How to get into tech with no experience: 12 tips and tricks

So, you’re looking to start a career in technology. That’s great! There’s lots of reasons to enter the field: great earning potential, high demand, and a field that’s always relevant. However, you’re worried about how you’re going to get in, either as a recent graduate or someone who’s never worked in a technical role before, and you’re wondering if it’s even possible. The good news? It absolutely is. 

In this article, I’ll share actionable steps to kickstart your tech career, along with stories from people who have successfully made the journey. 

In tech, there are a wide range of industry-recognized certifications you can get in a particular field—for example, cloud computing or cybersecurity—and they range from beginner to expert, so you can jump in at your skill level. They are, by far, the easiest way and most straightforward way of breaking into tech.

The biggest benefit, however, is by taking a certification prep course, you actually pick up the fundamental knowledge you need to succeed at the job you’re after. You also get a taste of the tech field you’re interested in, which is great for planning your career journey. 

If you find studying for a cloud cert boring, for instance, but you liked the parts where you were learning about VPC networking*, then you can study for a networking-related certification. This is called “following the rabbit hole of interest,” and is a great method for finding out where your true passion lies.

* But if you actually find network ACLs interesting, then I’m sorry—we can’t be friends.

Tech certifications are not the same as bachelor’s degrees

Tech certifications are not the same as tertiary degrees. They only take a short amount of time to study for—a couple of weeks at most—and won’t put you in crippling debt. 

You can also multitask while studying a tech cert

Certification prep courses are usually video-based, meaning you can stream them. A lot of people just plug in a set of headphones to their phone and get to learning. Me? I personally study with a tablet on the treadmill at the gym, so I can watch the course and work both my brain and leg muscles.

A great success story of getting into tech using certification is Winston Smith's. He went from phone sales to running a cloud architecture business by studying for a range of cloud industry certifications, which really shows how powerful they can be.

For advice on how to go about getting certifications, I’d recommend reading this story about Sharōn Prince, who managed to take all the AWS certifications in under three months (which is pretty miraculous). He studied for certifications while working at the same time, and he has some great advice on how to go about the process.

There’s a saying in tech: “Certificates get you interviews, knowledge gets you the job.” Specifically, you’ll want hands-on experience to cite in your interview, and you may be asked to perform a practical assessment to prove it. This is very common at larger firms like Google, Facebook, Amazon, and Microsoft. Even startups and smaller firms do this to ensure candidates have the necessary technical skills.

“But Adam, how do I get hands-on experience without actually having the job?” Sounds like a catch-22, right? 

Thankfully, you can get this experience in other ways before you even step foot into the interview. You can get it from online training platforms, coding bootcamps, open-source contributions, creating your own projects, or certain industry services tailored to your tech field (E.g. Kaggle competitions, TryHackme). If you’re already employed in a non-tech role, try to join cross-functional projects with tech teams.

Again, like certifications, working on a project ticks quite a few boxes. It gives you something to add to your portfolio, a taste test of what it’s like to work in that IT career path, and prepares you to do a practical assessment.

Look up a job description for your desired position and make a list of all the skills the job requires. Then, go about studying these. You can sign up to specialized tech learning platforms, watch video tutorials, or engage in bootcamps. If you’re okay with long bouts of reading, you could pick up an educational book, read tech documentation, or study official guides.

Another way to go about this is to find out the top tech skills employers are currently looking for and learn those. A good place to start is this article: “The 10 most in-demand tech skills in 2024 (with skill tests).”

As an introvert, I hate hearing the saying “It’s not what you know, it’s who you know.” Unfortunately, it’s absolutely true. There’s not a manager I know that likes hiring new employees, and fresh faces are always a gamble. They prefer to pick candidates who are a known quantity, even if their “on paper” skills don’t perfectly match.

Why? Soft skills, that’s why. Soft skills—like your ability to communicate, problem solve, time manage, or generally just be an awesome person to be around—matter more in tech than you think (I’ve written this whole article on why). You can refine hard skills like programming on the job, but soft skills are more difficult to learn quickly.

To network, get in contact with IT professionals in your organization or community groups. Attend industry conferences and meetups. Literally ask your friends and family if they know of any opportunities or IT professionals you can connect with. If you’re at a coding bootcamp, get people’s contact details, and remember to reach out to them after the event is over.

And yes, all of these suck if you’re an introvert. But these methods work!

The easiest way to find out how to get into tech is to ask someone who’s already well established in the area you’re interested in. To find a mentor, you’ll need to lean on those networking skills again and identify potential mentors within your organization or industry. You can ask around within your own network or perform some outreach on LinkedIn or at community events. If you’re attending a coding bootcamp, ask one of the instructors if they’ll be your mentor after the event.

Be bold, the worst someone can say is “no!” The odds are they won’t, as most people are flattered when asked to be a mentor. Mentors are not only invaluable for giving you guidance, they can also introduce you to their network. And they’re  excellent for helping you refine your resume and do mock interviews.

If you want proof, look no further than Allen-Michael Grobelny, Principal Developer Advocate for GameDay at AWS. He actually began his career in education and learned about the tech industry through a friend who was a front-end developer. That friend let him know exactly how he could get his foot in the door.

There are some specialized courses designed specifically to help you land a job in tech. Pluralsight offers a learning pathway on “Starting a Career in Technology” with courses by some of my favorite authors like Amber Israelsen and Maaike van Putten (both great value). To access it, you can sign up for a free 10-day trial, but the whole path only takes 15 hours. That’s more than enough time to dive in and out with no commitment.

Also, if you’re worried about your soft skills being sub-par, there are actually online tech courses that can help you out here. Two learning paths worth checking out are “Communication Skills for Technologists” and “Developing Soft Skills for Today’s Workplace.” These can help you give the right answer in interviews when you’re asked situational questions, like how to handle difficult situations in an IT environment or problem-solve effectively as part of a team.

It's a lot easier to get into tech within an organization you’re already a part of than in an entirely new one. There’s already people who can vouch for you, and you can walk right up to the people you want to hire you and start a conversation—or at the very least, schedule a video call. 

If you let them know you’re interested in changing careers, they’ll keep you in mind the next time there’s a hiring round or let you know the skills you need to get. It’s infinitely easier than trying to do this outside of an organization. On top of this, it shows your potential future boss that you’re invested in your own career growth. “Continuous improvement” is a highly sought after soft skill in tech.

If you’re a student, ask around in your university, which will no doubt have an IT team as well as an tech internship placement program.

A handy, non-conventional way to use generative AI tools like ChatGPT is for your own learning (see this handy guide by Amber Israelsen). You can get it to come up with flashcards to not only refine your skills in the field of tech you want to enter, but engage in interview prep.

Here are some prompts you might want to try out.

Prompt 1: Testing your skills

Prompt 2: Reviewing your resume

Prompt 3: Mock interview

For more neat techniques like this, check out Axel Sirota’s guide: “Prompt engineering guide: Techniques, examples, and use cases.”

Contract roles are common in the tech industry, because not everyone can afford to have full-time tech staff on the payroll. This is a great opportunity to get your foot in the door of your dream company and show them you fit their culture. Once again, it also puts you in their mind when it comes to future permanent positions—after all, why not just hire the person you’re already contracting?

If you’re not quite experienced enough to get paid work, you’d be surprised how many community groups, sporting clubs, and side hustles where people need someone who knows a little bit of tech, but they can’t afford someone who’s an established IT worker. I’ve lost track of the number of people who have asked me to set up a website for them or build them an app. 

These are your springboard to fill your resume with valuable experience and get word out that you’re the go-to person to solve these problems, which can potentially lead to a paid job in tech. You can also start eventually charging a fee for this freelance work (and if you want, you can actually make an entire IT career out of this).

Even though this article is titled “How to get into tech with no experience,” the truth is nobody ever has no experience. Chances are you’ve had some sort of job, performed some volunteer work, or even had a hobby that involved socializing. It might not seem so, but for getting into IT, all of this is relevant experience!

Look up your ideal role on a jobs listing site. Take note of all the skills, both technical and non-technical. Ask yourself what existing skills you have that are transferable to this role, and note these down as answers you can use to sell yourself on a resume or during an interview.

Here are some examples:

• If you are going for a cybersecurity role and you worked at a police station, you can talk about how your prior experience at incident response is transferable.

• If you worked in administration and you want to become a cloud architect, you could talk about how your ability to work with a wide range of people from different departments is useful for getting buy-in for large projects.

• If you work in accounting and want to get into data science, you could talk about how you’re great at crunching numbers, and demystifying technical topics for people outside of your field (e.g. management).

The combinations are endless. Your best bet is to get a list of soft skills, get the job description for the desired role, and start thinking about what skills you already have that fit the bill. Your past experience is a gold mine, not a hindrance.

One example of someone leveraging their transferable skills is Caitlyn Carpenter, who made the transition from teacher to data analyst. She described the shift as “seamless,” as she used data almost daily in her career when it came to analyzing student grades.

Standing out with recruiters and securing interviews is obviously a crucial part of getting a job. Learning how to analyze tech job descriptions, identify and use the right tech keywords, and present yourself properly are all essential for landing that eventual IT position.

I’d highly recommend reading this article: “8 tech interview and resume tips to stand out and get hired.” In it, tech professionals and recruiters give their advice on how to refine your pitch so you can land your dream job.

Another thing you can do is keyword stack your LinkedIn profile to attract the attention of a tech recruiter. Recruiters are constantly looking for people to fill IT positions, and having those magic words like “jQuery”, “MongoDB, “Azure” or “C#” can make them come to you with opportunities.

Lastly, you can enroll in a computer science degree, information technology, or a related degree program. I’ve put this right at the end, because you’ll want to explore every other possibility first. 

Why? While tech degrees can be beneficial, it’s often not time-efficient or cost-effective to get one just to get your start in tech. In fact, more than 25% of IT professionals don’t have college degrees, and many entry-level tech jobs don’t require one.

Here’s my personal story. Even though I already had a degree, I thought I needed one in tech, since I was worried I wouldn’t know the fundamentals if I didn’t do a “proper” tertiary course. Four years later, I started working at Pluralsight and realized I could have learned everything I picked up at university by just doing a few weeks of training courses for the price of a meal out, instead of several thousand dollars of student debt. 

I’m not going to lie; it stung. A lot.

My personal advice? Go for a tech degree if you’re fresh out of high school, you want the university experience, and you’re fine with paying for it. Otherwise, if you’re an established professional, leverage your transferable skills and take industry certifications instead. Don’t go back and burn three to four years if you can help it. 

Bookmark this article, and give these techniques a try! I doubt you’ll need to use all of them, as there’s a high demand for tech professionals, and we’re only becoming more reliant on technology, not less.

The obvious place to start would be to jump into Pluralsight’s “Starting a Career in Technology” path, and watch or listen to it while you’re going about your day. As mentioned before, there’s a 10-day free trial to use the platform, but the path only takes 15 hours, so it’s zero commitment. 

You can also spend the remaining nine days checking out foundational courses in the tech area you’re interested in, or perhaps doing a cert preparation course. Most of the entry-level prep courses can be completed in a few days if you binge it, or a week if you spread it out. 

I look forward to when you land that awesome new job in tech! And yes, it’s a when, not an if. You’ve got this!