Bare Hand Booster Skills for Today’s IT Professionals

Several years ago, it was unrealistically easy to get an IT job because that was a time when HTML was called a new programming language and knowing it was considered a hot skill. But having an IT job doesn’t mean you are an IT professional, nor have you secured a career. You have to fundamentally boost you knowledge and skills to extend your root deeply into IT soil.

The booster knowledge and skills will build you a defense base, from which you are able to move forward by attacking and exploring, or withdraw comfortably in the raining days. The booster knowledge and skills are:

1. Programming skills,
2. Modeling/Database skills, and
3. Network and Security skills.

Programming

Programming is the most stable, reliable and extendable skill every IT professional should has. You might not depend on this skill through your whole IT career; you may not even need to start your IT career with this skill, but if you are seriously considering job security, tap onto it.

When dealing with the world we are living in, the best way is to simplify the perspective at the beginning. With IT, computing is all based on logic, clearly defined logic. Any ambiguous input will halt computer and lead to the ending that nothing is accomplished. Programming is the only way to instruct computer to conduct its job; therefore it requires a logically thinking brain in front of the keyboard and monitor. The process of programming has a force-back-training effect, which constantly trains the programmer without his/her awareness. The training is focusing on logically going through a mix of existing conditions and finding a path to reach the goal or solve the problem. In short, it is the Problem Solving Ability. If observing your surrounding carefully, you will find out that such ability is the critical element, sometimes the only one, to differentiate the IT workers.

Everyone entered the IT world will shortly realize that it’s a fast changing environment. We could hear lot sayings that there are so many things to learn, to catch up and no ends in sight. If you are programming-trained, there should not be any more worries. Programming skill and the problem solving abilities acquired by programming allow you very easily adapt any new technologies. That’s because, underneath, any software works and is controlled by the same things, logics and sets of logically written instructions (programs).

Today’s IT world is so diversified that one terminology can mean many things. For one, programming here means that you actually use a true computer programming language (structured or object-oriented) to write a program. The language could be from Pascal, Basic, C/C++ to Java, even COBOL. There are many other activities are called programming, which most time involves using a third generation (3G) toolkit provided by specific vendors. In those cases, the tools confine the building blocks and what the programmer does is merely configuration with business rules applied. These tooling approaches, as said, “Is a good thing.” But it won’t contribute the programming skills we are here hungry for.

Even as important as it is, the programming skill itself won’t carry you anywhere too far, just like the knowledge learned in high school won’t land you a decent career, but you won’t have a career without those knowledge. It’s what the programming skill brings you matters.

To be more specific, the computer languages that you should claim to be proficient are C/C++ or Java. You don’t have to be doing it, but you should have done it. There are verities that you could easily extend to, such as Visual Basic for Application (VBA), Perl/Shell for scripting or the coming C#. But please don’t tell people the hot babe XML is another computer language you must know.

Modeling/Database

Remember data is the king in this business. What the data really means to the business, from which the data is generated in or collected, is buried in the relationship between the data elements. To fully understand, properly store, logically process, accurately retrieve and meaningfully present the data, modeling is the key. The modeling we are talking about here is beyond the techniques of it, which might include ER modeling, object-oriented analysis and modeling, the full UML arena and so on. Those techniques or skills are tied to certain roles played in IT world. Here the basic modeling skill is to be able to conceptually understand the essential of the relationship among data and apply the relationship into the logic of processing the data. This is equivalent to an example that, entering a big library, you are able to locate the book you are looking for and find the quote on one page. You are not asked to build the library and scientifically index and label all the books. The basic knowledge is to walk through all the bookshelves, knowing how the book is stored, and to find the book.

When dealing with data, rarely you will not touch database. In old days, when a company like IBM and IBM-like technologies dominated the IT industry, data storing and processing were in far backend of the business. There was dark cloud around it so that only a group of elites was able to reach and handle it. Today, new technologies such as client/server, PC or internet/intranet are pushing the data and database to the very frontier of the business battlefield. The knowledge of database and data retrieving become an essential part of requirements to carry on the basic IT tasks.

As for specific skills, you should be able to understand the data by reading data diagram such ER modeling diagram or Object-oriented data diagram. Based on the diagram, you should know how to map the business requirement to the data relationship and apply SQL to manipulate data. While processing data, you need the knowledge of data integrity and you should handle the data accordingly. By knowing the basic logic aspect of data stored in database, you should be able to integrate the knowledge of data relationship to standard database concept such as Primary Key, Foreign key or other database constraints. Moving further, you may be required to use standard mechanism, such as ER modeling with UML, to delineate the data.

Networking

There is hardly one business application without networking capabilities these days. The basic networking knowledge really gives you the insight of data flow existing in the today’s IT environments. This knowledge is the indispensable base to allow you to extend your knowledge to reach the coming technologies that form the e-commerce sports ground. It gives you the luxury and comfort to absorb, adapt, and conquer any acronym beasts, HTTP, SOAP or WSDL, to name a few. Once you grasp the basic concept of modern networking, you would feel that actually the ceiling is not that high and different faces do not make things that differently inside.

There are certain compressed ways to engage in networking knowledge. Given an example, Microsoft provides an exam named Network Essential. The coverage of the exam truly represents the basic networking knowledge. Similar exchangeable exam is also offered from network product vendor such as Sun Micro system.

Security

New technology such as Internet and the broadly availability of networked data exchange bring great attention to the security aspect of IT. Even still at early stage, the requirement of security knowledge is increasingly becoming a crucial ingredient of basic IT skill.

Security is a very unique area that it could saturate into any corner of IT computing environments, and in the mean time, it could be easily neglected. In general, IT security is consisting of Authorization, Accessibility, Confidentiality and Encryption. The knowledge is listed from policies on paper, basic access control, and utilization of specialized software/hardware to full implementation of PKI (Public Key Infrastructure). In the beginning, at least the continuing security awareness should be imposed into the basic IT skills.