Career as a Technical Consultant

Express the business side of your digital lives. Share your experiences and/or your comments regarding a business or organization.

No advertising.

Moderator: General Moderators

Post Reply
navlondon
Forum Newbie
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue May 02, 2006 12:48 pm

Career as a Technical Consultant

Post by navlondon »

I’m 24 years old and graduated with a BSc in Computing 2 years ago. Since then I have worked as a software support consultant for 12 months which was very technical and now i am working in web design using HTML, CSS, PHP and grahpic packages but I am very keen to learn .NET and become a technical consultant because i enjoy a client facing role.

I dont have good programming skills but i have seen some job roles for technical consultants which state graduates with software development
skills, preferably with MS .NET but skills and experience are less important than the ability & willingness to learn new skills and an aptitude for programming but these roles dont come up often :(

I have been offered a role for a project support officer and do you think it would help towards getting a role in technical consultancy as i do not want to go down project management path??

Would it make it more difficult to get back into technical consulting if i was to take this role because i will not be learning any technical skills from it?

What sort of things should i be looking to do to progress my career?

I have read consultants are normally 28 under when they start off and consultancy's dont recruit often once over 30..is this true???


thanks.
User avatar
onion2k
Jedi Mod
Posts: 5263
Joined: Tue Dec 21, 2004 5:03 pm
Location: usrlab.com

Re: Career as a Technical Consultant

Post by onion2k »

navlondon wrote:I dont have good programming skills
Don't be a coder then. Seriously. Spending time doing something you're not particularly good at is frustrating, boring, and ultimately will be the reason you start looking for a new job. Recognise your skills, and what you enjoy, and find a job doing that. You might not earn quite as much in the long run .. but you'll have a hell of a lot more fun .. and that's worth much more than any amount of money in the bank.

Also.. don't expect to learn all the skills you want in a new job. If you want to learn .NET .. then learn it. There's stacks of resources on Microsoft's site, you can get C# and the .NET framework SDK for free .. don't wait until someone is there to hold your hand, jump in and have some fun!
navlondon
Forum Newbie
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue May 02, 2006 12:48 pm

Post by navlondon »

Thanks for the response.

I haven’t really had to do any programming apart from HTML and CSS and some JavaScript which I borrow but I thought if your doing it day in day out on the job then it has to be easier to pick???

As for career I really would like to go down the path of ‘technical consultancy’ but was wondering if I took a role as project support, which is a project environment role, would it still be beneficial to getting into technical consultancy even though I wont develop technical skills????

I have downloaded the MCPD for windows developers and have installed visual studio. Do you think it’s a good idea to get the certification even though I will not have the industrial experience??

Thanks.
timvw
DevNet Master
Posts: 4897
Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2004 11:11 pm
Location: Leuven, Belgium

Post by timvw »

What would be in a job description for 'technical consultant'? What would be the requisits be in order to be qualified for the job?
navlondon
Forum Newbie
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue May 02, 2006 12:48 pm

Post by navlondon »

There are many job descriptions for technical consultant but some are just focused on client software requirements, going out and finding out how the business works, writing proposals, giving presentations, according to the needs, documenting the findingsand then assisting the complete devlopment life cycle right until implantation and providing them with the training.

I am not sure if there is need to always have a strong development background but one must have a good understanding.


Thats the kind of role i would like to get into but not sure if taking a project support role will give me the experience i require???

Thoughts pls??
alvinphp
Forum Contributor
Posts: 380
Joined: Wed Sep 21, 2005 11:47 am

Post by alvinphp »

I would say you take the project support job and practice programming on the side as the knowledge will be a great asset for you.
navlondon
Forum Newbie
Posts: 4
Joined: Tue May 02, 2006 12:48 pm

Post by navlondon »

Thanks.

I have downloaded the MCPD for windows developers and have installed visual studio. Do you think it’s a good idea to get the certification even though I will not have the industrial experience??
timvw
DevNet Master
Posts: 4897
Joined: Mon Jan 19, 2004 11:11 pm
Location: Leuven, Belgium

Post by timvw »

navlondon wrote: I am not sure if there is need to always have a strong development background but one must have a good understanding.
How would one be able to have a good understanding if he has virtually no experience/no strong background with development?
navlondon wrote: Thats the kind of role i would like to get into but not sure if taking a project support role will give me the experience i require???
In my experience is project support more about giving feedback about problems to the actual developers. I don't think you'll learn much about actual development practices.. If you're lucky you'll get to write some unit tests that reproduce the bugs?, perhaps a simple patch, but i think you'll be answering customer phone calls most of the time... Telling them where they have to click...
Post Reply