How To Find The Path To Your Ideal Job In The IT Industry

Getting in to the role that you want in your career can be challenging. You’ll need to know what the role is, then the steps needed to get there, and then do the work. Where do you get started? How do you get the role that you want in the IT industry?
Let’s take a look at the steps.

Decide On Your Ideal Role

The first step to getting the role that you want is to actually work out what it is that you want to do. This is easier said than done.
Do you know the job title of the role that you want to do? For example, you may want to become a Senior Software Engineer at a technology company. Or, you may want to become a Database Administrator in the finance industry.
If you know the job title, it helps, because we’ll use that in the next step.
If you’re not sure of the job title, do you know anyone who is in the position you’d like to be in? For example, a co-worker, or someone from a book you’ve read?
Write this down somewhere. You’ll use it in the next step.

Search LinkedIn For That Job Title

Once you have your job title, it’s time to pay a visit to LinkedIn.
If you don’t have a profile already, I highly recommend setting one up. It’s great for your career.
Assuming you have one already, log in to LinkedIn.
Why are we visiting LinkedIn? Well, we’re going to use it to do research on this job title.
For this example, let’s go with the title of Senior Software Engineer. Put that title into the search box at the top of the page.

The results will appear. At the time of writing, there is a list of job opportunities. This is probably on purpose, but LinkedIn may change this in the future.



We only want to see people. Click on the People link on the left, and the page will show people who have that title.


Now, the thing to note here is that the list of people will be dependent on your connections. So, it will show people who are closely connected to you at the top of the list. It’s also dependent on their profile setup and keywords they have used, as LinkedIn tries to show you the most relevant people based on your search.
So, we have a list of people with that title. Now what?

Look At The Job History Of People With That Title

The next step is to have a look at the job history of people who are currently working in that role.
Why do we do this?
Well, the best way of finding out how to become a certain role is to find people who have done it before, or are doing it now, and see how they got there. LinkedIn is a great way to find this, as people usually list their employment history in their profile.
So, find a profile from the list what has the title you want and click on the name.
Now, I’ve blocked out some of the details of this profile to maintain privacy of the person in question, but you should be able to get the general picture.

This summary section will show an overview of the person, which usually includes their qualifications and experience. However, for most profiles, it’s too broad to use for this research.
Scroll down below that and have a look at the section titled Experience.

You can see, in this example, that the person currently works as a Senior Software Engineer, because the date says “August 2010 – Present”. They have been in this role for almost 5 years at this company. You can also see what kind of work is involved and usually a little bit about the company.
However, to find out what you need, keep scrolling down.
There should be more entries in this Experience section for this person. LinkedIn profiles, unlike resumes, don’t have a limit on experiences, so you should see all of their roles here.
Sure enough, scrolling to the bottom will see this person’s first role.

This will show how they got started in this industry.
What do you need to do with this information?

Write Down Their Job History

Make a list of their roles and dates.
This helps with working out how to get where you want to be, and how long it takes.
So, go through this person’s profile and make a list of:
Their job role
Their tenure (how long they spent in the role)
Both of these are easily visible in the profile.
But, that’s not all you’ll need. You also need the Education part.

Include Their Education

Experience is one thing. Another factor to consider is the education.
Keep scrolling down in the profile you’re looking at, until you see the Education section.
This is important, as it shows you how the person got started in their first role.

As you can see, this person has a Bachelor in Computer Studies from a university, then went on to get a Masters in Engineering. They also did some independent coursework, and got a PRINCE2 foundation (which is in the Project Management field).
Once again, take note of these points from the Education, Certifications and Courses section:
The achievement (e.g. bachelor’s, master’s, certification)
The date achieved
This will show what extra things you need to get into this role.

Repeat for More People

Alright, so you’ve got the information from one profile. Now what?
One result is not a definitive guide to getting the role you want.
You should go back to the search results, choose someone else from the list, and repeat the same task.
How many times should you do this? Well, as many as you can until you understand what needs to be done to become this role. As an indication, I would probably get information from 10 different profiles if I was doing this myself.
If you have a large list of people, or are looking for a particular kind of role, you can use filters.
There are filters on the left that let you filter by your relationship, location, company, industry, and more.
I would suggest filtering by country, as different countries may have different requirements. You may also want to filter by company or industry, if you’re looking for those in particular.
The research for each person should take about 10 minutes. Before long, you’ll have a pretty good list of different profiles.

Combine and Look for Trends

Once you have a list of people in the role that you want, as well as their history, you should now combine the data.
By this, I don’t mean add them all into a long list. I mean, create some kind of summary that shows the most popular route to getting in to that role.
For example, let’s say you have information on 10 people.
Let’s start with Education. 7 of the 10 got a Bachelor’s degree, 1 has a master’s, and the other 2 didn’t have anything. You could then write down that the education requirement is to get a Bachelor’s degree.
The next step is their first role. Let’s say 6 of them started as a junior software developer, 1 in help desk, 1 as a software engineer, and 1 as a web designer. You should pick the majority here, and note that the first role is a junior software developer.
How long did they stay a junior software developer? Find the most common answer here as well. Let’s say it’s 3.5 years – so write that down. Don’t forget to include the next jobs, as some people move to a different company in the same role, which comes up as two entries on their LinkedIn profile.

Keep going until you get a complete picture of the path to the role you want.

For example, it could look like this:

Senior Software Engineer

-Bachelor’s Degree in Computer Science
- years Junior Software Developer
-5 years Software Developer
-2.5 years Software Engineer
-5 years Senior Software Engineer

From this information, you can see the education needed, the job roles on the way to that role, and the time spent in each role. In this example, it shows you need a Bachelor’s degree and 10.5 years experience to become a Senior Software Engineer.

Well, I hope this guide has been helpful if you’re trying to work out where your career is going and how to find the path to your ideal job. If you have a long term career plan (link), it’s one step you should be doing. If you don’t have a long term career plan, make one!

Career Action Tip: Perform this process for the job role that you want in your IT career.

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