How to get a Job in IT without Experience (2021)

hey everybody it's josh here today i'm going to tell you a pretty much guaranteed way to get a job in it without knowing anyone without having any kind of experience and without having a degree so let's get started i've worked a whole bunch of different jobs in my career from just kind of your basic help desk to like assist admin to like doing automation with powershell actually kind of made the transition into security like back in 2017 so i was a security analyst and then i did some kind of security analyst slash program management work as a vendor at microsoft and then now i work at king county as in local government as some kind of security program manager it's still kind of i. t related but i've had a whole bunch of different jobs throughout my career and interviewed a whole bunch of different types of companies like government and finance and i've worked in i worked in hawaii for a year i worked in japan for a short time on a base as a contractor so i've kind of been able to develop this checklist or this framework over the years that's really helpful in finding jobs especially for new people trying to get into the field so for the method we're about to talk about i actually had my wife take this and implement it and then find herself a job i didn't make her do it just for the sake of it she actually wanted to switch her career into i. t but the interesting thing about her is she's a she's a non-native english speaker so she had some kind of extra hurdles to overcome but as i explained the method to you um i'll explain each step and then i'll explain like exactly what what she did in her case to kind of complete the checklist so having said that let's get started so the very first thing to do in the process is to develop a base level of knowledge around information technology so there's a whole bunch of different ways to do this but what i would recommend is studying the comptia a plus curriculum comptia is basically a vendor who provides it certification and they go to great lengths to do industry research to make sure that their exams cover like all the latest topics and and whatnot so you can use comptia a plus as a really good kind of baseline for the knowledge level that you should be at when you enter it i would also highly recommend trying to get like a really cheap refurbished computer or something off amazon so as you study the things that come up like as it's talking about ram or hard drives or something like this you can like actually practice on the cheap computer that you got and like take the ram out and like take the motherboard out and like maybe take the cpu out and like reseed it and do the thermal paste and all of that all of that good stuff so i'd recommend getting like a a dedicated cheap computer just for that so you can get some hands-on experience while you go through your material the whole point of this phase is to develop a base of knowledge not necessarily get comptia a plus there's a different there's a bunch of different ways to develop a base of knowledge like for example you could go to some community college classes that teach basic like hardware and software about computers or you could have done a whole bunch of other things i'm just recommending uh for your knowledge base i'm just recommending the comptia a plus curriculum because it's well flushed out by comptia already and there's so many resources available for online the good thing about compdia and especially a plus is there's a whole bunch of material all over the internet there's a particularly good channel or a good dude who makes material for comptia exams it's professor messer if you haven't heard of them i'll put a link for it in the description and also i want to say if you feel like you already have a base knowledge in it like you already have some kind of experience or you already like play with computers all the time you can just make a check mark and just check this step off and move to the next one but before we do that i just want to kind of explain how my wife dealt with this step so in my wife's case she didn't really know what she wanted to do exactly whether that's just work in like help desk or something or do networking or do development or something she just she didn't have any idea at the time so instead of jumping straight into a plus she kind of just took her time and took a couple classes at community college like she took a web development class and then a couple programming classes with java and then after the java class i think she started studying for a plus and a plus has company a plus has two exams and she passed the first exam and then she started taking another class um at community college for cisco networking so she took cisco networking one and cisco networking two and then i would i would consider this a sufficient a sufficient knowledge base um so that's that's kind of how she checked off her box you can check yours off in like a similar way i would recommend comptia a plus because it's straightforward and easy but that's just uh how she did it and the next step is to complete some kind of certification i know like the first step kind of sounds like that but the first step is knowledge base remember and this step is certification you can have a knowledge base without a certificate and you can also have a certificate without a knowledge base like if you if you were to to cheat or do something weird but but don't do that in my head certification and knowledge is like totally separate and in my opinion the whole point of the certificate is to serve as some sort of hr filter to get you in to get you an interview or at least increase your chances of getting an interview since certificates serve as an hr filter it makes sense to get a certificate that hr typically knows about and for this in my opinion the best one would be comptia a plus which is nice because you can kill two birds with one stone so if you if you use comptia a plus for your knowledge base and then you decide to actually get the certificate that's two birds with one stone you can also augment or replace comptia a plus with comptia network plus or security plus itil is also another decent one you can use but any of those i would recommend to be honest i would recommend just doing a plus there's the most material for it and you can probably you can probably pass it for close to free minus the cost of the exam as in you you probably don't really need to buy any extra material to pass it and if you're concerned about being able to pass the exam like don't even worry about it actually actually made a video that talks about my strategy i use to pass it certifications i have a whole bunch like like 12 or 13 or something but i described like a rigorous step-by-step process that you use to kind of prime yourself for the information and then and then learn it and then be able to take the exam and pass it so don't don't worry too much just do your best uh it'll be fine you'll pass and getting on to how my wife checked off this box the certification box she actually started studying for comptia a plus first and a plus has two parts to it like two tests and she passed the first one and then she started taking cisco at community college and she's like wow i really like ccna so she took like cisco one and two and then the pandemic happened and then she just started studying on her own and we got like a full lab for her and then instead of doing a plus first she actually finished ccna first which is like really crazy and not what i expected her to do um but i would say it satisfies the certificate requirement for this framework sufficiently i would recommend a plus because it's going to take you like a fraction of the time as something big like ccna but she she just wanted to do ccna because she liked networking step three of this process after you have your certificate is to make yourself some experience now if you already have experience like you have experience doing help desk or something else you can just check this box off and move on but if you don't have any experience yet you have to make some for yourself so to manufacture your own experience what i would recommend doing is look back when you are getting your knowledge based on your certification were there any particular areas that you found interesting like when you're studying for those for example like when you learn about active directory was that interesting to you or when you learned about like security or networking or cloud computing was any of that interesting to you and i would pick a topic that you find interesting and then kind of do a deep dive into it so for example i might recommend active directory i say active directory because most large businesses use active directory and most it professionals have used it at some point or or know how to use it so for example if you choose active directory and you want to make some experience for yourself i would recommend maybe just searching on youtube for like how to build a lab in active directory i actually have a video on this but it's it's pretty bad so you don't have to look at mine but just search youtube and like follow along with a tutorial for for whatever it is you're trying to generate some experience for yourself on like build the environment use it and use it a little bit and then after you're comfortable with it i would make some kind of like some kind of blog post or publication on linkedin or something where you teach others basic things on how to use it like how to set up a domain or how to make you know organizational units or how group policy works like uh make your own kind of blog post or publication just to service like some kind of tangible evidence that you have experience doing that thing and then you can put that on your resume and that that counts as experience that's how you get experience without getting a job so what my wife did for this step she did a couple things actually um remember i said she was taking some like web development uh when she was trying to figure out what to do um so when she was taking web development she actually contacted a company that she used to work for and she's like hey let me rebuild your website for you so she just like rebuilt their website and wordpress and then and then gave it to them for free and then later when she was um when she kind of started liking cisco and working on her ccna um her experience was she she built like a physical home lab with a whole bunch of routers and switches like a rack and all of that good stuff so for her it would it was uh she used the website she made to check off this box as well as kind of her home physical environment you don't have to do anything too crazy for this step it can be it can be anything like active directory you can you can do something like microsoft office 365 implementation anything that you find interesting just kind of like dive into it and get your hands dirty and work on it and then make a blog post and you know publish that to your resume so the fourth step in this process is to have a nice clean succinct squared away resume i really hate reading in general especially like resumes and large blocks of text so i just kind of assume anyone who looks at my resume also hates reading and seeing large blocks of text so the way i tend to formulate my resume let's look at this example here the way i tend to formulate my resume when people first when people first look at it they they tend to look you know up in this corner in this kind of left side area here so i tend to formulate my resume as to where they don't even really have to read anything to understand like what's on it so for example in this case easy to see the name at the top and easy to see like a linkedin link a certification is like right there they don't have to like really read anything if you if you look at it for like a second you see like what it is already if you have any education just make it like really simple and put it right here and then i would recommend putting your um this is your manufactured experience right here so for example um i said to like make a blog post or publication or something say that you set up an environment in an active directory and you published a blog post about it like teaching other people how to do it and or he made like a you know an average youtube video describing the same thing personally i would have all that stuff right here like in the beginning because it doesn't need you don't have to read it to understand what's here like you're like boom and you that half the page and you already understand like what the person is about without having to read large blocks of text or anything like this and then moving on to technologies um people people tend to do uh weird things under technologies like they'll just like rattle off a bunch of technologies like excel office uh like powerpoint or whatever uh you know nmap active directory but that's that's not really useful it's just words it doesn't really tell about what kind of experience you have in like what you've done so like what i would recommend under whether you call the section technologies or skills or whatever um i would i wouldn't list like you know 10 different things i would maybe for example i would list like one thing and then really quantify what you did well with with that one technology that you worked on because for example um for example if somebody reads this like active directory oh they created standards for provisioning blah blah blah they talked about like powershell a little bit after somebody reads this it can be inferred that you already know how to use like uh the office suite you already know how to use like word and excel and all the stuff and it can be inferred that you can already communicate well and and and do all sorts of other things so if you have like a solid skill or technology and you describe it well a lot can be a for inferred about you through like what you wrote here so you don't have to like rattle off 20 different random technologies and then for your experience whatever it is like working at macy's like whatever you did before you can just um you know make it succinct you don't have to list every single job because people are not going to care about you know they might but they're not going to care about like if you had like a 10-year career at like uh safe ways like a cashier or something it's cool but you don't have to write you don't have to write too much about the stuff that's not relevant maybe just put like your last like one or two jobs or something and then when you talk about like what you did at that place for example we have a delivery driver here don't put like create like cooked pizza and like delivered pizza and answer the phone because that stuff is like really obvious like obviously you did that stuff if you're a driver um so what i would put i would i would like put stuff that stood out about like what you did there so for example if you if you got any kind of awards so in our case we currently ranked we currently rank number two in deliveries per hour we raked number one for order accuracy like i contributed to training like put this kind of stuff don't put like obvious stuff or like um you know collaborated with teammates or whatever because you you it just takes up space and it's just extra words to read so like the whole point of this um the whole point of this read of this resume is to just make it as succinct as as short and concise as possible and then of course don't forget to spell check your resume i would recommend using google docs because they have a really good spelling and grammar checker and it's totally free for anyone so don't forget to do that but yeah feel free to use this again i'll put the link in the description so for step five now that you have your certs and your resume and everything squared away now is the time to go to linkedin and make sure your linkedin's like totally updated and flagged for looking for work and then go to all those other job sites like indeed glassdoor career builder monster and just fill out profiles on all of those websites and then mark yourself for open to work we're also going to be applying to jobs too but updating your profile on all of these sites and marking yourself as available for work allows the opportunity for other recruiters to find your information there and then contact you directly without having without you having to necessarily go and apply to them so now that you have all your profiles filled out it's time to start actively applying for jobs so what i would recommend i i tend to use um there's a lot of sites but i i tend to use indeed just for my kind of initial search so for you as you're new to it and like getting into it i would i would look for jobs with keywords such as like com you can use like comptia a plus as a keyword so you can use like comptia comptia plus you can use service desk text tech support uh desktop support or technician or any of these kind of like support kind of centric keywords for your job search because you'll you'll be able to find a lot of it entry level jobs with these words so now that you have all your profiles filled out it's time to start actively applying for jobs if you're watching this during the pandemic there's probably more remote jobs than there were a year ago which is good news for you if you're just now trying to get into i.

t i also want to say if you live somewhere really really rural like you live out in the country for example in walla walla washington with a population of 33 000 you might consider moving to a larger city just just for your initial entry into the it field so before you say no and decide not to do that if you live in the country consider this for a moment so say uh say we want to say we live in walla walla and we want to we want to find some kind of job so i'll just type like comptia a plus and we'll look and here it says we have like page one of one and there's only there's only one job only one job so say that we instead of walla walla we just look in like the whole like seattle area by the way seattle population of about according to i think it was wikipedia 3. 4 million or so so say we look in seattle so remember in walla walla there's only like one job with the comptia a plus keyword just one and in seattle uh 25 mile radius of seattle so you don't even have to live in seattle um there is 29 pages of jobs and then each each page has how many jobs one two three one two three four five six seven eight nine ten eleven 12. a whole bunch i'll just say like 15 so uh 15 times how many pages 15 times 29 i don't know it's a whole bunch 15 times 29 like 400 400 we'll just say like 400 jobs just for this keyword just for relocating to seattle so you can imagine if you expanded your search from like walla walla to seattle and then seattle to the whole washington state and then the whole of washington state to like you don't care where you work in the u.