The spotlight falls on IT consultants in this week’s career memes, the individuals who advise businesses and organisations on how to best use information technology to meet their objectives.
An IT consultant’s role may also involve integrating IT systems into a business or organisation: defining objectives for a project, designing and installing the IT systems, training staff to use those systems, and producing reports.
An IT consultant needs to have solid advisory, technical, business, management and communication skills in order to, for example, obtain information about business’ needs, to explain technical information to a non-technical audience, and to ultimately help businesses or organisations obtain a high return on their technology investments.
Technology companies or management consultancies may employ IT consultants, but IT consultants may also be self-employed. Their educational background will likely contain a focus on computer science, particularly in programming or software development.
In Ireland, an IT consultant can expect to earn an average annual salary of €41,354, according to PayScale.com.
