I come from a background where I studied Engineering and went to work with IT firms after graduation. I realized that there were a few stereotypes associated with this profile and I wanted to pen down a few suggestions for fellow IT applicants to break out of the mould.
1. Don’t feel burdened by your background
First and foremost, don’t be apologetic about your background. I have seen many candidates get discouraged from applying to good schools where they fit well because people give them poor advice and put them down for coming from an IT background.
Don’t listen to such advice.
If you present your candidature effectively and have the necessary numbers to back up your credentials, you are on an even path to be judged based on merit with your competitors. Whether you are from an IT or non-IT background, the principles of applications remain the same.
Sure, the IT applicant pool is more competitive than most, but look upon it as a badge of honour. If a single pool consistently sets the bar high by having (lets say) excellent international experiences, top GMAT scores and key set of transferable skills, doesn’t that mean there is something right happening in the training and development of people in this line of work?
Key takeaway: Be confident of your background.
2. Identify your strengths
There are a few key areas where engineers and especially IT engineers have an edge. In my experience, some of these include:
- Analytical skills
- International exposure
- Good teamwork and communication skills
- Crisis management
I worked in production support for banks for a while and whenever there was a problem, we had to quickly go over thousands of transactions over many days to identify the problem areas and generate reports for managers. In other instances, we had to identify the behaviour of the system in the front-end, code and database and optimize it to eke out an extra second worth of speed improvement for the overall customer experience.
On the face of it, this doesn’t seem much, but if you consider the mental calculations, prioritization skills and the slicing and dicing of large volumes of data that go on in the background, you know you actually have some neat skills that can be used in a business environment.
As outlined in Thomas Friedman’s book “The World is Flat”, the global economy has become more mixed and businesses in one part of the world work closely with technical service providers in another part of the world. Consequently, there is a lot of international travel for IT engineers (sometimes to the point where you say: “Please, no more.”)
Its really nice to see a new country, enjoy the cafes and experience the culture amongst other things, but what IT guys don’t realize is that not too many people get this opportunity to engage with other cultures and get comfortable in an international work setting.
In my job, we had lengthy meetings between Indians, Chinese and Japanese team members where no one knew the other language well enough. It was di rigeur to send email communications in multiple languages and it was interesting to see different attitudes towards the same task from different cultures.
Observe, internalize, participate and present your international story. Highlight your work skills, demonstrate your cultural engagements, jot down your travel experiences. Stand out.
Anyone who has worked in IT knows we have a guideline for everything from email etiquette to dossiers telling us about a particular country and how to engage appropriately with the client. I’v already mentioned generating reports for managers (I learnt a lot of MS Excel doing this) including analysis and monthly billing reports.
The next time you get into a meeting room with 15 other team members and the boss, observe how the discussion is moved around. What are the cues used by your boss, team members and yourself? Which ideas are presented effectively and which get a buy-in from the boss? Learn and apply. Repeat.
Another scenario is where you spend the better part of the day on the phone with the client from the Hong Kong trading desk asking why a trade won’t go through (sample scenario). You are busy firing SQL queries and trying to identify the root cause of the problem. There are differences in language, intonation, pronounciation but you manage to understand what he is saying in a functional perspective, get the relevant technical data and translate it in terms of the system functionality for him. That is effective communication skill.
I still have a copy of a mail from my former site manager asking what kind of releases we make and saying we all could have been out of a job for a HUGE mistake that I made during a routine release.
Yup. Things go wrong. And the consequences can be terrible, especially if you work in a place where big money changes hands.
In my case, I had 3 Japanese clients, 2 managers (my boss and my boss’ boss) and 2 team members gathered behind me along with 1 more team member on the phone as I sweated it through my Excel sheets. That isn’t the time to feel bad or feel guilty. You just get the job done and worry about the consequences later. You maintain an even tone, calmly avoid spitting out every SQL query you used and report only relevant information for your boss (and boss’ boss) to use in their accident report meeting.
Once the inquest is completed, you go down, have a coffee and come back and prepare for your next release.
Sure, the scenarios might vary, but we have all been there. What key skills did we demonstrate and which of them worked effectively? Understanding this and presenting your story will help the adcoms understand how you will behave in a team effort.
Key takeaway: Understand the strengths associated with being an IT engineer. Play them up and present interesting stories to back up your statements.
Also, there will be many more strengths beyond just the few I have listed. Internalize, identify your unique strengths and present them.
—
This concludes Part I. The next part will include perceived weaknesses and areas of improvement.
