How to plan your move into tech

So, you’ve decided that you want to make the big career move into tech. Now what?

This blog post is the first in the “How to land your dream job in tech” series. 

Over the following weeks, we’ll explore each stage of the career change lifecycle, from the initial decision, through the recruitment process, to navigating negotiations to seal the deal with a much sought after offer. 

In this first article, we’ll cover how you can think about, plan for and strategise before actively engaging in your job search, ensuring maximum chance of success, not only in landing the best possible job offer, but also long term career development and fulfilment.

Work out your “why”

First, have a think about exactly why you decided to get into tech?

Here are some common reasons:

Culture

If you’re not in tech, then the perception of the workplace culture in tech will have images of nap pods, foosball tables and great perks - pretty much how Vince Vaughan and Owen Wilson experienced it in ‘The Internship’. This can be seen not only in the “Big Tech” companies, but also with small startups. Some of the perks include endless free snacks, gym memberships and importantly, flexible working - something that has enabled many tech companies to not only survive, but thrive during the pandemic, and tech companies are often ranked as having some of the best company cultures.

But it’s not all about the free Starbucks and working in from a beanbag. As the demand for tech grows, the demand on teams has grown, which presents opportunities to rapid career development. If you are someone who looks for a challenge, continuous learning and is willing to work hard for fast growth, then tech could be the career for you.

Money

According to Glassdoor, tech jobs consistently rank amongst the highest paying in the UK (at least eight of the top twenty from that list are in tech). A career in tech can offer one of the highest paying salaries out there, and due to “the Great Resignation”, as a response to Covid, this isn’t going to change anytime soon, as demand is set to grow exponentially. 

Shortage in high quality tech talent is leading to a candidate driven market, driving up salaries: “of the top 20 roles with the highest increases, 15 of these were for technology, highlighting the high demand for IT professionals” says Staffing Industry Analysts. A typical techie salary is £74,727 as of 2019, with an annual increase of 13%, according to Hired, and that’s before Covid hit and tech demand soared.

Skills development

The great thing about tech is that it’s constantly evolving, and that means that your skills will constantly develop in order to adapt to the industry. There is certainly a high level of variety in tech, and compared to my previous role in sales where I was having the same conversations and pretty much following a script with prospects and customers in order to close deals before each month end, there is always something new on the horizon providing you an opportunity to grow your skill set.

There are at least a couple of examples I can think of that apply to me in this situation. When I began in the tech industry, the typical project delivery model followed a ‘waterfall’ methodology, which meant that the requirements and scope of the project was very fixed at the beginning. As our company transitioned to an ‘Agile’ delivery model, I had to demonstrate the ability to respond to fluid requirements and change whilst maintaining progress on working software. 

As well as the ways of working changing, the technology itself is in constant flux, meaning you will have opportunities to learn skills in new technologies. The technology I work in, Salesforce (world’s #1 CRM) has three releases a year, meaning that it’s important to keep up with best practises and new tools available with each iteration.

Innovative Industry

Fundamentally, being excited by being part of the world changing potential of technology, using technology to solve business problems, improve processes or achieve goals, and wanting to be a part of how the solution is created is probably the most important and critical reason people get into tech.

I recently spoke to a senior executive at a large, well-established tech firm, who said that one of the proudest moments during his career was being able to roll out technology enabling large scale coronavirus testing capacity in record timeframes, and being able to look back at that achievement made him appreciate the organisation he is part of.

Although not quite on the same scale, before I began my career in tech I was on the client side of a small scale Salesforce implementation at my company, and seeing the ‘before and after’ of how salespeople worked once they had an effective CRM tool was one of the key factors in inspiring me to make the move into tech.

Figuring out your “why” is going to be critical not only during the interview process, as you are bound to be asked what made you decide to follow this route, but more importantly for yourself. Having this self-awareness and ensuring that your future career meets the goals that you’re setting for yourself is going to give your career meaning, purpose and long term fulfilment, as well as preventing you from regretting your decision for the career transition later down the line.

Skills Audit 🤓

Once you have your “why” established, you should start your planning by doing a skills audit on yourself.

Start by writing down:

• Things you know that you’re good at 

• Areas you’d like to improve or learn

As well as:

• Things you like doing in your current role

• Things you don’t like doing in your current role

You may already have an idea, but getting these down on paper will help you hone in on where you want to focus for your next step. For example, I knew I liked working with clients and wanted to stay in a customer facing role, but didn’t like working to a monthly target and wanted to develop more technical skills that sales was never going to offer me. I knew I was good at being organised but felt I could flex my organisational skills in another role where these could be developed further. By completing this exercise, it helped me to paint a picture of the kind of role that I wanted, and then when browsing job descriptions and the associated responsibilities, I could see whether these fit what I was looking for.

Research

At this point, you will have a pretty good idea of what you want and where you’re at. The next step is to research what’s out there that could be a good fit for you.

By the end of your initial research, you should have aimed to establish the following:

The most suitable roles for you

There are tons of resources out there to help you decide what the right role is for you. Next week we’ll be covering some of the most popular roles in the tech industry, including what kind of skills are required, and what kind of personalities are best suited to which roles. For example, you don’t have to be a ‘technical’ or ‘maths-y’ person to get into tech - there are roles in sales, marketing, project management, recruitment, business analysis which don’t require any knowledge of coding, and even as a consultant or an administrator, coding knowledge isn’t required. If you’re still unsure of what the best role is for you once you’ve looked at some example job descriptions, then you can even take a quiz.

What you can expect from the role

What can I expect to do in a typical day-to-day (we’ll be covering this in our upcoming “A Day in the Life of…” series, but another great place to start looking in the meantime is at profiles and experience of other people already doing the role on LinkedIn or Hired.com’s blog. This will also give you an idea of the kind of profiles that would be applying for the same role and what you’d be up against, which is important because once you start applying you’ll need to establish what is your USP (unique selling point) and why companies should hire you over someone already well established in the industry. 

What is the trajectory?

Establish a clear picture of what you can expect to be doing for your first month, six months, twelve months in the role, which will not only help you with very clear understanding and expectations of the role, but also demonstrate to future hiring managers that you have a clear understanding of what this role entails and how your career change would materialise. If they have reassurance that you have thoroughly researched and understood the role, then it removes the risk for them in hiring someone who has no background in tech.

Accept the side effects of a transition

As with many career changes, a transition into tech could mean that you are moving across, or you may even need to swallow a slight pay cut. You may have built up a career for many years in a different industry, but for a tech company’s hiring manager, there is still a level of risk taking say, a high school teacher over a well established techie, no matter how much you have emphasised your transferable skills, and that level of risk is offset by coming in at a lower salary band. You may be able to counter this somewhat by proposing a performance based bonus, but we’ll get to that in a later blog post on salary negotiation 😉 .

Speaking from personal experience, that short term sacrifice was 100% worth it for me in the long term. Prior to moving into tech, I earned a chunky top up of commission on top of my salary - sometimes over 50% on top of my base salary. My salary upon moving into tech, although higher than my base was in sales, was significantly lower than my total take home package. However within 18 months in tech, my salary had increased higher than I could have hoped for had I stuck in sales, and continues to do so.

Make sure you check Glassdoor as well as job descriptions for indicators of what you can expect for a salary. If you do need to come in at a lower level, what timeframes can you expect for progression, what does that progression look like and what will you need to achieve it? 

Conclusion

There are a number of different factors to consider before transferring into the tech industry, but with enough due diligence and forethought, you can be sure that your move into tech is a one that offers growth, job satisfaction, fulfilment and success.

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