Yewande Odumosu an alumni of University of Lagos gave a talk on "Designing a Tech Career Roadmap". She has a background in engineering and has worked with prominent companies such as Google, Vodafone, Exxon Mobile. She has also founded a few startups.
Based off of her talk, I would be highlighting the major pathways to creating a tech career roadmap
Phase 1: Evaluating where you are now
This phase is basically a self-discovery stage. Here, you start to question yourself properly in order to understand your likes and dislikes. Your strengths and weaknesses? Odumosu provided some questions in her talk such as "what motivates me?", "What do I find myself doing in my spare time?", "what do people say I'm good at?", "what aspects of my work do I enjoy the most?". The honest answers to questions like this could provide a very solid base into your transition into Tech.
Phase 2: Understanding your strengths and skills
After answering your questions in the first phase properly, this stage helps with transferring those answers, which are basically skills of yours, into the equivalent tech role(s). For example, perhaps in the first phase, you discovered your like computers and you also like writing. With this combination, you can check out Technical writing to see if it's something you would enjoy. Or perhaps you're an artist, would you want to transfer your skills to a digital setting by trying out visual design?. Or you have excellent soft skils such as presentation skills, communication skills, negotiation skills etc, would you consider product management?. This phase is basically understanding your strengths and skills and seeing how you can transfer them into tech.
Phase 3: Transitioning into Tech
At this phase, you have already discovered which skills you can transfer into tech and you want to try it out. Odumosu mentioned that you could take online courses or try side projects. You basically try to focus on one thing and see how it works out for you. Basically trial and error. But you should also give yourself enough time to actually see that whatever you are doing may or may not work out. Jumping to different things perhaps due to salary or trends could be quite detrimental to your growth. At the beginning try sticking to being "A Jack of one trade".
Phase 4: Differentiating yourself and how to get noticed
So now, you've found out what you like. Your tech journey is on and about. Life is probably going good. But there are still other things you can do to improve. There's always room for improvement. You have to ensure you are not slacking nor are you caught lacking!. Odumosu highlighted the internal and external factors you can use to stand out. For the internal part, she mentioned that you should try having a great work ethic. People like hardworking people!. Be proactive, have a great attitude, show up, let people see you and you are available. For the external part, share your work. Literally people would not usually come to ask you what you have done. You have to show them. Odumosu also mentioned that you have to constantly update your LinkedIn. You probably learned something that's insignificant to you but perhaps people want someone who has that. The summary of this phase is "put yourself out there!".
Phase 5: Accelerating your tech journey
By this stage you have put in the effort and you are enjoying the results. Congratulations. But as you know, no man is an Island, You can not possibly know everything so whatever it is that you wanted to learn earlier but you put off because you did not want to be a "Jack of all trades", you can learn them now. Odumosu mentioned getting certificates from recognized online courses such as Udacity, Udemy, Harvard Uni edX, freecodecamp etc. She mentioned networking both physically online and offline, listening to podcasts. Get a coach or mentor if you can. This stage to me, seems like the reverse of the fourth phase. In the fourth phase, you are putting yourself out there. This stage is more of like accepting what people are putting out there.
Summary
The journey to tech is not necessarily going to be linear. There would be breaks and turns, new discoveries and possibly hardships. But ultimately, embrace the challenges that come your way and celebrate your successes!. This roadmap is also useful to myself as it may be useful to you. We have to persevere, remember the end goal and enjoy the beautiful process!.