 it's in my opinion it's not really necessary to get a degree but if you were to select the one I would recommend just getting like any kind of generic information technology degree like you don't necessarily have to specialize in like uh networks or like database management per se because especially in your your first job usually people tend to start off in like kind of a help desk like like analyst capacity so um just a generic IT degree and then secondary to that I would recommend getting a business degree um if you if you want to get a degree right um business degrees are good because I the whole like purpose of IT is to kind of facilitate business and provide like some kind of platform like technology to help drive the business like help the money makers like make money more easily and with a business degree it kind of um kind of helps you like open your brain a little bit and think about things in a more holistic way instead of just like technology is cool a lot of like computers like it helps you to kind of think about um the business and like why technology and IT exists in the first place so IT degree or or business degree it would be pretty good for IT. Also like a degree is like really good to have but the opportunity cost tends to be pretty high that means that it takes you um a decent amount of time to get the degree wherein you could have spent that time like doing something else so because IT is not really regulated like the medical field like you have to you know you have to go to um residency and you have to get a degree and to be a lawyer you have to like pass the bar and have a degree like with IT you don't really need a degree so um if you want a degree that's really good um but if you just wanted to get into the IT field your time might be better spent getting like an entry-level certificate certification like CompTIA A plus or or something like this. Hey guys Shane from the future really quickly I wanted to say that there are a few resources down in the description it'll be at the very top that I think are good when it comes to IT. One of them is going to be a certification that is very common and it's a good way to kind of dip your toe into IT and see if it's the right thing for you and it can also help you to get an entry-level job or maybe an internship and then the other one is a website that allows you to quickly test out of different classes at a fraction of the cost at study.com so definitely check out both of those down in the description below. Got it okay well that's segue's into the next question which is extremely important which is what actually matters when it comes to getting a job so we're talking about internships grades work experience projects volunteering out of those things what actually matters when in the IT field specifically when it comes to getting your first job right out of college or maybe right after getting your certification so the way I think about getting your first job in IT there's a bunch of different kind of endeavors that you can do and the different endeavors are kind of split up into two main goals like the first goal is to it's really simple but like the first goal is to get an interview and then the second goal is to pass the interview and I kind of split it up like this because there's certain things that you can do that will help you get an interview but won't really help you pass the interview and then vice versa of course like networking is the most powerful thing to get a job and I'm not going to talk about that because I don't really like do a lot of networking myself like I mean like social networking with people so things that you can do to like get the interview is you know make it a resume look as good as possible so for example if you don't have any IT experience you can always kind of generate your own IT experience like you can do little you can learn something simple and do like a little project by yourself like for example like experiment with like Amazon or AWS or sorry AWS or Azure or something and then maybe like figure out how to do something simple like create a storage account and maybe write like a little blog post about it and you can put it on on LinkedIn or something then you can put on your resume just like little things like this you can do to get experience to put on your resume and then especially for your first job I would recommend getting some kind of certification like early entry level one like comta plus those things will like be like super invaluable for you like to get at least get the interview because you'll have like kind of experience and at least some kind of credential so that's that's the getting the interview part and then the second part like once you've gotten the interview to pass the interview you can do like a lot of like really simple things like you know polish your physical appearance and those kind of basic things but what I would recommend especially if you're going for like a help desk or some kind of help desk analyst job is to get like whole bunch of practice questions like 100 actually have some so maybe I'll give you a link and maybe you can put that in the description or something but I'll get like yeah whole bunch of practice questions and just kind of go over the questions like in preparation for your interview like not only to kind of learn the answers if you don't know them but practice like saying the answer out loud so you get really good at articulating yourself during the interview because if you go over like 100 help desk questions they're probably going to ask something within here and then when you've already like kind of went through like thinking about how you'd answer and like practice saying it to yourself it becomes like really easy once you get into the actual interview and you don't have to you don't have to spend your precious like brain cycles like thinking about how to answer it you can you know offload that because you practice it already and just automatically answer and then you can use your brain power for other things like maybe thinking of questions for them or thinking of like ways to relate to the interview or just like you can be more more relaxed and kind of show them your personality more if you've already kind of practiced the process if that makes sense so just those two phases focus on getting the interview things that you can do and then focus on like passing an interview practice questions and you know clean you know clean yourself up I guess as much as possible So when it comes to mistakes that either you or maybe other people you've worked with have made what are some of the pitfalls that you commonly see when it comes to getting into IT? This is an interesting question like the pitfalls that I think of might be different than what somebody else might think of but I notice a lot of people like they come into IT and they get like a job in a certain area and they have like some kind of expectation for what they're going to be doing and like what's going to happen but very often than not like the reality of like what happens in the business is like way different than kind of what do you imagine when you're going to school like you see like all these memes on on LinkedIn like data scientists like what you imagine and like reality and the reality is like a bunch of boring stuff like making reports that are boring and like interfacing with like management and stuff like this so I think one of the biggest pitfalls is like not having an open mind and then you do a job and then when your actuality differs from your expectation it tends to like stress people out quite a bit and that just leads to you know if you get the more stress you get more quickly you get like burned out and like you know disgruntled or whatever so just just try to keep an open mind I suppose just kind of be open to to anything and think about everything holistically like why your position exists and like what you're doing to like facilitate the business and you can kind of avoid that a little bit I totally agree and that's one thing I've noticed with a lot of different careers correct me if I'm wrong here but with a lot of careers especially when you're on the entry level like the first few years you're probably not going to be doing work that you absolutely love you know you're going to have to go through the those first two years get that experience it's kind of like that catch 22 situation where you need two years of experience to get the job but in order to get two years of experience you have to have the job but after you get those first few years of experience you have a lot more flexibility and a lot more freedom and a lot of different careers with people that I've talked to would you say that's true yeah I would I would say that's true just like like you're saying like maybe you you're getting into IT for like the first time and you want to be like a network engineer or something so you get your CCNA and you learn about all these like kind of advanced routing protocols like EIGRP you get really good at configuring that and then you get your first engineering like network engineer job and then they just have you like doing configs or something because it's not really it doesn't make sense for them to like throw you onto the core router to like start configuring EIGRP because you're like new so that kind of like perception is like can be weird and then also for sure yeah when you get that experience it really like opens up your your possibility to work like many different places and I've come to find kind of the more you know or the more you know how to do people will they'll see that you know something and they'll try to hire you for something else even if you don't know how to do that thing but they'll base it on like the fact that you know you are able to like you know learn EIGRP and OSPF and then work in like a 10,000 user environment they're like he must be able to like learn how to do mobile device management so they'll like pitch you jobs for like kind of other things if that makes sense the more experience you get the more kind of opportunity like really opens up so what would you say in terms of kind of like the right person or personality what are some traits that you think you would be looking for that would make a really good information technology professional um I mentioned this earlier but flexibility is really important because we don't business is like really um I don't know the right word you don't really know what's going to happen like tomorrow or whatever and then it is kind of it has to it serves the business needs so whatever is required like you have to kind of fulfill that requirement as an IT person so just just be as flexible as possible I mean you don't have to you know bend over too much like really it's really sucking but just kind of keep an open mind I suppose and the second thing would be be really really open to criticism in fact I would like recommend seeking criticism out because it's really it's really hard for people to give negative criticism even though that's like the it's like the most valuable thing that you can get because it's kind of an opportunity for you to like you know self reflect and and think about the criticism and then have an opportunity to kind of grow not saying all negative criticism it's going to be useful but I would seek it out and like be really good at taking that negative criticism um I've had a lot of opportunities because I I try to get criticism from people and I'm really really flexible um I've had you know people when I was a contractor they try to like make me work full-time or they try to coach me from somewhere else because I've worked with them before and I'm like really it's like kind of flexible in the workplace so flexibility and accept criticism well will take you like really really far