Career opportunities after being a IT Tech?

[Guest Guest]

Hi all,

 

I'm currently working as a Tech in a new-build academy - it's great place to work and I really enjoy doing it (have been for two years). Everything seemed sunny.

 

However, someone recently asked me that classic question "Where do you see yourself in five years?" And to be honest, I couldn't answer. I don't plan on being in a school in five years, but then again, I haven't necessarily planned for anything else!

 

So... I want to ask the people of edugeek, what sort of career opportunities (outside of education) does being a IT Tech facilitate?

 

Do you have any examples of Techs who have gone on to weird and wacky (or relatively normal) things after leaving the school environment?

 

Working outside of IT arena entirely?

 

Share those pearls of Wisdom

[Fleetwood]

Being so rich I can do the "WELCOME TO MY WORLD!" lottery adverts and have a white condo with sexy parties and having a bubble machine that looks like a pipe, wearing a Hugh Hefner gown... not sure what all that says about me O_O but sod it!

 

But in reality though, I'd like to get to some form of Senior/Manager level one day. Whether I'd stay in Education is a different matter, I quite like the idea of doing something field based/multiple sites as I love variety. It's a tough question for most of us younger folk though, really - I still can't settle with one car for more than half a year, never mind a job! one of my friendlings ended up becoming a consultant, another became the school's ICT Coordinator. It can vary so much these days

[Ephelyon]

I'd ask @GrumbleDook. @elsiegee40 got kicked upstairs too (her words).

[elsiegee40]

Can I recommend that anyone thinking about getting booted upstairs takes a serious look at volunteering as a school governor. Staff governor at your own school, parent governor at your kids' school or simply sign up to SGOSS - School Governors One Stop Shop and get your skills matched to a local school that needs governors. The list of skills added to my cv since I became a governor is impressive. The training is available. I have skills, particularly in HR and finance, that I could never have achieved by just working in school IT. I have learned more about the world of management that way than I could have thought possible.

 

It does require time, but it is time well spent ensuring that young people in a school all get the chances that they deserve. And the skills I learned gave me the progression I didn't expect, but really enjoy

Edited March 16, 2014 by elsiegee40

[Trapper]

All the tech's I've worked with have also gone down the familiar path and remained in schools:

 

Tech to Senior Tech to Middle Manager and either after moving to another school for more money or as part of an internal promotion as the school converts or grows get kicked up stairs to a strategic IT role.

 

This is pretty much my plan in the next five years. Either at my current school, or look elsewhere after the new builds have been finished.

[Ephelyon]

Some may find that the strategic IT role involves being kicked upstairs to an extent, as with "Director of IT" positions or similar that may sit on SLT. Others find that they subsume the strategic role as part of their normal duties, hopefully finding the time to co-ordinate support, operations and strategy. I suppose they can only hope they will receive appropriate support and understanding from other senior colleagues.

[Oaktech]

I see few options...

 

Become a more senior version of yourself, utilising supervisory management. Spending more time on 3rd line issues and strategy.

 

Management: Spending all your time on strategy and planning and dealing with Human factors

 

Contractor: Swooping down, fixing a specific problem and running away with the cash before another problem rears up.

 

Consultant: Telling people what they should be doing and how they should be doing it. Run away with the cash before they actually ask you to implement anything.

[Guest Guest]

Thanks for the response guys.What do you think of working for a company like RM? Or other companies that implement and support ICT systems? Am I now the anti-christ?

[Ephelyon]

Beware the Prince of Darkness!

 

RM are in flux at the moment what with selling off their desktop business. Not sure whether that would influence e.g. service engineer positions positively or negatively.

[TechMonkey]

I remember an IT head hunter saying decent IT techs/managers from education were prized by industry as they had a great all over viewpoint. Most private company IT bods specialise very early on (network, server, database, storage) whereas education bods deal with everything. So you could head out to Private sector management once you'd got enough time and experience under your belt. Work your way up there.

[visioN]

I remember an IT head hunter saying decent IT techs/managers from education were prized by industry as they had a great all over viewpoint.

 

This is the same as working in any small - medium private business with a small IT team...

small IT team = do everything!

[Soulfish]

As others have said as an IT tech there is good progression to the Network Manager/IT Manager level, and if you're lucky enough to find an opening to the IT Director level for the larger schools/trusts/academys.

 

However once you reach that level there isn't a whole lot more to progress to, and having hit that wall I had to look outside of Education to progress my career. It's something I know a fair few others have had to do as well. One thing to be careful of is that a lot of private companies don't understand how advanced IT within Education now is, and the massive exposure you get to all the technologies they use. Selling yourself is key, and having a well written CV that gets that across

 

I jumped from being an IT Director to being a technical project manager within a global company. It's a totally different perspective and while I enjoyed my time in education this is a new challenge . My role is a cross between a subject matter expert and a project manager. I get to keep up my technical skills (although as TechMonkey says I now specialise in Office 365/Exchange/SharePoint/Lync/Identity rather than generalising with all technology) while also developing my project management skills/qualifications.

 

The fact that I actually get formal training now and the world wide travel (I actually enjoy travel though, so it may not be a plus for everyone ) are other plus points for me

[X-13]

As others have said as an IT tech there is good progression to the Network Manager/IT Manager level, and if you're lucky enough to find an opening to the IT Director level for the larger schools/trusts/academys.

 

This is pretty much what I'm aiming for. [Eventually ending up in LEA as the head honcho.]

 

I've seen/heard far too much with regards for bad practice/policy with IT in schools that I now want to get to a point where I can sort it out... Plus, I should be able to make things fairer for techy types in schools, making sure that they're involved in any IT decisions that happen.

 

[i've just had our HT insist they "know about copyright" while asking me to break copyright law, for the 6th time this term.]

Edited March 21, 2014 by X-13

[glennda]

So far my career has done this:

 

Started in IT for 3 months to help doing odd bits in a school while waiting to Join RAF in Aircraft Engineering (Which never happened!) - Stayed there 18 months

Moved to another school with more responsibility and abilities to expand the system (I rebuilt everything!). Was there for 2 1/2 years

Moved out into the Private sector working for a Third Party Support provider and I now do the following:

Work as Third Line escalation on the helpdesk (and 1st/2nd line to cover absences)

Design, Install and configure everything from large VMware installations to Wide area networks.

 

I love it now - I have managed to do a lot of training courses (these tend to come about a lot here when bringing in new partners) - I have completed the VMware VTSP, Nimble NTSP, VMware VSP (Only sales this one!), Open-E OCSE, Meraki CMNA.

 

I hope to in a few years be in charge of the Technical side of the company (we are on a major growth spurt currently!) but it was a learning curve leaving EDU.

[dhicks]

I remember an IT head hunter saying decent IT techs/managers from education were prized by industry as they had a great all over viewpoint.

 

Where we might do well is an organisation like a small-ish startup - big enough to now be hiring more staff, and needing a general all-round competant person to handle general IT stuff (and anything else that crops up), much as with a school.

[glennda]

Where we might do well is an organisation like a small-ish startup - big enough to now be hiring more staff, and needing a general all-round competant person to handle general IT stuff (and anything else that crops up), much as with a school.

 

Exactly what I have done - joined a company of 5 people - already up to 6 with 3 adverts out at the moment (1 apprentice, 1 tech, 1 sales admin).

[Norphy]

This may sound like I have a horrific lack of ambition but I'm actually quite happy where I am and in what I'm doing. I enjoy my job, I have no desire at all to move into management, I get paid well and my job is as secure as it can be. If I found myself here in another five years, I wouldn't be unhappy at all.

 

Of course, that may change in the blink of an eye...

[X-13]

This may sound like I have a horrific lack of ambition but I'm actually quite happy where I am and in what I'm doing.

 

While I'm the same at the moment... I also want to lead my people to the promised land.

 

However... I'm also lazy. So, I may need to look into automating it somehow.

[Ephelyon]

Same. Never thought anyone else was interested tbh.

[HTCPCP]

Thanks for the response guys.What do you think of working for a company like RM? Or other companies that implement and support ICT systems? Am I now the anti-christ?

 

Not sure RM would be a good way forward for anyone at the moment. No longer selling any hardware, a lot of their hardware warranties heading towards the end, so techs are set to be made redundant. Sales team has been slashed as well from what we have been told. By the drop in service standards too makes me think that they have started getting rid of (or at least losing without being able to replace) engineers...

[DPrince]

Not sure RM would be a good way forward for anyone at the moment. No longer selling any hardware, a lot of their hardware warranties heading towards the end, so techs are set to be made redundant. Sales team has been slashed as well from what we have been told. By the drop in service standards too makes me think that they have started getting rid of (or at least losing without being able to replace) engineers...

 

RM chopped 300 personnel from their workforce to consolidate after the BSF programme ended. They also cut their hardware division because the profits were pretty much non-existent (I heard about 0.5%). The redundancies seem to have been spread right across the business, so I know sales teams were consolidated, and I know of at least one top-tier engineer that was cut (bearing in mind there are only a few of these across the business). That said, everything else seems strong, and they are launching new services and products, and focussing much more on their software and services, which have always been their core business. Their staff always seem happy, regular redundancy rounds notwithstanding. I've always felt they look a good company to work for.

[apearce]

Talking from my experience, I spent 3 and half years as a Network Manager at a school and then another 18 months as a ICT Manager for another school and have never left education since. Before becoming a network manager I had 4 years of experience working in small and medium size businesses doing general IT support and really enjoyed it. After my 5 years in schools I did a year in BSF working on projects on deployment before the money disappeared. This 1 year at this level set me up for what I know now, the danagers of ICT in education, the impact on a larger scale of schools but also understanding education and the impact of ICT across a number of schools and LA for both primary, secondary and special educational units. Don't get me wrong, it wasn't that easy during the time but the value of understanding how a business and council run at that top level helped me in what I do today.

 

Following leaving BSF i started my own company and after 3 years and 4 months we are sailing the Office 365 Education boat and have reached over 1.2millions users in the UK and growing as an organisation. What i learnt the most wasn't from the school years (even though my time in the school was very valuable) but understanding how a business runs, what is required to deliver higher end projects to schools and the project and customer relations behind that have given me such an understanding along side the education knowledge I had has allowed me to grow and I wold recommend that to anyone.

 

For me the next step is Network Manager and then ICT Director looking after the operations of the communication and anything with a plug on but also look at how you can make it all more productive and saving costs. From their you will find opportunities as ICT Director for groups of schools before than going onto ICT Director or something similar for a academy group.

 

Try and get yourself experience in, tendering out your purchases, writing those tender, meeting with supplier and negotiating. Project Management (and be mean to ensure they deliver on time as you will learn a lot from this), manage staff and give them full appraisals and objectives and get them yourself.

 

Hope this helps.

[AM_LHS]

I am currently a Director of IT and ultimately my aim would be to become a Deputy Head or Head / Principal. I know that many would disagree with me that someone without a QTLS and significant in classroom experience should not be a Head Teacher.

However if you have been in the school / education environment for several years and gained genuine experience and skills including senior management training then why can’t a IT Network Manager one day rise to become a Head.

Especially with the increase focus of technology and e-learning strategies it might actually be a good situation for a school to have a leader who has the knowledge and experience of technology strategies to develop and lead the school.

However unfortunately I don’t see this happening which is a shame not just for me but for driving education towards the next generation with a change in leadership directions in education.

[Ephelyon]

Not sure about Headship, but the most senior member of IT staff should definitely be on SLT anyway.

[elsiegee40]

Not sure about Headship, but the most senior member of IT staff should definitely be on SLT anyway.

 

Why?.....