Thanks to the hype and glamour associated with Information Technology product launches, the IT industry is slowly shaking off its nerdy stereotype (at least that’s what I keep telling myself). Social websites don’t hurt the industry image either, ‘hip’ young citizens have taken to the technology like a duck to water.

And all of this social acceptance has unveiled a new era of Information Technology career professionals. These are people who may not have had a natural inclination toward computers as youngsters, but as young adults they can see the potential and security that IT careers can provide.

By far, the most common question that I receive from this demographic of would-be IT professionals is “what do I have to do to get started?”.

The bad news is that this is not a straight forward response, you see, Information Technology does encompass dozens of fields and to complicate matters further – the entry requirements for those fields vary depending on the region of the world and supply/demand of IT professionals at the time.

The good news is that due to the wide variety of fields there are many options around entry level IT careers. And the news gets even better – by understanding fields and options in the IT industry one can tailor their preparation to target in demand areas.

One such example may be a help desk role, these roles usually request people skills, well organized candidates, punctuality, good phone manner and a number of similar attributes that define someone’s character. The extent of the expected technical knowledge does vary but I think that it is fair to say that a general understanding of IT systems will usually suffice.

If you were looking for an entry level role without so much telephone duties, perhaps a desktop support role may appeal? Desktop support staff assist users with their PC problems and these roles can hire entry level job candidates for high volume desktop rollouts and other more repetitive tasks.

I hope that you can see from the aforementioned examples that by knowing what jobs to target within the industry entry level jobs are within reach. The IT industry has so many career pathways but instead of viewing that as a deterrent use the complexity to your advantage. Find the career path that suits you; determine the job requirements, target your planning toward that type of job and submit relevant, convincing applications as a result. So don’t wait any longer – your fantastic IT career beckons – what is your ideal entry level job?