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Wednesday, June 25, 2008

IT Careers: 3 Tips for Computer Consultants

Those computer consultants looking for real IT careers have a lot of work ahead of them if they want to build strong businesses with steady, high-paying clients. If you are looking for IT careers, the following tips can help you organize your services and skills as you start your business.

Tip 1: Your “Ideal” Clients will Need Help with Specific Tasks

Your ideal or “sweet spot” clients will need help with some popular desktop applications; Microsoft Office; Intuit QuickBooks and Interact ACT! will be important to know if you want IT careers. They will also probably need your expertise setting up shared folder backup software and updating antivirus and firewall software. You will also most likely run into PDA syncing tasks and work with Microsoft Outlook. Generally, your clients NETWORKS will be of the utmost importance as well.

Tip 2: Remember, Differently-Sized Businesses Have Different Needs

Micro small businesses (those with fewer than 10 PCs) will usually have peer-to-peer networks and very low-end computer needs compared to your ideal clients. You will NOT need certifications to work with this group, and they are often seen as negatives by small business owners that won’t want to pay someone who is overqualified.

Tip 3: IT Certifications Are Really Only Important to Real IT Managers

When you sell to a real IT manager in a larger small business (with 50 or more systems) as part of IT careers, you will be dealing with someone that knows more about certifications and will see them as important. However, this is probably not going to be your target market as a “generalist” computer consultant because these types of buyers will be looking for very deeply-niched specialists that can fill in skills gaps.

Today we talked about some tips for building and thinking about IT careers as computer consultants. To learn more about IT careers, visit the attached link.

Added By: Computer Consulting Kit