Time to read: 3 minutes.

Hello! My name is Quintin, I was recently taken under the wing of MTS and was given the opportunity to learn all about the expansive world of IT. As a recuiter, I have had the privilage of interacting with IT professionals from entry to expert levels of experience. It has been an exciting and eye opening experience, but also an experience I didn't expect when I first started.

As someone who is brand new to the IT world, I entered with some preconceived notions and a lot of questions. Most importantly: What the heck is IT? What does that even stand for? (Mostly kidding.) A quick Google search will tell you that IT means Information Technology… that sounds pretty broad, not too helpful there. Maybe asking some different questions will do the trick… what about the people that actually work with IT: what do they do? How do they do it? Over the past few months, I have just barely scratched the surface of the answers to these questions. It all seemed so overwhelming to me when I first entered the field as a recruiter, heck it still is!

I study Mechanical Engineering and, living largely outside of the IT world, my perceptions of IT were… off to say the least. I had thought that IT was the anti-social guy in a roller chair, in the basement, with a spaghetti stain on his shirt, drinking Mountain Dew. Surprise surprise, I was dead wrong. Turns out that just like most fields, IT has a broad range of expertise, personalities, and faces. Sure there are the introverted tech types (and who’s to say there’s anything wrong with that?) but I have also seen extremely extroverted, bubbly personalities of all shapes and sizes. It all seems to come down to a shared passion, one of delving deep into systems and networks, and even a smidge of helping others. From the entry level IT jobs at help desks, to the brainiacs who reimage and restructure entire medical IT systems through firewalls, wrangling discreet IPs, and everything in between, I have met quite the variety of people in IT.

Another thing that interested me is how IT professionals conduct their work. The cool thing about IT, from my perspective, is the versatility. Many IT jobs can be done remotely, some people like that, others don’t, but the fact certainly remains. From the simplest help desk operator, to the network technicians and project managers, many choose to form their teams and operate from home, and it still works! Of course, some of the most amazing teams I have seen operate in intense medical environments with high-stakes and no room for failure. These people who I once thought were introverted all contribute to this well oiled machine, both from the office and at home, all presenting their expertise and doing their part.

I am still learning a great deal about IT and all the services it covers, but I am very excited to learn more about the profession and more importantly, the faces behind the profession which continue to impress me every day.