 and that's what's so amazing about the tech field, maybe not on other fields where it's more traditional, but in the tech field there are unlimited possibilities and with a little creativity you can get a job with limited experience and no degree, so fairly quickly. What's happening guys? It's Shane here, so today we are going to be interviewing Nicole, and she has seven years of IT experience. Right now she is currently a network security engineer and she has a YouTube channel as well, so I will go ahead and let Nicole introduce herself. Hey guys, so I'm Nicole and I have seven years of IT experience as Shane said and I started off in the army and I've had roles in network administration, system administration, I've worked with databases, virtualization, I've done everything, I've lived in multiple states, I worked overseas in Turkey for a while, so I'm very well versed in infrastructure and IT ops. Well thank you so much for coming on the channel today, Nicole. I think everybody's going to be able to learn a lot from you. I'm a fan of your channel as well, that's how I found you and I thought you gave some really good insight as well and so basically I want to ask you some questions about people who would be potentially interested in getting into IT, so we're going to be talking about the career itself as well as you know certifications and the degrees that you would get in order to get into your career and your perspective on that, so the first question I want to ask is going to be what degrees or education would you recommend getting for IT related careers? That is a big question, so there is no set education path for any of the tech fields because the field is so new that there are so many different routes that you can take, so you can go to the traditional route and get a degree in IT and then after that you can get a job in IT and you can do that. You can also join the military like I did, you get a GI bill and they'll pay for your college and you'll also get experience. It does take a certain type of personality to deal with that so I would strongly against it if you don't figure that type of person. You can get a certificate, an IT cert, those are huge in the IT field and then you could get a job in that because that verifies your knowledge. You could also just create your own experience and set up an LLC, make your own projects post to YouTube videos on tutorials that you create and show that to a potential employer and you can put that in your resume and be like, hey, I did this. It's really up to you and your personality type. There are so many different ways. You don't need a degree, you don't need a cert, you don't need military experience, you just really need to be able to sell yourself to an employer that you can solve their problems and that's what's so amazing about the tech field, maybe not on other fields where it's more traditional but in the tech field there are limited possibilities and with a little creativity you can get a job with limited experience and no degree so fairly quickly. Okay that's some great insight. What would you say actually matters when it comes to getting a job specifically from the perspective of someone who maybe just graduated high school and they're looking to get into IT and the tech field in general or maybe someone who already got their degree and they just graduated college. So what actually matters when it comes to getting that first job? There are so many various factors but if you have a degree and you're looking to get into the field or even looking to change your field, I would say creating projects and creating your own experience. So there are many ways to do that and you can do it all in your home. You don't have to go anywhere to get the experience but I mean Google is your best friend and you can create your own projects put that on your resume and gain your own experience. Show an employer that you have a lot to offer to them so not only can you learn tech but you can also create videos and do all of these different tutorials and most important you can learn on your own and be resourceful. So those are really important skills for tech is you have to continuously learn on your own and that that definitely kind of portrays that. You can create your own experience by creating an LLC and then making YouTube videos of tutorials. You can also create a GitHub if you want to do more security projects or web development or software development and then you can put that on your resume. You can link to your GitHub with your experience. So honestly that right there and then that shows that you have resourcefulness which is really important in IT that you're eager to learn and that it also shows what type of employee you leave so it's already demonstrating leadership abilities right there and that is exactly what employers want. They don't want to tell you everything you need to do. You want you to think on your own and kind of think outside of the box. Yeah one thing when people you know ask me for advice in private a lot of the time I tell them that one of the best strategies you can use is there's certain things where you want to not stand out right. It's a good idea to not stand out in certain areas to be normal so to speak and then there's other areas where you really do want to stand out like it's extremely important and one thing you can do that to make yourself stand out in a positive way is just to try to get their attention in a creative way so you could maybe make your own video in order to get their attention. You could do a project to show them that you're able to teach yourself some of these skills like you know the ability to make videos for instance that's a skill you know it takes a while to teach yourself that and if you're able to do that teach yourself that and do it in a creative way chances are you're going to be able to take on a bunch of the other tasks that require you to think outside of the box within the business itself so it's just a great way to kind of demonstrate that to a potential employer and then you also kind of just stand out in general I mean you're the the person who made the video they they don't even know your name they're like hey what about the the video guy or something you know that's a great way to kind of stand out from the crowd so to speak but again I don't want to I don't want to like speak for you but uh that's kind of one thing no you're right yeah yeah you are right standing out but within the box you know like you don't want to make your resume colorful but you just want to show your skills you know you want to be like I'm the best at this kind of you know but not like I'm weird I'm gonna cause problems or I'm gonna try to I don't know but yeah exactly yeah it is a that's one reason why I've never made a video about it because I feel like people would it's kind of general information and people would try to apply general information to like a specific job and they probably wouldn't do it right unless they got kind of advice directly from me so that's one reason why I kind of don't include that in videos but uh I've seen it correctly before and I've seen people get jobs that are just like their dream job like right away yeah by doing that so it's it's definitely something you can do um one thing I wanted to ask you about Nicole is uh are there any pitfalls that people should specifically look out for when it comes to getting into it yeah so these were some of my pitfalls um uh I would just read so I'm really big on reading I love researching and I love reading and I just find it all fascinating but I wouldn't do anything I wouldn't apply these skills to tech I would just continuously gain all of this knowledge but I would never apply it so it wasn't I did this for years probably early career for the first three or four years I just learned stuff and read and watched YouTube videos but I never set up a lab and actually did it so when it came to actually applying that knowledge it was just it was just useless knowledge I was like it's completely useless to have all this knowledge and not use it or know how to use it because I never did it in a lab I just theoretically knew it so that was my number one pitfall my number two pitfall is I stayed at the help desk a little bit too long you can kind of get stuck there and it pays well and you're like well do I ever really need to leave the help desk you're like this is nice but say you can get stuck at the help desk so your goal when you get a help desk job if that's where you start is to get out of the help desk as fast as you can because you can just stay stuck there you also don't need to spend a lot of money on a degree I didn't but some people spend like 80 90 a hundred thousand dollars to get a help desk job or even a system administration job you don't need any of that uh I suggest WGU I have some reviews on it but it's it's quick and you can get a degree fast and it's just functional it's just it works for tech me not for other fields but for tech it does work um and then also in this field you can kind of get lazy because you get paid well so you have to you have to motivate yourself to continuously learn new things and new skills otherwise you're going to become outdated really fast and that's also a benefit for anyone entering the field because the skills you learn are up to date whereas people who have been in the industry for 10 20 years their skills may be a little rusty so I mean you're going to get replaced with the the newer screw in the the great business machine which is a pro end con so I would say those are the major pitfalls so you know people a lot of people who watch this channel very young sometimes they're in high school sometimes they're early in college and they're kind of at that point in their life where they don't necessarily know what job would be best for them so uh what type of personalities or you know personality type traits tend to be really good or tend to enjoy this type of career I always liked puzzles and so someone who likes puzzles would do well in this career um and also you have to be very curious I was always curious about everything around me and I loved to learn I was just continuously learning as a high school student and a college student um and in this field it really satisfies that because there's so much to learn and once you get in a little bit it just opens up a whole new world of just tech and it's just absolutely fascinating and then you can apply those principles to other things in your life like business and relationships and it gets really nerdy uh so curiosity number one number two someone who can kind of go with the flow not too rigid and kind of it needs to be this way because in tech you're gonna you're gonna destroy things in a sense and you have to be okay with that and you just have to go with the flow you're like oh I broke this and then you just have to fix it really fast or or something will come up or a customer or a network will go out or someone hacks your network you just have to be like oh this happened now how can I fix it and so someone who's solution oriented and not problem oriented because the problems are going to happen you just have to find a solution and just be like I'm done all right let's just fix this so someone who can be like water someone who's curious someone who likes puzzles uh but I would say those are the three things and then also someone who's resourceful and self-reliant because it is a lot of figuring things out on your own not someone's not really going to tell you what to do my boss has no idea what I do so I mean they're not much help and then you're continuously thrown in new situations to where you have to learn really fast and that comes as you get more experienced you can learn things faster but yeah I could say those things got it what about introvert versus extrovert do you think that applies here or does it not matter that's a big thing so I'm more introverted and I can go days without talking to someone but if you're an extrovert you may have issues because you're going to be surrounded by introverts I've seen it happen I've seen extroverts trapped in introverts jobs and it's not good um I'm not saying you can't succeed you can become an IT manager and there's there's rules that do deal a lot with people like desktop support help desk things of that sort um but you're gonna have a lot of quiet time and you're gonna be around people who also enjoy the quiet so I'm not excluding like if you enjoy working with people I'm not saying tech isn't for you it just made me different it just I don't know I don't want to deter anyone here you know what I mean I don't want to be like well you're an extrovert you're gonna do terrible uh uh I don't know you just have to know when to flip it on and off what what I found just looking at different careers is if it's a really common career where there's just like hundreds of thousands or millions of jobs it really doesn't matter all that much what your personality type is because you're gonna find like a sub career within there that's gonna fit your personality so for instance there was one girl I knew who went into accounting and she didn't really like doing bookkeeping and you know she thought she wanted to do it she didn't like bookkeeping but there's so many accounting jobs out there she was able to find one that she really liked and it was more in the recruiting right where she's interacting with people and there you go like if you go into certain careers that are extremely niche you might find yourself stuck there but if you go into one where there's just like a lot of sub fields there's a lot more flexibility so I kind of usually recommend people do that if they're not 100 sure what they want to do because it gives them more flexibility yeah no I completely agree with that uh there's tons upon tons of jobs like I'm sure there you could do business and then do like the business planning and that's work with stakeholders for IT infrastructure they're they're definitely jobs uh yeah for everyone in IT some people who like compliance and you can definitely do career changes too so into IT with just a few skills gain a few skills and then you can make a transition to IT pretty easily also okay so for some of the viewers who maybe you know are thinking about going into IT how would you recommend them finding out if this is a good career for them or not something that I wish I had done was just do it I would just get your hands dirty and then go through various courses so maybe like web development I personally don't I have done it and it's just too much sitting right there and then typing and then the semi-colons it drove me nuts because I took some web developing things I tried databases and I was like this gives me a headache networking I have my masters in cyber security I mean I was all over the place GIS just go ahead and um just do things honestly and then there are a lot of online learning low-cost things that you could do that such as Pluralsight and you could or you DM me and then just go through their labs and see if you enjoy it and do as much as you possibly can the traditional college route just teaches you memorization and someone who's just coming from college it took me a while to get over that I'm like what uh I have to do stuff I can't just take tests and memorize all these facts and then I have to apply it I was really lazy it took me a while to get over that it's like I have to have to apply my knowledge um but yeah just go ahead and do it don't spend too much time learning about these concepts or the book knowledge of it just just dive deep down as many topics as you can and also talk to people in that field so I'm in IT I wouldn't be able to really tell you what being a software engineer is like or I wouldn't be able to tell you what cabling like they're cable dogs in IT uh because I can't speak from that but there's just so many jobs I guess but yeah so talk to people and try as many different things as you can for free or low cost don't don't spend five thousand dollars on a course that's a fantastic suggestion especially the the course one I always recommend just in general um you know I give kind of like general advice on my channel but I always tell people I it's almost like a broken record at this point I think people get annoyed when I say in my video but always try to contact somebody in the field that you're looking into you know you can get a hold of them maybe via LinkedIn for instance and just ask them what they would recommend so you're gonna find that for some uh career paths you ask them hey do I need a degree to get into this and they're gonna be like for sometimes they're gonna be like absolutely without a doubt you need a degree other times they're gonna be like sometimes you need a degree but you know it helps but you don't absolutely need it and then other times they're gonna be like you do not need to get a degree don't get a degree right and the only way really gonna know if that's important is to just reach out and ask people because something that might have been true 20 years ago is not true right now there's a lot of degrees that in my opinion were really good 20 30 years ago in my research and they're really just not that great right now for certain career paths that you want to go down for instance and then I really like your suggestion about just trying stuff out online for kind of like cheap or free I think that's great what there's like teachable Udemy Coursera is good treehouse treehouse yeah and then you said plural site plural site yeah plural site is really good got it yeah so those are some great resources just get on there and try to do some projects and then um your suggestion for maybe just recording yourself and putting it on youtube as well just to kind of challenge yourself I think that's a great suggestion as well and uh if you hate doing it you probably shouldn't get into it yeah don't do it for the money guys not not not for the money no there's nothing worse because I've had jobs that I've despised there's nothing worse than having doing something 40 hours a week that you just can't stand because you're miserable and everyone around you is miserable too because you're miserable which just yeah make sure to try it out and also you're right talking to people on LinkedIn I was always afraid to reach out to people I was always very scared um but honestly people want to help and it's not something I understood it was like why people want to help me but it actually probably it's like a gift to them to be able to help you now I understand a little bit more but I was so afraid at 18 19 to ask anyone like what am I supposed to do I don't know um yeah just talking to someone people in the field is the best way by far and you may think your teachers um have a lot of knowledge I'm not trying to go against teachers but there's nothing like someone who has working experience in the field to be able to tell you what it's like teachers teach uh but they're not going to give you insight on the day-to-day life and whether or not it's suited for you because they just teach the knowledge of it so that's an important thing yeah that was a great suggestion yeah one thing I found uh with certain careers I've talked to people about this is uh I'm not saying all counselors all teachers are like this but sometimes college counselors will give you advice that sort of benefits the college yeah because they want you to come back and get like a master's or a doctor's right and then sometimes same with teachers sometimes same with teachers right they're maybe they're they honestly think their advice is good and maybe it was good five years ago 10 years ago 15 years ago but until you actually talk to someone who's in the field and doing it you're not going to get the best advice and I always recommend talking to several people if you can just to get like a balanced perspective on it as well definitely and different genders too so I'm a female in a masculine environment so my perspective will be way different than a male in kind of this in like a male dominated field so like if anyone wants to reach out to me and ask what it's like to be a female in IT I'm probably that person but if you're like well what's it like to be a male in a male it couldn't help you there so it's important to take that into consideration too so absolutely and by the way if I didn't mention this before everyone I'll of course link her youtube channel down in the description and if you have any questions on this video or just comments criticisms concerns any way we could make these videos better for instance just comment those down below and of course Nicole you can feel free to answer the comments you would probably give much better answers than me of course but I try to answer every comment it's been a little overwhelming lately but I try to get to everyone but yeah that is a pretty pretty good idea and of course you could comment on her channel and she would answer them there as well so next section we're going to get into is going to be the yes or no section so if it's not oh if it's not a yes or no answer you can give like a very short answer like but we're going to try to keep this under a sentence if possible that's my goal with this section so okay you got you do grades matter in college for absolutely not absolutely not no no just to get rid of that whole concept of grades no actually i think it's a deterrent so if you're an s student it's better okay that was a that was a very straightforward answer i appreciate that thank you um i feel strongly about that topic um how about clubs do you think it's worth your time to be joining clubs in college is that going to help you with getting a job it's good for meeting people so yes um if the people can help you get a job yes if if it's like the drinking club probably not no yeah how about uh getting leadership positions within those clubs do you think that's something that's uh is going to help you quite a bit or not it will help you because it develops your self-esteem and your your ability to communicate with people and those types of skills and that will help you get a job so yes how about internships would uh our internships important do they matter yeah they would help a lot in securing a job and then this is probably kind of along the same line but work experience is that important yes but you can create your own working experience and then networking how important is networking in a field full of introverts man man that one's hard it is so important but i understand if you don't want to do it at all it is important but i didn't know anyone in my field uh so in it there's so many jobs that you don't i don't want to i don't want to say don't need to network but uh it get a low competition high demand job and you won't need to network yeah there you go got it and then how about skills how important are skills very important number one you need you need to have skills and you need to know how to use them got it and then um this is sort of along the same line of as you know getting experience but just kind of like doing projects on the side like we were talking about maybe doing youtube videos for instance how important is that if you have no experience it's very important if you have experience it becomes less important but unless you're trying to change your niche got it and then is the school you go to is that important is that something people really care about in the it field i know not at all most of my coworkers don't have degrees okay so i know this is pretty difficult i sent you the list because this is a lot to kind of just picture in your head but uh can you rank from most important to least important uh grades clubs leadership positions internships work experience networking skills and projects oh projects and the school that you go to so the first one would be work experience of course um and then i would say internships uh and then your skills would be second but it kind of goes with your work experience a little bit so you gain skills at your work experience um and internships and then below that would be projects uh and then below that would be networking and then clubs and then the school you go to and then i would say your grades your grades don't matter at all so if you're a d student don't feel bad about yourself totally okay um you can still get into tech if you're a d student uh yeah i would say that some of them go together though so you can gain skills from working experience projects and internships so but the the brand name of your school matters none in tech it wouldn't even hmm it's kind of updated why does it matter i don't know is that a good answer did i answer that well that's fantastic yeah that's absolutely fantastic yeah um you know i've i've found that uh you ask this question to different people in different fields you'll get literally the op like it'll be flipped opposite really yeah yeah great matter i i asked yeah in some fields your grades really really do matter like you'll actually put it on your resume and then i would say in most fields they don't but there are some fields where you you legitimately will be on your your resume or your cv so it really does matter yeah and then yeah some fields where the school you go to the school you go to really matters like if if you're a lawyer for instance a lot of the time the school you go to matters like a lot so i wouldn't do well in those fields at all that would just anger me to be honest that would be so angry it was like because i would also just say this like your school is pointless and your grades don't matter uh that's wild because it's kind of outdated if you think about it school is outdated you can get all this information online but i guess like in nursing or a medical field i can understand why the traditional route so it's not complete in tech though that's kind of my realm in tech it doesn't matter other fields i'm just never going to enter them i'm never going to become a lawyer is there anything else uh that we didn't go over that you think might be important here i do so when choosing your niche uh if you're interested in finding a job really quickly with little experience i would choose one where the skills gap is really high so for instance cyber security uh cloud and data science are in it one of the highest job niches with a huge skills gap so you're going to be able to pick up a job a lot faster than say if you go into networking which has been around for 20 years still a skills gap still a skills gap just not as high as data science cyber security in cloud um so i would mess around with those technologies and there's so many niches underneath those that you might be able to find one that you like yeah seems like uh data analysts data scientists that one is highly requested in my comments section so uh anybody's watching this and they are a data analyst or a data scientist go ahead send me an email we can maybe do an interview um because that one seems to be very high in demand in the comment section oh those are the most introverted people too so it could be a little bit more difficult to find them i actually did a poll on my channel and i think something like 75 percent of the people who watch my channel are introverted so yeah i can kind of see that that's fascinating that's very cool awesome nicole well thank you so much again for coming on today thank you for having patience there and uh where can the audience find you nicole yeah so i have a youtube channel that i just started and it's nicole a nest and like you said it's probably linked below and there i'll be creating videos on how to change your career into tech or how to get your first job in tech so i will be going over all of those topics thank you again so much nicole and uh we will see you next time have a good one awesome oh thank you so much shane see you