ranked universities are the best places to study the more generalised courses such as Computer Science and Software Engineering. These institutions include:

• The University of Cambridge
• The University of Oxford
• The University of Edinburgh

You can find more specialised courses, such as Cyber Security, Game Design, Artificial Intelligence, Database Administration and the like in the following institutions:

• Imperial College London
• King’s College London
• The University of Westminster

Of course, there are many more Universities and Colleges in the UK that offer IT courses. You just have to identify what you really want to pursue, then select the best institution that offers that course.

A brief illustration of fields of study when pursuing a PhD in Information Technology

As mentioned earlier, IT is quite a broad field. Considering a PhD program in a field such as Computation, Cognition, and Language, the thesis forms a major part of the course.

According to the University of Cambridge’s website, the institution accepts dissertations based on the following topics:

• Natural language processing
• Educational and assistive technology
• Data extraction, mining, and presentation
• Computational models of human language acquisition and processing.
• Multilingual technology
• Text data technology for health
• Computational and corpus linguistics
• Computational digital humanities

A PhD thesis should not be more than 80,000 words so if you feel like you are up to the task, go for it. The reward for this hard work and many years of study will be a wealth of knowledge that makes you the cream of an ever growing IT industry.

After graduation

What do you do as an Information Technologist?

So you have completed your studies and have been awarded a degree. What next?

As an information technologist, there are so many job opportunities that you can explore. It all depends on what you specialised in but regardless, you qualify for at least more than 1 occupation. Let’s take an in-depth look at these professions.

Occupations in Information Technology

For Computer Science graduates, programming is their strength and with their knowledge, they can work well in:

• Applications development
• Software engineering
• Web development
• Geographical Information Systems development
• Database administration

Cybersecurity graduates fall squarely in the realm of securing systems and information. As such, they qualify to work in:

• Computer forensics
• Risk management
• Cybersecurity
• Network security

Computer engineering graduates are pros in matters hardware. Therefore, they will find these opportunities interesting:

• Hardware engineering
• Technical support
• Telecommunications
• System/network management
• IT consultancy

Network engineering graduates qualify for:

• Technical support
• Network management
• Telecommunications

These are just a few areas of specialisation in this profession. For some occupations such as Network Engineering, Cyber Security, you might be required to earn some extra certifications such as CCNA and CCNP.

These will help you specialise further in different technologies so as to remain relevant in the job market.

Future as an Information Technologist

The future of the IT industry looks very promising. Currently, all sectors of the economy are either implementing or updating IT services in order to remain competitive and lower the costs of doing business. This means that there will be a high demand for people with IT skills in the future.

The private sector is leading the pack, with businesses in agriculture, retail, manufacturing, and finance among many others, investing heavily in IT.

The public sector is playing catch up but shows a lot of promise. Both the local authorities and the central government have embraced IT in security, service delivery, intelligence gathering, and many other sectors.

Unemployed as an Information Technologist?

There are certain instances where you may find unemployed information technologists. If it happens to you, no need to worry. There are plenty of freelance IT jobs that you can work on. These are mostly found online and you could potentially earn enough from these jobs to match what employed Information Technologist earn.

These jobs range from database management to applications development, web design and more art-related projects such as 3D animation. However, freelance IT jobs are mostly coding based and thus, you must be good in at least one programming language for you to do well.

Salary

How much does an Information Technologist earn?

When looking for a job, there is obviously a money factor involved because you have the skill and you feel like you should be compensated well enough for what you bring to the table.

Well, IT job salaries are not that bad. While the money you make depends on the organisation as well as what you specialised in, the median starting salary for an information technologist is about £30,000. This is according to the High Fliers’ report on “The Graduate Market in 2017”.

However, this is for an Information Technologist with a Bachelor’s degree. For Master’s and PhD level, the starting salary is much higher.

If you are a Master’s graduate, you should expect slightly higher than £30,000 but the chances of progressing faster in your career are higher than those of an undergraduate.

For PhD graduates, starting salaries range between £30,000 and £40,000, with their careers being mostly in consultancy, research or lecturing.

How it’s like working in the industry

As compared to other professions where long working hours matter, in IT, employers tend to emphasise of task completion. Instead of being paid for a 9am-5pm job, you will find that projects will form a major part of your work, with deadlines across different checkpoints on the project.

Opportunities to work abroad

Who said it’s a must for you to work in the country? There are tons of opportunities to work abroad but you will definitely find different starting salaries there. Of course, the ideal situation that would make you work abroad is greener pastures. However, you should consider other terms and conditions so that you don’t regret it once you get there.

Self-Employment

Self-employment basically means that you either form your own start-up or work as a freelancer.

With entrepreneurship being a big thing globally, the process of building a company from scratch is simplified nowadays because of the availability of investors to provide the seed capital. All you need is a revolutionary idea and you may find yourself on the billionaire's list.

Freelancing is also very rewarding. Most companies prefer to outsource some services such as mobile application development and maintenance. The good thing with freelancing jobs is that they are very flexible and leave you with plenty of time to work on multiple projects.

Important note

The IT industry is constantly changing. As new software and technologies emerge, there is a need to keep skills up to par so that you can impress your employers. As such, it is recommended to read widely and possibly attend some short courses every once in a while so as to remain relevant.