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Leading Companies & Markets

Within the outsourced IT industry there are a number of different types of players. You firstly have your old fashioned IT guy who offers a break-fix approach; those who perform proactive IT support and consulting services; the managed IT services companies and the project companies. Many companies have different approaches, but those in the latter two tend to lead the market direction, and tend to have a higher financial turnover.

Some of big the players in the Australian outsourced IT market are firms such as AlphaWest, Thomas Duryea, Brennan IT and EDS, but the majority of the dynamic and challenging work, and larger opportunity for people starting their careers comes from smaller and niche IT firms. You tend to progress faster, be given more responsibility and develop a skill-set much more quickly as you are forced to fend for yourself.

Most IT professionals start out within the internal IT sector. Most businesses with more than 75 staff start to consider bring their IT support in house. There are many roles available within this sector; but while you might start out in the ‘mail-room’ with very little responsibility, as you develop respect within the organisation, you find that you do end up with more decision making power, not only about IT systems, but also about the overall operation of the company.

There are no market leaders within the internal IT industry, but there is a rule of thumb: the larger the company, the larger the opportunity and the larger the salary. The most challenging roles within the internal IT sector tend to be for organisations holding sensitive information, as it becomes your mission to protect that information ‘at all costs’.

Environment & Culture of the workplace

Most IT professionals work indoors, which is great if you have pale skin and hate getting sunburnt. The environment for an IT person can be extremely stressful when things go wrong as you can have the entire company’s profit margin resting on your ability to keep the IT system running.

On a good day, you can sometimes sit back, relax, listen to music and read the latest RSS news from CNet.com. You can tend to dress more casually than other people in the office, turn up late and go home early because you have the ability to ‘install the latest Microsoft Updates remotely from home’....

A role in IT normally involves a lot of time with the above two extremes in play, but the role is extremely rewarding when your monitoring system can deliver a report showing how well you did your job over the past quarter, which you can show your boss and ask for more pay or more budget.

You get to play with a lot of cool ‘toys’ and can sometimes develop a lot of respect and responsibility within the organisation. IT can be a very enjoyable role with the correct attitude.