If you are trying to break into tech but have no idea where to start, this guide is for you. While everyone’s path is unique, the following domains and resources are designed to help you land your first role in IT.

Potential Job Titles

In IT, job titles are often loose and vary by company. However, after mastering these skills, you will be qualified for roles such as:

1. The Master Skill: Troubleshooting

Skills are everything, and troubleshooting is the most non-negotiable one.

What is it? Simply put, it’s figuring out what’s wrong when something isn’t working. It is a systematic approach to identifying, localizing, and correcting faults in a system—whether that's a software bug, a broken printer, or a network glitch.

How to get good: You need to fix broken things. To practice, research the 10 most common IT support tickets and learn the workflow for each:

  1. VPN & Remote Connectivity
  2. Printer Malfunctions (Network & Local)
  3. Software Installation & Update Failures
  4. Performance Issues (System slowness/freezing)
  5. Email/Outlook (Sync errors and search issues)
  6. Audio/Visual (Teams, Zoom, and hardware toggles)
  7. Hardware Failures (Keyboards, monitors, docking stations)
  8. Security Alerts (Phishing and malware remediation)