Salutations,

I am currently a second year student in South Africa (Age 20) studying Bsc BIT (Business Information Technology) through the London School of Business and Management, I kind of stepped into the course not knowing what I was going to do one day choosing the degree since IT has been a passion since I was a kid and the business management aspect of the course kept my dad happy who is a banker by the way (go figure), this covers my background...

Earlier today I went on some job search sites under the IT / Telecomms topics and did some browsing. I figured I'd do programming after completing my degree since I do have .net skills (C#, VB.net, ASP.net) and because I excel at it, but after having some talks with people who have been in the development sector for some time I grew a little anxious about the working environment, I'm a very social and outgoing person and enjoy public speaking and figured I’d be wasting some of that potential. I then came across numerous applications for BAs and SAs, having only read about their roles in text books, I wiki'd that shit to look at some of the requirements and it sounds like an absolute dream job!

I'm thinking of either doing my MBA or MSC in information systems management (which sounds perfect) after completing my HONS degree.
The job applications are quite vague on the actual skills required and seem to vary tremendously, however skills such as programming (.net, java and C++), SQL, UML skills and a broad IT knowledge seem to be common among most.

My essay is drawing a close,

I would like to know where I go from here if I wish to pursue this line of work. Are there skills I need to learn on my own time? And how do I get into this career path as even the Junior Applications require 1 - 3 years worth of Analysis experience???

Thanks and sorry for the lengthy read!

Wessel (Pronounced "Vessel" - The English seem to have trouble pronouncing it ;D )

Wessel,

I'd say complete your course. Since youre only 20 you'll definitely have more than one career, in fact, plan to have 5-7 careers. Thats the nature of the beast with Gen-Y. (Non-english So luister mooi!).

Doing VB, C#, JAVA is a bit of a gamble as these languages will disappear and new ones will emerge - just ask oldies who did COBOL, RPG, PL/I, APL, C etc. However, business will always be business. A bit of industry or domain knowledge would definitely help so pick one: Banking, Manufacturing, Logistics, Telephones, Social networks  etc.

Coding is not that Bad. Bill of Microsoft fame was a programmer; and so was Marc Shuttleworth!

All the best mate!

warm regards,

K

Every IT Career requires some years of experience ... yet every has to start somewhere.

The trick is to focus all your attention on getting hands-on experience using internships, etc. even if you have to work for free.

I got hand-on experience for a next to nothing slalary when I started ... from college and that was a one-time investment.

It is also better to actually get hands-on expereince so that you can decided early if you like the career track or not and make appropriate adjustments.