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The purpose of this post is to explain how to create a story on your resume, explain the research process of the IT role and pre-prepare for different types of questions. However this post is not just targeted for L1 jobs, but for any job related to the IT industry.

Ok so you’ve graduated from college/university, read an article on the future of IT and want to partake in the industry or just want a career change and shift to the IT world.

First and foremost, write down on paper some items on what you know about in IT. Write these items in dot points and leave a bit of space between each dot point. Leave a bit of space between these dot points (4-5 cm). It can be as simple as turning on and off your phone or computer, navigating around a screen on your device, writing a piece of code for an application or program or describing at a very basic level of what a certain button does on your device (e.g. when I press the Facebook app it opens Facebook etc). This might sound like you’re not doing much but this is the first level of learning. The examples above might sound simple but this is an important stepping stone into having an IT critical thinking mind.

After you have written down these items, begin researching online these items. For example we’ll use the Facebook example and how a user opens the app.
Some examples of researching on how to open a Facebook app includes the following

• “What happens when you open an app on your phone”
• “Where do you go after opening the FB app”
• “What happens during the FB app being opened”

When I quickly Googled (AI Chrome provided these responses at the time of writing) these sentences I was provided the following;

• “What happens when you open an app on your phone”
  • “Phone operating system locates app on device”
  • “Loads memory and starts app
• “Where do you go after opening the FB app”
  • “Loads messages and newsfeeds”
  • “Edit your personal details like email and password”
• “What happens during the FB app being opened”
  • “Loads personalised newsfeeds displaying posts and pages”

Don’t write too many points to begin with. Write then 3-5 points to begin with and write 1-3 lines of research (like the example above). There is no set time on how many times to do this. Don’t think from the word go this is going to deliver a massive outcome. What we want to this task to achieve is to think outside the box and build critical thinking.

After you have written down 3-5 points leave it for a day. Don’t think about it, don’t try to reflect. Put the paper a side and go with your day. On the next day or 24 hours later, repeat this step. You might only have 1-2 things to write about. As an example you may have thought about the following items to research about
(The following responses below were generated through Google AI on Chrome).

• “How does my mobile/cell phone driver bill customers”
  • “Your mobile provider calculates your bill based on the messages, calls and other charges you have made during the time of your billing period”
• “What system does my mobile/cell phone prover use to bill customers”
  • Among (me) researching, I came across two websites aircall.io, splynx.com that may use some system to send bills and invoices to customers.

After you have done this a few times (again there is no set or defined period on performing this), you can further into depth and research some of the research points you have written down (I have used a 3rd dot point tier, defining new questions). I have copied the dot points above from the Facebook example

• “What happens when you open an app on your phone”
  • “Phone operating system locates app on device”
    • “List the different types of operating systems”
    • “What is an operating system”
  • “Loads memory and starts app”
    • “What is memory”
• “Where do you go after opening the FB app”
  • “Loads messages and newsfeeds”
    • “How does the messages and newsfeeds get generated”
    • “What type of code is used to present these messages and newsfeeds”
  • “Edit your personal details like email and password”
    • “Where are these personal details kept or stored”
• “What happens during the FB app being opened”
  • “Loads personalised newsfeeds displaying posts and pages”
    • “How does Facebook personalise these newsfeeds, posts and pages”

Summary:

• Write down some things you might know about IT
  • It can be simple and dumbed down. Don’t spend minutes on end thinking about it, just write down what you know or that comes to mind
    • Start Googling and researching some of the items you have put down
    • Have a think about the how, why, where questions
• Keep these pieces of paper somewhere for later reflection
• There will be several parts to this post.
  • There will be links between this post and other related posts
  • The next post will be around researching systems, tools, applications, skills for the IT role you are interested in