The choice of technology is just as important as the choice of a career line or job profile. Nowadays there are choices of multiple technologies in a most of career fields. Different technologies accomplish more or less same things and have similar underlying concepts but have different implementations. Career advice can help you in choosing the technology. There are several factors that would influence your choice of technology that is right for you. Career advice can be effective in choosing the technology by providing you information about these factors. Let us take a closer look at the various factors that can influence the choice of technology and / or skills that are right for you.
- Job Market condition
The market condition or the demand of people with knowledge of a particular technology or skill is the most important factor that would affect your choice of technology. After all the whole point of career advice is to help you get a job and there is no point in choosing a technology if there is no demand for it in the job market.
- Future prospects
Some technologies are time tested and likelihood that they'll stay in demand is greater. The future prospect of a technology should be an important factor in your choice of right technology. Most of the technologies associated with various career fields are always evolving. This can be in the form of minor changes in existing technologies for example newer versions of softwares or programming languages in software field or in for of some technologies turning obsolete. Even if a particular technology does not turn obsolete, its use in industry and thereby demand in job market may vary a lot. Career advice can give you some idea of which technology is more future proof.
- Job Criteria
Most of jobs have some basic qualification criteria that you must fulfill before applying for them. Career advice can provide you with information about the criteria associated with typical jobs involving a particular technology. While choosing a particular technology, most of the jobs associated with have criteria that you do not fulfill can be an exercise in frustration.
- Interest and Inclination
You own interest and inclination should be taken in to account when you are choosing a particular technology. This part would likely depend on you and hence any career advice would not be of much help to you in this. Still some career advices can help you understand the particulars of a specific technology. This way you can make a better informed choice.
- Complexity
Some technologies are more complex than others. For example in software industry a higher level programming language is typically harder to learn fully, but require fewer lines of code to write a program compared to a low level language. In a low level language the number of commands or keywords is less, but a similar program would involve more lines of codes and would be more complex. The complexity of a technology will affect how long it'll take to learn it. Career advice can provide some help with understanding the apparent and actual complexities of the technologies involved and thereby help you in taking an informed decision.
- Major Employers
You should know about the major employers or type of employers that hire people with knowledge of a certain technology before choosing a technology. Career advice can help by providing this information and giving you an idea of the companies that you can apply for during your job search.
Choosing a technology is an important decision. Learning to work with a different but related technology, though not so difficult as when you start from scratch, is time taking nonetheless. You also lose the most important factor of experience, as your experience with the previous technology would be of much reduced importance and relevance. It is almost certain that you would have to change technologies or learn new technologies at one time or another in your career, but choosing the right one in the beginning can give your career a good start.
