If you’re an information technology professional, or are considering entering this rapidly evolving industry, you might be wondering how to keep your skills up-to-date and make sure you’re following best practices to grow your career.
For starters, you might want to consider furthering your education, whether it’s through online courses or a master’s degree program.
Building Skills Through Continuing Education and Mentoring
Siobhann Steindorf, an IS Team Leader at Duratech, graduated in December with a UW Online Collaboratives Information Technology Management master’s degree, but doesn’t have any plans to stop learning. She is going to continue developing her skills through online training or other courses when available.
“Even after receiving a master’s degree, I’m going to learn about machine learning and AI, because that’s the future,” she says.
As someone who has embraced lifelong learning and has earned several college degrees, Siobhann encourages her team to either work toward a degree or take online courses to excel in their jobs. Her company enrolls employees in subscription-based learning programs specific to software developers and information systems specialists. But, there are many free courses out there available to working professionals, including coding academies. In fact, Siobhann first learned how to write code by watching YouTube videos before fully transitioning into IT roles.
In addition to education, it’s often helpful to connect with others in the industry for advice. Some communities have Meetups, where industry professionals can meet in-person to discuss work. In addition, industry publications can also offer expertise – though Siobhann warns some are written with the intent of selling a product.
“I think networking on LinkedIn is a good idea, too, if you can find people that have either the job you have or the job that you want,” she says.
Besides taking classes, one of the ways Siobhann stays current with her skills is by building a team who has knowledge and expertise that she doesn’t.
“When I hire people, I hire people who have skills that I don’t have. I focus on building a team. If I had five Siobhanns, that wouldn’t be helpful. We want to build a diverse group of people with different skill sets and different knowledge so that when we come together, we have what I call an IS think tank.”
When they are faced with a problem, team members come together to discuss it. Occasionally, they need to pull people from other departments for an outside perspective. Because Siobhann has built a team with unique skills, she’s constantly learning from them.
“I learn stuff all the time from my team. Even as a leader, your team can teach you. [One of the things] I do to stay current is to sit with those team members who have the skills I don’t have, learn from them, and not be embarrassed to say ‘Hey, I don’t know that. Can you tell me about it?’”
Even as the most senior person on a team, it’s OK not to know everything, she says.
“I just really think that sometimes you can’t let your ego get in the way,” she adds. “Who does that benefit? If you can admit that you have opportunities to learn and that you have opportunities to grow from other people, the sky’s the limit.
Crafting an Individualized Development Plan
Mike Poaletti, Director of Application Development at UW-Superior and a student in the Master of Science: Information Technology Management program, says he looks at professional development on an individual basis. Mike has already completed one master’s degree, but is working toward a second to meet his career goals.
“I make goals for all my developers,” Mike says. “They might have to complete some type of course through Udemy or LinkedIn to develop not only their skills in IT, but their ability to meet with clients and facilitate meetings. There are all these different lenses to look through as you develop that person.”
“I think the best thing to do is craft a development plan. I do that every single year. What is the development plan for this person versus this person versus this person? They’re not always the same. They’re all gifted and talented, smart, bright people, but they all play a different role.”
As far as technical skills, IT professionals need to keep up on the latest developments. He uses the example of shifting frameworks.
“One of the bigger things in development is the shift from ASP.NET to .NET Core,” he says. “And although they’re both the language of C#. They are two completely different frameworks. Microsoft is in the process of deprecating ASP.NET and shifting everything to .NET Core, which then means we need to figure out for the applications that we have written, how to convert them to .NET Core. Because if something is no longer supported, you don’t want it out there, because it’s going to be hacked. You can’t have these vulnerable applications out there because the code has been deprecated and no longer supported.”
Mike requires his employees to attend training, but sometimes it’s more than just taking classes to learn technical skills– it’s understanding what your employees need.
“Not every employee has the same skill set,” Mike says. “Perhaps someone is great at working the help desk, but they need stronger communication skills. Like, your technical work is great. You can fix anything. But maybe you’re not the best at dealing with clients. You have to identify those gaps by person and then craft a way ahead year over year to continually push that needle and move it north of where you are today.”
Adapting to the AI Disruption
Staying current with the latest issues is especially important given the disruption AI is bringing to multiple technology industries.
“When we get those disruptors like AI into any space, I think people are resistant to change,” Siobhann says. “And that’s just in our DNA to not want to change. But the AI train is going, and people have to get on board. Even here, we’re interested in adopting AI, but there still must be people to babysit it. A computer is a computer. Computers are dumb because they only do what we tell them. There still need to be humans to help build and implement AI models.”
“When I think of the future of AI and machine learning, it is expansive and going to make billions globally in the next few years,” Mike adds.
Dr. John Muraski, instructor in the UW Online Collaboratives Information Technology Management program that Siobhann graduated from, says that working professionals need to acknowledge that AI is here to stay and it can actually help them do their jobs better.
“I think if you are hesitant to use AI because you’re afraid it might take your job, you’re done,” he says. “If you’re not using AI in your job, AI may not replace you, but I guarantee you someone using AI will replace you.”
With AI, John suggests that working professionals ask themselves, “How can AI make my job more efficient? How do I get over hurdles? What are the roadblocks I’m having that I could use AI to help me overcome? What are some simple tasks that I can outsource to AI to do on my behalf so that I can move onto something else? To be more efficient, to be more effective.”
There are many ways to use AI in the workplace, whether it’s rewriting emails or using it to transcribe notes. When it comes to coding, Microsoft CoPilot with GitHub is designed to help augment coding and companies that have adopted CoPilot with GitHub are seeing something like 70% increases in the amount of code their developers are producing, John says.
“You still need to test it,” he says. “You still need to ensure it meets business requirements. But companies, by and large, are adopting tools and using generative AI to write code.”
Security is always a concern with AI, so John emphasizes the importance of not plugging personal information or data into ChatGPT.
“When I’m using my ChatGPT, I’m not putting confidential information in it, or anything that’s trademarked or restricted.”
If users put private information into ChatGPT, that information can be found by hackers or others wishing to misuse data. Rather, users can use CoPilot, which works along Teams in the Microsoft Suite, for data that cannot be shared outside of the organization.
While AI has security concerns, it can also be used to detect problems.
“There’s other AI that’s written to detect anomalies occurring on your network, which could indicate some sort of threat actor,” Mike says. “There’s known behaviors that can trigger an alarm.”
Mike also warns that the concept of AI gets “thrown out and misused a ton.”
“If you don’t have machine learning [a subset of AI], you don’t have AI. That’s why I say it’s misused a lot because you have static data points; you’re not collecting additional data. That’s not machine learning. That’s not AI. It’s an FAQ on steroids. It has no true predictability because it’s not learning. It’s not growing. You’re not adding additional data points.”
“The volume of data points and the span of time you need to collect those to have machine learning and artificial intelligence is extremely high,” he adds. “Think of big data. That’s where you can have AI and machine learning. And it’s going to continue to trend up, because you can apply it to so many sectors, right? You can apply it to initial screenings at a health care clinic or the dental office.”
Learning How to Lead (Even If You’re Not a Manager)
Beyond AI and machine learning, IT professionals can also stay ahead of the game by developing and refining their leadership skills.
“Those skills, for me, are done by practice,” Siobhann adds. “I help my team develop those skills by giving them projects. Sometimes people think, ‘I’m not a leader because I’m just a contributor on my team.’ But you are a leader because people look up to you. Even if you don’t have the title of a leader, you can still be one to your group.”
And when things don’t go well, that’s just room for growth, Siobhann says.
“We have to be able to make mistakes. Even in software, you have to figure out how something works when it breaks. If it always works, you’ll never know how something actually functions. I think it’s the same for those soft skills.”
Even as a manager, Siobhann has mentors. Right now, her direct supervisor is the vice president of finance, and she often goes to her for advice. However, there are times when she meets with senior members of the team she manages for advice because they have longevity with the company and institutional knowledge.
“I think it’s just really understanding that you can have multiple mentors, depending on what you need mentoring in,” she notes.
Are you interested in continuing your education in the information technology field? Consider a master’s degree program to boost your skills and earning potential. Learn more about the 100 percent online UW Master of Science in IT Management by exploring the program’s curriculum or contacting an enrollment adviser. For more information, call 608-800-6762 or email learn@uwex.wisconsin.edu.