Where is the best place to start an IT career?

This is really easier than it appears at first.

You can look at this in one of two ways: Economic or Environmentally. I'll explain.

Economically. Wheres the most bang for the buck. Be a mercenary and go for the money. Who cares where its at as long as it pays off the SGLs - fast!

Environmentally. What area of the state or states do you feel most comfortable. Your going to need to take time off eventually. If your into mountain biking the desert probably isn't going to be your best bet. See what I'm getting at? If you like the Ocean but are 150 miles from the ocean are you going to be happy with your career choice as well?

Best bet is to find something a bit in between. Compromise what you need to and work from there. What your really looking for is the opportunity to grow your knowledge not just your wallet. Think longer term. Five years worth of long term. Will the job/position advance you to where you want to be in those five years? Thats more to the point than asking which geographic area you should be looking at to start a career.

Good luck! It looks like theres going to be a good deal more hiring in the next few years and beyond.

- beads

Virtually every major metropolitan area will have needs. The question is less about geography and more about role. Where is the best place to start an IT career? Usually, not in the IT department.

Why? For some reason, there is a persistent myth that the way to an IT career is doing help desk for 1-2 years, help desk tier 2 for 1-2 years, network support for 1-2 years, etc., etc.

Instead, work for a smaller organization or in a department of a larger organziation - where your tech skills will be stretched - where you will be forced to learn new skills daily.

You might be performing office automation one day, network support the next, helping with some web application the following week, etc. Smaller organizations do not have the traditionally segmented roles that are common in IT departments.

Techrepublic has a chapter from my book, The IT Career Builder's Toolkit, for download. The topic: Breaking Into IT
https://www.techrepublic.com.com/5138-6240-5594538.html

Hope this is helpful.

Matthew Moran
The IT Career Builder's Toolkit
http://www.cbtoolkit.com

My son graduated this past year and landed an excellent job with Intel.

I began this position 1 year ago; my only previous experience was having my own PC; 10 years of crashing, replacing hard drives, sound cards, modems, extracting files in DOS one by one then 15 minutes later learned there was such a thing as an unzipping programs. Reseting boot sequence in BIOS to reinstall windows, restoring windows, heck I even flashed my BIOS once. All learned by doing. I loved every minute of having to figure out how to fix my horrific (at times)self teaching chaos. Then I figured out how to network 2 PC's at my home (just recently, so quite a perfect network yet). OK so I get this job - as a Computer Operator, we monitor the network of a large hospital - 24/7 - we do the help desk job nights and weekends, we do the Customer Service Analyst jobs nights and weekends (repairing, swapping, or helping user's find their icons!), we support the programmers, web developers, the duty officers (help care givers with electronic charting of patients), we even run financial jobs on our old mainframe. So even though we are the at the bottom of the "totem pole" so to speak - we are absorbing tons on IT information. Our newest Network Engineer started as a computer operator. My hope is to soak up more about networking, servers, and all about Windows XP's administrative tools. I know you are more educated than me, but I just wanted to share with you my story. Good luck in all your endeavors.