IT industry is facing a severe shortage of competent human resource both locally and globally
By Ken Subedi, Kathmandu
There is an opportunities in the field of Information Technology (IT). We know lots of career path that can be selected from new and emerging career paths along out way. It is necessary for one to select his/her field of interest during the study period and its future prospects in the context of both Nepal and abroad. Currently IT industry is facing a severe shortage of competent human resources both locally and globally.
IT graduates can work in different companies like software companies, financial institutions, health, corporate organisations et cetera. Here are the following lists of most common career paths for IT graduates in the country.
1. System administrator (SA): The SA manages all the IT resources of an organisation and requires to manage servers, pc, network, internet, backups, and security. The SA can get opportunity in ISP, NGO, INGO, software companies, schools, colleges et cetera.
System analyst (SA): SA having wider scope in software companies is responsible for performing the feasibility study of a system to prepare — software requirement specification based on the prerequisite of the stakeholders. The SA researches problems, plans solutions, recommends software and systems, and coordinates development to meet business or other requirements. They also help programmers during the development of the software.
2. Project manager: Managing the assigned project in software companies — they coordinate projects related communication with clients and manage the development team, distribute project work among the team members, and track its progress report.
3. Mobile application developer: It is one of the most demanded and fastest growing career fields in the world. As mobile devices continue to change the way we do business, communicate, and access news and entertainment, the demand for new and innovative mobile applications is growing rapidly. Mobile application developers for iPhone and android phones are in high demand.
Software developer: A software developer should have a good programming, problem solving, and analytical skills. They can select any one of the development platform among VB NET, Visual Basic (VB), Java, Delphi, and Oracle Business Intelligence.
4. Web developer: The developer is responsible for the development of websites and web applications. They can select any one of the programming language as a development platform among PHP, ASP.NET, ASP, JSP, Perl, Ruby on Rails. There is a huge scope of PHP and Asp Net in Nepal. Moreover, many software companies choose PHP as a development platform. Furthermore, PHP web developers can expertise in popular open source software like Joomla, Word Press, Drupal, Magento et cetera. Web developers working as an expert of these software can relatively earn more. It is also good to have knowledge of PHP framework like Zend, CodeIgniter, CakePHP et cetera. Web developers showing sufficient and frameworks are in high demand.
5. Web Designer: A web designer should have knowledge of Photoshop/ Fireworks, HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and JQuery. However, designer should be creative enough to make attractive websites and interfaces.
6. Search engine optimisation/ social media marketing (SEO/ SMM) expert: IT graduates should possess sufficient skills to do online marketing of businesses (websites) by listing it in organic search result of search engines. They can also make use of social media and networking tools like YouTube, Twitter, LinkedIn in promoting products the need of SEO expert is increasing globally.
7. Database developer: These professionals should have a good knowledge of database design SQL since it will be used while creating software, websites and web applications. Popular database systems used by database developers are MySQL, Oracle and MSSQL.
8. Quality assurance (QA): QA officer make officer are responsible for ensuring the quality of the software and web applications. They should have knowledge of different testing techniques, designing test cases and performing tests.
9. Technical writer: They are responsible in creating documentation of the software and web applications and also in creating manuals.
However, there are also other careers prospects for IT graduates like graphics designer, database administrator, network engineer, ethical hacker, network security specialist, hardware security specialist, hardware engineer et cetera. Moreover, new trends of working practices are being developed with boundless opportunities to work from home as a freelancer if you can reveal competent skills. Some other sectors like animation, game developing and out-sourcing can be job sectors for IT graduates.
The author is associated with Living with ICT and CG Manipal Campion School. He can be contacted through kengb1@gmail.com. This material is further published in The Himalayan Times, March 18, 2013 edition.
