ten years ago (while in high school) I decided on a future in IT because of the travel


unfortunately somewhere along the way I went completely wrong as I've done zero business travel to date... in fact, I haven't done any IT to be honest and wonder what I can do to fix this disaster I find myself in


for undergrad I did a dual major in Information Systems and Criminal Justice from a state school in New Jersey... for my masters I went across the street to another NJ state school and attempted to get a Computer Science degree, but realized I'm not the biggest fan of programming and switched to MS in Information Systems.


while in college and for a few years after graduating I stuck with a small transportation company doing their online marketing and some minor computer work... it never paid well, and was hit hard with the economic crisis.



now I'm pretty much done with them, only working on minor projects from time to time but nothing significant and desperately need to get my life on track.... from those in the IT field, given my relative lack of experience in anything meaningful what are my chances in getting into a position that would allow me to travel?


its sad, friends or family members working as Analysts for larger firms ask me for advice on some projects they work on from time to time, but I can't land myself in a similar position because of "lack of experience"



where can I get this experience, what jobs should I be applying for? (entry-level or not)


help :)

Your question wasn't "should I choose my degree based on my desire to travel?" so I won't answer that :)

I'm a chemical engineer (BS from a large east coast university). First out of school, I took a job with Accenture (IT consulting) b/c I couldn't find a ChE job that I liked. I did it for about a year and traveled a lot, but didn't practice ANY engineering.

I now work for a chemical company as a Technical Service Engineer. I develop new formulations for foam insulation & then implement them at customer sites. I also am the first line of defense for customer's technical issues. On the whole, I probably travel 40% of the time, but it comes in spurts, depending upon the customer needs & seasonality. Sometimes I'll be out for 2 straight weeks, but then I might not have a work trip for 3 weeks.

With this degree & experience, I could easily move to a "Technical Sales" position where I'm out for 80% of the time. I also have a good friend from college with a ChE degree who is a corporate quality engineer for a chocolate company. She is based near Philly but travels about the same as I do. However, a majority of her travel is to the corp production facilities in Belgium. So it's possible to travel with a ChE degree.

i think you have to think about what kind of travel you want to do as well. domestic, international, planes, trains, cars, etc.

fair warning though from someone that wished for this type of life and got it, it is not as glamourous as everyone led me to believe and it really takes a toll on your personal life. business travel for me means getting in on average at 11pm to a strange city, driving a rental car around in the dark trying to find my hotel, forgetting where my car/room is, getting up 6 hours later to get ready and go to meetings, and repeat times 5 each week. hence why i'm "home" on a friday night.

There are tons of jobs that take you traveling. I've a got a degree in MIS, but strangely enough I do logistics exercise planning for the military, I suppose I'm a analyst of sorts.

Can be pretty rewarding and interesting at the right points in your life. Im at the point where I have two little ones, I am trying my hardest to dial back the traveling.

try going into transportation sales for ocean liner or freight forwarder.

I just watched that movie out of curiosity and if anything I thought that it would put people off taking jobs that require travel.

I always thought being a tour guide would suit me.

I am an attorney. For the last several years, I have worked at a law firm with negligible business travel, and never thought I would do much travel in this profession.

I just took a non-law firm position that will be basically 100% travel. I was not looking for a job that requires travel, but rather one that I would enjoy, and this one happens to involve a lot of travel.

So, to the OP, IMO generally you cannot predict whether a choice of education now will translate into a lot of travel years down the road (except for certain obvious choices like flight crew, foreign service, certain sales / consulting jobs, etc.). It is funny how life works out sometimes.

"hotel tester"
 

So I was in the same mindframe back in highschool, so I joined the Navy....lol
Nope dont regret it, I enjoyed traveling the world.

Although, now I am in a dead end job (contract i work under is coming up for re-bid) and have heard of such jobs as 'hotel testers' under the Fed Government's Transportation division. Anyone else heard of such? I currently work as a contractor for the fed gov, but haven't seen any postings on the gov websites tho?:confused:

looks pretty interesting @:-)

Hi TrueBlue~
I'm contracted by a company called ISYS Technologies under a Federal Goverment contract for IBM & General Dynamics, most of the IT's that travel are usually high up in the GS13 ranks for the government but the IBM'ers that i've talked to seem to travel a bit more, you might want to look at some of their job postings. Try doing a google search on IBM FDC that will get you looking in the right direction I believe... hope it helps

Thats what my parents said...but at the beginning when he was like i feel at home with the cheap sushi and when they are at security i like both of those things. Not getting stuck behind people though

yeah that would be interesting

Best advice you can take from all of this. Do what you enjoy.

Oh wow, didn't realize lawyers travel so much. Is that just you or is that normal? May I ask what your practice area is?

i specialise in arbitrations....

there are a few people in my firm that travel quite a bit but i think i have the most amount of work related travel at my firm....

i am trying to get out of it though....been doing it for 5 years now & its not something i would want to do much longer....