Build your career with an MSP

Your IT career on the rise

A career in IT… are you pursuing one? Great job (literally)! You’ve chosen a highly interesting field of study, the fastest developing industry and possibly the most diverse career path. But how is your career going? What is the smartest thing for you to do if you want to develop your skills, gain more responsibilities and become a true guru in your field of expertise?

What are your considerations when planning your next career step? What are companies offering you? And is that what you are looking for in a job? Common elements to consider include location and the related commute, flexibility, training options, growth opportunities and, of course, salary! What is most important to you?

Make your considerations, take your time.

The job you choose can have a huge impact on your future. A few tips to take into account:

• Are you interested in specialising in a certain area and does your future employer have relevant expertise? Is there an expert in house who can show you how it’s done?
• If there is no senior staff in your field of expertise, ask about training budgets and certifications. Becoming a gold-certified cloud specialist can be gold for your future career.
• Make sure your future employer is technologically up to date. Are they using the latest tools? Do they have modern equipment? Technology is changing so fast and you need a modern, cutting-edge environment to be able to fully develop your skills.
• Is your job diverse and challenging enough? And is that what you are looking for? A job in an SME’s IT departmentcan involve very different duties than one at an MSP, for example. Weigh the pros and cons.

An MSP ticks all the boxes!

An MSP is not just a tech company, it’s a people business. A collaboration with such a diverse group of people, with complementary skills, may be just what your IT heart desires. Patient first-line technicians put employees at ease. Specialised security engineers get their kicks out of tricky technical issues. And last but not least, project managers have a passion for deadlines, communicate in human language and report based on clear SLAs or KPIs. That does-it-all, mission-impossible IT person has become a whole team of experts who are always available to help you.

Do you already employ strong IT staff or have a talented junior working for you? This can work very well in combination with an MSP. Young, high potentials want to learn from the best. A Managed Service Provider can be a beneficial environment for them. They will come into contact with many different kinds of technology and have a chance to interact closely with vendors in their areas of interest. This gives them ample opportunity to become niche experts in their preferred domains.

On-the-job training, combined with a team of experts to assist the juniors, makes all the difference. Young talents can work and deliver projects of consistent quality, confident that they have access to support as needed.

Pre-defined vendor learning paths like CompTIA are a requirement for many professionals who are changing careers and want to start in our industry. And for the experts, vendor-specific niche training courses keep them up to date on new technologies and risks. As an Executive Member of the CompTIA Benelux community, I consider training opportunities in our industry a personal priority.

A strong MSP has also developed a standard product and toolkit. This software and hardware mix is balanced as to price, because an MSP also has competitors, of course. Over the course of many years, these solutions have been tested extensively in all kinds of environments and situations. The technologies are known from A to Z and back again. For an MSP, their main cost is labour, so they are committed to automation. And you share the benefits.