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Guide

fIve-coMPonent careerS

Some years, even some decades, students can wait the entire system, with all five components. So, as a systems
until their last semester to think seriously about jobs. They analyst, you work with system users to determine what the
can pick a major, take the required classes, and prepare to organizational requirements are and then with technical
graduate, all the while assuming that job recruiters will be on people (and others) to help develop that system. You work
campus, loaded with good jobs, sometime during their senior as a cultural broker: translating the culture of technology
year. Alas, today is not one of those periods. into the culture of business, and the reverse.
In the current employment situation, you need to be pro- Fortunately for you, many interesting jobs are not cap-
active and aggressive in your job search. Think about it: You tured by the bureau’s data. Why fortunate? Because you
will be spending one-third of your waking life in your job. One can use what you’re learning in this course to identify and
of the best things you can do for yourself is to begin to think obtain jobs that other students may not think about or even
seriously about your career prospects now. You don’t want know about. If so, you’ve gained a competitive advantage.
to find yourself working as a barista after 4 years of business The chart on the next page provides a framework for
school, unless, of course, you’re planning on starting the thinking about careers in an unconventional way. As you can
next Starbucks. see, there are technical jobs in MIS but fascinating, challeng-
So, start here. Are you interested in a career in MIS? At ing, high-paying, nontechnical ones as well. Consider, for ex-
this point, you don’t know enough to know, but Figure 1-5 ample, professional sales. Suppose you have the job of selling
and Figure 1-6 should catch your
attention. With job growth like
that, in a category of jobs that is
net of outsourcing, you should
at least ponder whether there is
a career for you in IS and related
services.
But what does that mean?
If you go to the U.S. Bureau of
Labor Statistics, you can find
that there are more than a mil-
lion computer programmers in
the United States today and more
than 600,000 systems analysts.
You probably have some notion
of what a programmer does, but
you don’t yet know what a sys-
tems analyst is. Examine the five
components in Figure 1-7, how-
ever, and you can glean some
idea. Programmers work primar-
ily with the software component,
while systems analysts work with
Source: Tyler Olson/Fotolia

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