The short version of how to get into IT with no experience: pick one entry-level role, learn the specific skills that role uses daily, prove those skills with a home lab you can talk about, and study for one third-party certification exam that hiring managers in that lane recognise. Most people who stall are not short on ability — they are short on direction, bouncing between tutorials without a target job in mind.
This article lays out the order to do it in. Nothing here needs a degree, and nothing here needs you to quit your current job first.
Pick the Lane Before You Pick the Course
“IT” is not one job. The four common entry doors look similar from outside and completely different once you are in them.
| Entry role | What you actually do all day | Skills that matter most |
|---|---|---|
| Help desk / service desk | Take tickets, reset accounts, fix printers, image laptops, escalate | Windows, Active Directory basics, ticketing systems, patience on the phone |
| Desktop / field support | Hands-on hardware, deployments, site visits, user onboarding | Hardware, imaging tools, Windows and macOS, documentation |
| NOC / network technician | Monitor alerts, patch cables, run first-line network triage | IP addressing, switches, DNS, DHCP, cabling, monitoring tools |
| Junior cloud / IT ops | Run tickets against cloud consoles, manage identities and VMs | Linux basics, one cloud platform, scripting, identity management |
Choose one. Help desk and desktop support are the widest doors because every organisation has them and turnover is constant. NOC roles suit people who like systems more than people. Junior cloud roles exist but usually expect some prior support experience or stronger self-taught depth.
Write the chosen role at the top of a page. Every decision after this gets measured against it.
Learn the Five Things Every Entry-Level Role Assumes
Regardless of lane, interviewers assume you already have these. Gaps here get found in the first ten minutes.
- Operating system fluency. Install Windows cleanly. Navigate it without a mouse where you can. Know where logs, services, users and network settings live. Do the same for one Linux distribution.
- How a network moves a packet. What an IP address is, what a subnet mask does, what DNS resolves, what DHCP hands out, what a default gateway is for.
- Identity and access. Users, groups, permissions, password policy, multi-factor authentication, and why least privilege matters.
- Troubleshooting as a method. Reproduce, isolate, change one variable, document. The method matters more than knowing the answer.
- Writing it down. Clear ticket notes and short runbooks. This is the skill that gets a junior promoted fastest and the one most candidates ignore.
If you can teach each of those five to a friend out loud, you are further along than most applicants.
Study for One Exam, Not Four
Certification prep gives your study a syllabus and an end date. Tech Skills Library does not issue certifications — the vendors do. CompTIA, Cisco, Microsoft, ISC2, AWS and the rest own their exams, set their own objectives and award their own credentials. What a prep course does is get you ready to sit one.
For a first exam, map it to your lane:
- Help desk or desktop support → CompTIA A+. It is two exams, Core 1 and Core 2, and it covers hardware, operating systems, networking basics, security basics and operational procedures. It is the broadest starting syllabus.
- Network technician or NOC → CompTIA Network+, or Cisco’s CCNA if you want the vendor-specific depth and are willing to work harder for it.
- Security-curious → still start with A+ or Network+. Security+ assumes networking knowledge you do not have yet.
- Cloud-curious → one foundational cloud exam from the platform your target employers actually run.
One exam. Book the date before you feel ready, because an unbooked exam becomes a six-month “someday”. Download the vendor’s official exam objectives PDF and treat it as your checklist — it is free, it is authoritative, and it tells you exactly what is in scope.
Build the Lab, Then Break It
Nobody hires an entry-level candidate for their certificate alone. They hire for evidence that you have done the thing.
A lab is cheap. A used mini PC or an old laptop with 16 GB of RAM runs a surprising amount. Free hypervisors let you run several virtual machines on one host.
Build this, in this order:
- A hypervisor host with a Windows Server VM and two Windows client VMs.
- Active Directory on the server. Create a domain, join both clients, make three users and two groups.
- DHCP and DNS on that server. Watch the clients pull addresses. Break DNS deliberately and watch what fails.
- A Linux VM. Set a static IP, install a web server, point a DNS record at it from your Windows server.
- A file share with permissions that let one group in and keep the other out. Test it from both clients.
- A ticketing tool or even a spreadsheet, and log every fix you make as if a user had reported it.
Then break things on purpose. Disable the gateway. Expire a password. Fill a disk. Fix each one and write down what you checked and in what order. Those write-ups become your interview answers, and the habit becomes your actual job.
Write a Resume That Describes Work, Not Intentions
Entry-level resumes fail by describing enthusiasm instead of output. Fix that with three moves.
- Name the lab as a project section. “Built a two-client Windows domain with AD, DHCP and DNS; documented twelve fault scenarios and their resolution steps.”
- Translate your current job. Retail, hospitality, warehouse and call-centre work all contain triage, documentation, stock systems and irate-customer handling. All of it is relevant to a service desk. Say so in the language of support.
- Mirror the posting. If the ad says “Windows 11, Intune, Entra ID, ticket queue”, those exact words belong in your resume where they are true.
No invented job titles and no inflated dates. Hiring managers in IT verify more than most.
Apply Like It Is a Pipeline
Treat the search as a process with stages, not a lottery.
- Build a list of 40 local or remote-friendly employers that have service desks — managed service providers, hospitals, councils, universities, logistics firms, credit unions.
- Apply to the entry roles, including the ones that look slightly above you.
- Follow up once, politely, after a week.
- Record every application, the date, and the outcome.
- Fix one weakness per rejection cycle rather than rewriting everything at once.
Managed service providers deserve special mention. The work is fast, broad and sometimes punishing, but a year at an MSP exposes you to more systems than three years in a single internal team. Many people use that as the on-ramp.
A Realistic 90-Day Sequence
- Days 1–15: choose the lane, download the exam objectives, build the hypervisor host.
- Days 16–45: work the objectives in order, build out AD, DHCP, DNS and the Linux VM, write up every fault you create.
- Days 46–60: book the exam, start practice questions, rewrite the resume around the lab.
- Days 61–75: sit the exam, build the employer list, start applying.
- Days 76–90: interview practice out loud, keep applying, keep labbing.
Outcomes vary by market and by person, and nobody can promise you a job in a fixed number of weeks. What this sequence does is make sure the time you spend produces something you can show.
Start With the Lane, Then the Syllabus
Getting into IT with no experience is an exercise in narrowing. One role, one exam, one lab, one resume written for that role. Breadth comes later, on someone else’s payroll.
When you are ready to put a syllabus behind the plan, start on the Tech Skills Library Course Catalog page and pick the single prep course that matches the lane you wrote at the top of your page.