While the corporate world has its sights set on a digital transformation that enables the future of work, many IT organizations are not prepared for the business strategy skills that will be necessary to their survival. 

It is crucial that business owners and managers alike think about how their technology teams can create new opportunities beyond sales. Companies should work to find new lines of business or optimize current processes to grow opportunities for the business overall. 

But what skills will the workforce of the future need to grow these opportunities? How do you hire new employees or reskill current ones when you’re not sure what they’ll need to know how to do? Let’s walk through what capabilities your teams will need to have.

If there’s one thing that literally everyone can agree on, it’s that work will change a lot over the next 10 years. Will we be replaced by robots? Will there even be offices? Will everything be so virtual that we can literally work from bed? 

Unless you’re ready to retire within the next few years, it’s critical that you think about what work will look like for you and your teams so that you can not only prepare yourself and avoid becoming collateral damage in any staffing reductions, but also to put yourself and your teams positions for success. 

As companies continue to set up more infrastructure for distributed teams and faster technology and networks, open positions for network engineers are booming. With 650% job growth in fewer than 10 years and 11.5 million additional jobs expected to open in the next few years, becoming a network engineer can be an exciting, well-paid, and stable career in IT.

Most business owners need a solution that’s somewhere between “I wrote it down in my notebook” and “I deployed a relational database.” On the one hand, notebook experts use color-coded tabs, symbols in the margin, shorthand, and organizational wizardry. On the other hand, a relational database is pretty heavy-handed, requires a lot of upkeep, and can be costly. What’s a mom-and-pop shop to do?

Enter Microsoft Access.

Whether you’re keeping track of your vast Pokémon card collection or categorizing users on a global social media platform, knowing how to manage and query a database is invaluable. Organizing, indexing, adding, removing, and deleting — these are some of the most prevalent verbs in data management. Data is the biggest thing on the internet right now and we’re seeing more and more demand for it everywhere we go.

Anyone who wants a piece of that sweet data action needs to start by learning SQL.

If you have Microsoft Software Assurance Training Vouchers (SATVs), you need to assign them before June 30, 2021 and use them before December 31, 2021. In this post, we’ll talk you through how to redeem SATVs before they expire. 

If there’s one thing that the COVID pandemic showed the American workforce, it’s that working from home is not only possible, it can be glorious. No pants? No worries! You can still do your job, make a living, and ditch that soul-crushing commute.

Leaving military service (or thinking about it) and transitioning to a civilian life and career can be a big challenge, especially for veterans who aren’t sure what they want to do or where they want to focus their professional efforts. 

The IT field is well-suited to veterans. Not only does IT offer rapidly-growing opportunities and excellent compensation, it is also a good fit for veterans who are systematic, methodical, and used to working under pressure. Plus, having security clearance from your time in the military can help you get hired faster for compelling positions. 

If you’re interested in cybersecurity, check out our post specifically about veterans and cybersecurity. If you’re interested in offering technical support, check out these jobs, descriptions, and average salaries to learn if it’s the right fit for you. 

It’s also worth noting that these positions are mostly entry level. As you go up the IT food change, compensation increases demonstrably, and with a few more certifications and years of experience, you could easily double the range for these entry level positions.

Our previous post went into what people in these five different IT positions actually do: associate network engineer, DevOps engineer, information security engineer, information security analyst, and network and systems administrator. Today we’re going to explore six more IT jobs to help you find the IT career best suited for you. 

A career in IT has many advantages: It’s a quickly-growing field with ample growth opportunities; it remains relevant (even vital) as companies transition their infrastructure to the cloud; and it’s an area that continues to provide new challenges as technology advances.

So then how do you choose what aspect of IT you want to focus your career on? What do people in various IT positions actually do? We’ll explore 11 common IT roles and discuss what they do in this two-part blog series.