A new book to provide tech career insight

Christina Lovelock is a writer, speaker and coach with 20 years’ experience in organisational change, strategy development and digital leadership. Christina’s new book, Careers in tech, data and digital, has been written against a backdrop of rapidly evolving tech, to provide detail about the wide array of IT and tech careers now available in what has become and exciting, fast-paced and dynamic industry.

Why is now the right time to bring out a book focused on tech careers?

There is a lot of excitement around tech’s evolution at the moment, but there is also fear and misinformation. AI and emerging technologies are definitely going to change the nature of many roles in tech. It's therefore a great time to showcase the breadth of roles available and to encourage a wider range of people to consider a career in this industry. There is a massive digital skills shortage in the UK and globally, and it's costing our economy in the region of £12 billion, so now is the time to shine a spotlight on the exciting opportunities available.

What are your thoughts on the view that tech roles only involve coding?

It is such a narrow view because most people in tech do not write code and BCS research, alongside Coding Black Females, found that only about 11% of tech professionals have a computer science or tech related degree. But we don’t talk about that to anyone outside of the sector. We see a lot of initiatives about getting more young people, especially girls and young women, into coding and computer science. While that is fantastic, we also need to highlight the wide variety of roles available, not just coding. With the increase in low code and no code platforms and AI, there's going to be fewer careers in the future that are going to solely focus on coding.

How have the skills required to succeed in a tech career changed?

There is much more emphasis on communication and collaboration than there has ever been. There is a far greater need for stakeholder engagement and closer working between teams. Every person that I interviewed for case studies in the book really emphasised this point. And, because tech continues to involve, often extremely quickly, a focus on lifelong learning is now so important. The book looks at many different roles, and the progression routes, into the more senior tech roles. I look at tech leadership roles like CTO and CIO, and examine the pathways that people have taken to get there, providing some clarity that is often missing. Elsewhere I look at ‘squiggly careers’; those careers that allow people to try different roles and technologies, not follow a linear path. These roles illustrate the kind of flexibility and mobility that a tech career gives you that is not as common outside of technology.

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For those wishing to pursue a career in tech, what are your top three pieces of advice?

The first thing is to really understand your options. This relates to the routes into tech as well as the potential roles. There are many routes into tech, including apprenticeships, graduate schemes, direct entry boot camps... and there’s a lot of research to do in understanding all of those different entry points, different routes and different roles, and which might be the best match to your own skills and interests.

Secondly, build your network. This means going to events, talking to people, finding out what they do, what they enjoy about their work, and the types of challenges they face. The best way to gain access to some very exciting career opportunities is to grow a wide professional network. Get to know people who work in different organisations, and use that to gain visibility of great roles that exist in companies that you might never have even heard of.

My final piece of advice is to keep learning. So many people that I spoke to in writing the book stressed this. Tech doesn't stand still, so tech professionals can't afford to either. There are so many ways to learn by reading articles and books, watching videos, going to community events, and sometimes making an investment of your own time and money in your professional development. Having a positive attitude towards a growth mindset is key. It’s the commitment to lifelong learning that sets the best tech professionals apart from their peers.

How important are role models in today’s tech profession?

The concept of role models is really important and that's why I conducted so many case studies when writing this book, to show the broad range of people and the types of journeys that they've been on. Every career path in tech and every route into tech is quite different. The Fawcett society have published research about the gender gap and perceptions of tech from people outside the industry, which was really interesting. Young girls — who'd been exposed to some of the ‘you should really work in tech as a young woman’ type narrative — said that all they were hearing was ‘I'm going to be the only woman and there must be a reason why so few women work in tech’. By talking about the gender disparity we are actively reinforcing that situation, which I think is really sad. In the book I deliberately haven't gone into any of the statistics about gender or ethnicity or background. I've just said we need a diverse workforce in tech, and this is why. Hopefully anybody picking the book up will be able to see many positive role models that they can identify with, and that’s vitally important.

In closing, what do you want the book to be?

What I'd really like is for this book to be something that tech professionals buy for someone in their life, whether it's their child, friend or relation — anyone that they would like to help understand what a career in tech involves and what the opportunities are that it provides. I hope it encourages the next generation — the future tech workforce — by showing them the true breadth of roles in tech, and the realisation that many exciting opportunities are open to them.