It’s Not Just Coding: Skills That’ll Get You Into The Tech Industry

This is a piece by Brainster, a platform for education helping you future-proof your career.

It’s not even a secret anymore. You don’t necessarily need (any) programming knowledge to get a job in tech.

We know it’s sometimes hard to believe it since it always seemed like the Earth is spinning around the coders with the nice diploma and the skills to write lines of text you wouldn’t be able to decipher even if your life depended on it.

But if you have a hard time believing us, just check the latest statistical data on the topic and you’ll find out that for every programmer hired in Washington 7 other jobs are added. It creates another 1.7 jobs within their own company and another 2.7 jobs across the wider economy for a multiplier effect of 7 jobs. Just think about it, every programmer that recently developed an amazing app will need someone to do the branding or manage social media.

So it’s about time you stopped thinking of yourself as someone that could only dream of a job in tech because you really weren’t so good at maths in high school, and realize that the tech world is vast and constantly growing. Companies, of course, keep seeking developers, but they also need a lot of other people with different types of skills that will help them make the process complete.

There are millions of ways to actually learn the skills from the list below, and all of them are pretty easy and can be done by basically anyone who puts their mind to it. Even though leaving your old job immediately might not be the smartest move, with just a little bit of time and effort in the day — you’ll be applying for tech positions in no time.

Design

Yes, we’re aware of the broadness of the category. But that’s just amazing, think of all the different tech jobs that would fall under it — web design, user experience, user interface design, graphic branding, mobile design, or even package design.

And even though it demands to own a nice set of skills before actually calling yourself a designer, it all comes down to whether you have an eye for good art and aesthetics, and the knowledge to come up with something nice that will make your audience stare open-mouthed.

Start with the basics, learn about color, typography, and designing with a grid. Study some of the graphic design theory. The biggest mistake you can make is jumping into Photoshop too soon.

User Experience/User Interface

User experience (UX) and user interface (UI) positions are different but work closely together. And sometimes you might see them combined into one job. The role of the UX specialist is creating the best feel in a website or an app and make sure that everything works the way it should be, and in a sense that suits the user. While UI specialists are the ones who create visual designs and craft interfaces for websites and apps.

It might seem complex and confusing (especially the super-fancy names — UX and UI), but it’s actually not at all, and you can definitely master it. The overall goal of both is creating a website/app that will be intuitive and pleasurable for the user. In order for an app to be good and lure you into using it, it needs not only a good design but also a design that makes sense. And this is where the UX and UI come in.

So maybe you’ve worked as a layout editor in the past, or maybe you’re just really good at creating flowcharts, or reading and creating maps. If you know how to simplify and guide the human eye from Point A to Point B, this is something you can easily learn how to do.

Check out our UX/UI Design Bootcamp.

Marketing (Including Social Media)

You can only understand the importance of social media and marketing when you catch on two entrepreneurs nervously talking about the latest changes in the Facebook algorithm. It probably goes without saying that the best way to get a company’s product on the market today is with intense digital marketing.

This means that usually there’s a team working only on this. Some of them would be working the social media marketing, while others would need to do some content production (like writing blog posts, audio, and video).

Of course, marketing positions in tech range in requirements and skill levels, but they all work towards the same goal — bringing their company in front of the world. So this basically means that your amazing Twitter skills, but also Instagram and Snapchat, can be very useful for some tech companies.

You can start by reading a bit about the algorithms of different social media platforms, learn some SEO, and by studying the companies that do it best.

Technical Writing

Don’t let the word ‘technical’ fool you into thinking it’s definitely something you can’t do and must be just another phrase for coding. It’s exactly the opposite. Your job as a technical writer would be to use all your best copywriting skills so you could document everything that goes into developing the product (whether it’s a website, app, or software). Alongside all the code, the goal of the reports you’d be writing is making everything understandable for non-techies.

So, if you have a solid grasp of language and you’re well organized and clear-minded, all you need to do is practice your copywriting skills, and of course, read a lot about technical writing. But what you’re trying to learn how to do is the ways of coming up with concise and clear content to communicate with readers. This means the creation of user manuals, press releases, disclaimers, technical reports, specification reports, scripts, and even more.

Data Analysis

It seems as if you just can’t get rid of the word ‘data’, it has been everywhere for the last 5 years. Truth is, the bigger the tech world gets, the more data there is, and the more present it will be. But the good thing is that all this data just needs someone to sort through and understand.

The goal of a data analyst is to inspect data in order to discover useful information, draw conclusions about things (like website clicks and sales), and help with decision-making by making suggestions of how to best use what the data present.

Working with data analysis means that you’d need to break down big pieces of data into usable forms put in the forms of graphs, charts, lists, reports, and more.

So, if you like statistics, and you’re actually good at reading it, getting the data analysis skills all those tech companies are looking for will be a piece of cake. Especially if you’re good at logical thinking and finding patterns.

Check out our Data Science Bootcamp.

Project / Program Management

For every good team of coders, there is an even better manager. Being a good manager in the tech world means learning how to understand programmers and complement their needs, without actually having to know how to do anything they’re doing. Project managers are in charge of coordinating specific projects, which means coordinating the priorities and actions of a range of parties, from developers and engineers to marketers and salespeople.

If you’ve worked as a manager before, there’s nothing stopping you from working as a manager in an IT company. If you’re not sure about the quality of your management skills, there are a lot of ways and courses that will help you strengthen them.

If you have ever thought about a future-proof career in UX/UI Design or Data Science, have a look at our remote Bootcamps.