Unsolved Giving A Career Talk to the Graduating IT Students
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I was invited by a friend to give a presentation about an IT career. They are graduating students- roughly 50+ audiences.
How else could I structure your presentation/talk?
I need more ideas from you ML experts.
This is my first time to give a career talk
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Couple thoughts...
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Explain the width of the field. Like medicine we have 100 directions you can go with sub specialization to the point that two professionals in the same room might not understand a single thing the other does. (IE Developer vs. Sysadmin, and within Sysadmin a AIX admin vs. a Windows admin will still have a lot of different concepts and tools).
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Explain how NOT to get in the field. AVOID all for profit scam shops. Note that a large number of people work in IT without holding degree's, or holding non-traditional degree's. Explain how you can learn many concepts at home with a small lab.
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Explain the role IT plays (Operations, Finance etc). In a lot of ways IT is becoming less of a stand alone field, and discuss how understanding business and operations are critical to the job (It isn't for people who just want to hide in a basement).
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@John-Nicholson This is awesome thoughts, I will include this to my list. Thank you in advance.
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I would highlight the important of self learning after getting their degrees. Their degrees might get them started in their careers, but being able to learn and teach themselves throughout the rest of their careers will be very important. From learning new technologies that come out to learning new skills so that they can move up or change directions is important too.
John mentioned the home lab, highlight that. Push it. Tell them how important it is to be thinking of their job as where they gain experience, home where they gain more knowledge.
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Don't forget to talk about social media! This is so important in IT, especially for people who want mobile careers. By working with social media (within IT, mention ML of course!!) IT professionals can gain insight, access, attention, respect and experience that is essentially blind to industry and location. IT practitioners that end up in the SMB can experience the enterprise, or vice versa. Views into broad IT differences across industries and locations, contacts with professionals of every level, from every location is possible. Social media, like ML, can do wonders for breaking down traditional barriers of many types.
And explain that this is something that they could be doing as an action item immediately, as soon as they get home. This isn't something that they can do "someday" once they get into the field, this is a way for them to be improving themselves and taking action for their futures RIGHT NOW. In fact, not doing it right now lets them fall farther behind those that will do it.
Same for home labs, most can take action on this immediately.
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@scottalanmiller pretty sure i will suggest ML.
