I’m in IT, and some thoughts.
Don’t bother with credentials unless you can’t get on-the-job experience. On-the-job is VASTLY more important in IT, outside some very specific subspecialties. (Network security, for instance.)
What I would actually recommend is going to your manager or someone else at work, and saying “hey, I really want to build my skills in [x] – could I do something like [y] for a few hours per week, as my other duties permit?”
Ideally, this is going to involve you spotting an actual issue at work and asking to do that specifically. Say, “Hey, I’ve noticed that our team doesn’t have a written guide on debugging VPN issues; could I write something up and run it by you? I think that might be really useful for onboarding.”
Slightly less ideally, it’s going to involve you going to your boss (or grandboss, or someone else with the authority to tell you what to do who seems friendly), and asking if THEY’VE seen any issues that you could work on. “Hey, I’d really like to build my technical writing skills; do you see any big gaps in our documentation that I could help with, as time allows?”
Most reasonable managers will be ok with you spending say, 2-5 hours per week on skill-building or other duties. Especially something like documentation, which is always behind and often unpopular to work on. If there’s something you want to learn, literally just ask, preferably with a specific, actionable idea.
(This is why I’m suggesting couching it as a clear ‘in addition to your normal duties’, taking up only a small portion of your time – that’s a much easier sell for most managers than an undefined “actually, instead of my job, can I go do something else?”. This approach also requires that you’re doing well at your ordinary work, for what that’s worth – a reputation for competence is probably your biggest asset in IT, at least WITHIN a company.)
As far as subspecialties –
– You might enjoy becoming higher-level tech support. This is often referred to as T2 or T3 tech support – the people who get calls escalated to them, rather than the entry-level folks who get all incoming calls. (Often, they also write the documentation that T1 folks use.)
Working in tech support and getting a reputation for competence and handling the difficult calls is going to be useful here.
A minor caveat: It’s very common for large companies to outsource T1 (entry-level) to other countries, but usually NOT T2 or T3 – so sticking around your current company until you get a promotion or a couple of years of experience might help you bridge that gap.
– You might enjoy being an analyst. “Business process analyst” or “business systems analyst” are likely titles here, but you may need to dig into different “analyst” positions to find the appropriate ones. The job I’m talking about involves being the liaison between IT and stakeholders – the person who gathers business requirements, runs status meetings, and translates stakeholder requests into IT language.
There’s a lot of writing here – this is the person who takes “I want the website to look more modern”, talks to the stakeholders until they get specific (“I don’t like the navigation bar, the graphics look dated, and there are broken links on the ‘about’ page”), writes down those specifics clearly enough that the stakeholder can agree that you’ve gotten their request right or make any needed changes, and turns them into actionable requests for IT (“revamp navigation bar with blue/black color scheme and mobile-friendly CSS, for a demo to stakeholders in two weeks”).
As you might guess, there’s also a lot of translating between technical and nontechnical language, managing expectations, and dealing with potentially frustrated stakeholders.
– You might enjoy project management. There’s a lot of overlap with the analyst work I described above – but the project manager focuses a lot more on making sure tasks are on-time and on-budget, which means keeping your finger on the pulse of team members’ workloads. If you like juggling ten different priorities, rather than focusing on one thing all day, PM work might be for you.
All of these are basically jobs you can train for on-the-job. If you do some of these tasks in your current position – say, translating requests, answering the hard questions, doing documentation – then you’ll be fully qualified to jump into any of these positions. Just finetune your resume to highlight those tasks, look for a gig which isn’t expecting too much experience (say, 1-3 years, “associate” level positions, or just the plain title without something like “senior” in front), and explain that you want to make a lateral move because you’ve found that these tasks are where your passion really lies. You might be able to make this move from within, too, depending on how your organization works – and that might be easier, because a reputation for competence is going to really bolster your chances.
(Hiring in IT is a huge headache, because LOTS of people lie on their resumes. “Are you a reasonable person who can do what you claimed you could do” matters vastly more than your degree, your past experience, or your credentials. That’s why reputation matters so much – and while it’s not super transferrable between organizations, it’s VERY transferrable within an organization.)
There are probably some other subspecialties that would work! An actual “technical writer” gig seems to be somewhat uncommon these days outside particularly technical IT (like, engineering or industrial programs), but I think there’s a lot that would work for you. These, however, are the ones I’ve personally done, and I’ve actually made the lateral move from phoneline support to software development, and from software development to analyst/PM work.
I think “analyst” is likely to be a good general keyword for you to keep an eye on, if you’re more interested in writing and talking than the actual technical stuff. (I am, too – that’s why I switched specialties.)
Hope that’s useful; good luck!
