People have seen the students and graduates of computer science & information systems as the geeks of the world. We’re known for always sitting in front of our laptops and it is not usual for us to interact or socialize with people. But think about this for a moment and understand: what is the difference between us and others, and what can we achieve with our skills as it’s the global new language of the world?

The importance of an IT talent:

The world is evolving & being more dependent on technology today than it was just yesterday, eight out of twenty-five jobs are now in tech divisions. Coding is the most required skill in all fields and demand will only increase. Yet the majority of the world still has an image of people with these skills that reflect them as “geeks” or that they don’t “fit in any kind of job that doesn’t demand receiving instructions while sitting in front of a computer”.

So are they intimidated by us? Or do they feel that we only excel in this one thing?

When I was in university I kept contemplating this one question in my head: Is this the only skill that I want to acquire, in order to work and have a routine job? I realized soon that there is one choice we make. A choice of selecting the different spices that we add on top of our hard skill, that choice will shape how we live our lives. We choose whether we want to work a routine job or we want to be entrepreneurs and open our own startup. Yet, we still miss the rest of the skill based human interaction, leading teams, strategic thinking as they don’t teach us that in university. IT is all about logic, right?

I then had the choice to do something different, I joined AIESEC when I was 19 years old. I never thought that four years later, I would be leading the IT projects of the organization. I didn’t settle to be the average tech guy and fix laptops; I learned that my scope can and will be much bigger than that. I got to lead teams, use the logic that I had learned and use it in different applications of life. In strategic thinking, organization evolution, problem-solving and crisis management. Which all made me learn and evolve my thinking process.

Know your value

They teach us in universities about how to code, but is that enough? What is the real-life application of your skill that we have done? How useful was it to the world? Having a purpose and a direction is what keeps you moving forward and understanding what kind of life you want to have. Right now, there is a massive demand for IT talents, which puts you as a young person in the unique position to choose what you want to do and how. My drive was the adventures that I want to live and the places I want to go, I dropped out of university and when I started working in the global headquarters of AIESEC when I was 21 years old, here I was in a position to lead the global platforms of the organization. One faces many challenges during the development process to accommodate a platform that is used by cultures and mindsets from 126 countries & territories around the world.

What I have learned outside of university has taught me so much and made me realize that as demand increases, our value increases with it and what we have done really makes all the difference.

Make your own choices:

Don’t settle for a normal routine life, search for what makes you happy and gives you purpose and direction. For me, AIESEC has provided me with the purpose and direction while happiness also came from adventures, a life of traveling and living in different places. It’s not an easy road and you will find many challenges along the way, but if you have your own clarity of what you want to achieve, you have to strive for it until you make that happen.