One viable way to give yourself space while you figure out your next
career move, and remain employed in the interim, is to become an IT
trainer. It's a solid lateral move that won't have any negative
repercussions on your future career potential -- a safe haven, so to
speak, where you can identify exactly what you like and dislike about
your area of IT.
In addition to the change of pace and providing you an opportunity to
assess your future in IT, spending time as an IT trainer has a number of
residual career benefits as well:
A) It gets you out from behind the desk and up in front of a crowd,
which can help you become more comfortable with making
presentations and communicating with higher-ups.
B) It helps you realize just how much you know -- and what you don't
know -- about your area of expertise.
C) It helps you develop and improve critical oral and written
communication skills -- learning to explain difficult concepts
as plainly as possible will position you for management-level IT
jobs in the long-term.
D) Should you decide to leave IT entirely, IT training experience
will serve you well whatever career transition you decide to
make. Teaching credentials and a proven ability to speak before a
crowd are skills you can transport into any arena, within IT or
without.
You may want to test the waters before making a firm decision to pursue
a training opportunity. For example, you could make a how-to
presentation in front of a user group or arrange a brown-bag lunch
seminar for your colleagues at work to present a new technology or
project plan. Another possibility is to offer to talk about "Working in
Real-World IT" or another IT-related topic for a local college or
university IT class. If your comfort level in front of a group or your
public speaking skills leave something to be desired, consider joining
your local chapter of Toastmasters International, where members can work
on their speaking and listening skills among a group of likeminded
people.
If you determine that a stint as a trainer would be a rejuvenating
career experience, look first within your own IT organization, where you
are a known quantity (that will help make up for the fact that you lack
previous training experience). If you have a unique technical skill set,
seek an opportunity to train other IT professionals. Alternately, seek
out opportunities in your company's end-user training organization.
If your company doesn't maintain an internal training organization,
consider going outside the company. One possibility would be to train
part-time, teaching night classes at a local training center or
technology institute. That would give you a chance to try before you buy
-- that is, see how well you like training before you give up your
current job.
A recent search at a number of job search sites, including Techies.com,
Monster.com, Net-Temps.com, Workopolis.com (a Canadian job search site),
and Dice.com, turned up a wide range of IT training opportunities,
ranging from end-user applications training to JD Edwards, SAP and
Oracle Financials training, and more.
This is possibly because training salaries aren't quite as high as in
other IT areas, so companies have a hard time finding qualified experts
who are wiling to teach. Salaries range from $50,000 for stand-up
technical trainers with some responsibility for training and
documentation development to $90,000 and up for training managers
responsible for curriculum development, online training programs,
training standards, and documentation.
Professional staffing firms, consulting agencies, IT training companies
and large corporations with internal training organizations were all
among those advertising training positions. Many of the jobs were for
contract trainers, or contract-to-hire, but a number of full-time
positions came up as well. Most are looking for one to three years of
training experience. Technology certification is useful, and
tech-training certification (such as Microsoft's MCT) is an added bonus.
Some companies also require specific industry-related experience. For
example, a pharmaceuticals company's ad stated that it would not
consider applicants who had no experience in the pharmaceuticals arena,
and a storage technology firm stated it would only consider applicants
who came from another storage technology company.
At IT job search sites, look for IT training jobs via a keyword search
for jobs with "Trainer" in the title or description. At general job
search sites, select "IT-All" as the category or industry and "Trainer"
or "Training" at as the job description or title.
