What IT professionals really want

We all have that image of the IT Industry in our minds, comprising big brands, expansive offices in posh locations, and equally big names that are always dressed to impress and own swanky cars and mean machines. All these generalized perceptions take the IT industry further to also make it the ‘It’ Industry. But beyond these assumptions, what is it that an IT professional actually look for in a job? Taking from the popular adage ‘Do what you love, love what you do’, everybody has certain expectations that they would want their job to fulfil, to turn it into their ‘dream job’. Here we list three of such criteria that IT professionals set for an ideal job.

1. Keep changing or get changed.
   While every job involves some sort of repetition, IT has the advantage of providing unique solutions to tricky and sometimes even unusual problems. A huge share of the credit for constant innovation and change in today’s world goes to the IT sector. These features make it a dynamic sector like no other, also in turn making jobs interesting. Job seekers in the industry thus look for this element of constant change and challenges in their jobs, which will help them develop their skills and also discover their strengths.
2. Don’t just go through it, grow through it.
   An IT department is multi-faceted and there is never a dearth of newer and better things for one to explore, providing a lot of scope for growth and diversification. An IT firm usually has a variety of specialized areas such as management, programming, security, web development, networking etc. A person looking for a job in this industry will thus prefer a job wherein he can either move up to higher positions or explore and experience different areas of IT with regularity and ease, and with IT being one of the top two industries in the country today, that should hardly be a problem.
3. Set yourself free
   Although corporate culture varies from company to company, an IT professional is believed to have the attractive benefit of personal freedom, with flexible working hours and being able to work from home at times. The work environment in IT companies is also more relaxed and laidback than most other industries. Also, the nature of IT is such that training programs and workshops have to be constantly organized for employees and more often than not, they involve travelling and exploration. Thus, some amount of personal freedom and flexibility in an IT job is a given that no potential employee can overlook while considering a job.