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A Sample Career Path for an IT Person

Guest post by: Josh Bellendir

Article Overview: I was once asked by one of my former employees what the typical career path for an IT person is, and my explanation went something like this. Depending on the size of the organization as well as the size of the IT department within that organization, the career path varies substantially. If the IT person lacks the skills needed to make business and strategic decisions, his/her path usually ends at the Sr. Engineer/Team leader or IT manager role.

A Sample Career Path for an IT Person

I was once asked by one of my former employees what the typical career path for an IT person is, and my explanation went something like this. Depending on the size of the organization as well as the size of the IT department within that organization, the career path varies substantially. If the IT person lacks the skills needed to make business and strategic decisions, his/her path usually ends at the Sr. Engineer/Team leader or IT manager role.

However, if the individual possesses the skills necessary to be able to make both, IT and business decisions, his/her career could travel along a path to a CIO role or perhaps jump over into a COO or CEO role (typically only with companies that are in fact IT companies as opposed to others, let's say pharmaceutical, industrial, government, retail, etc).

Typically an IT person that possesses both business and IT smarts will end up holding a position as the CIO, COO or consultant to senior or executive management positions.

So here is a typical career path of an IT person:

Start of Career...

1. Junior Engineer

2. Engineer

3. Senior Engineer / Engineer Team Lead

4. IT Manager / Regional IT Manager / Senior IT Manager / IT Division Manager

5. IT Director / Sr. IT Director

6. VP of IT / SVP of IT

7. CIO

Then depending on the company, you could potentially shift into a COO or perhaps even the CEO role (typically only applies to IT companies). Moving into a COO is more likely as CEO's typically come from sales backgrounds and those that are visionary in nature. Even the CIO role is sometimes occupied with a person that does not necessarily have a strong IT background but more or less understands the business and has experience and a proven track record in an executive level position.

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Article Tags: Career, CIO, IT



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