Internet related jobs: Careers that can click for you; Has web surfing become vital to your well-being? Then find out if the internet is your superhighway to career success - Focus

Career World, Feb-March, 2002 by Janice Arenofsky

What would you do if someone offered you a job that paid $45,000 a year with $70,000 worth of stock options? Colvin Pitts, a computer science major at Stanford University, received that offer and accepted it. He dropped out of college and became a programmer.

A year later, Media3k, the dot-corn company Colvin worked for, failed. Unemployment became a grim reality. This past fall Colvin returned to school and plans to graduate in June.

It was a wise decision, according to Joanna Pineda, the founder and managing partner of Matrix, an Internet consulting company and a career expert in the industry. Pineda says anyone interested in an Internet-related career needs both a college degree and good experience to land that all-important first job.

Working with a Net

Since the Internet started taking off in the 1980s, a whole new vocabulary has been born. You hear words like E-mail and chat groups, and you hear job titles such as technical trainer, network engineer, database administrator, and user interface designer. Consider the position of information designer (sometimes called Web content developer). This person analyzes what the client needs, defines the site map, and comes up with the informational structure of the site. Then there's graphic designer, Web administrator, copywriter, search engine analyst, site publicist, advertising account manager, and so on, depending on the size of the organization. Large companies may need Web translators and consultants; smaller Web sites may hire people skilled in several areas-for example, animation, illustration, and audio.

All Internet companies and jobs have their own unique set of pros and cons. While employees get quick feedback from their Web skills, they also may have to put up with long hours in an unstructured environment But this is balanced by the advantage of flexibility. Take John Lerma. While studying at the Art Institute of Chicago in Illinois, he was able to keep his Internet job in Austin, Texas. "I telecommute," says Lerma. "I [can] work on Web pages from anywhere in the world...."

Whatmustlknow.com?

Working in a high-tech field may sound new and exciting, but it's really the same old thing: preparation. Before 2000 (the year that Internet start-ups started to crash), workers did not necessarily have technical expertise. Managers hired marketing experts, advertising professionals, public relations specialists, and even legal affairs experts. Nowadays, however, technically skilled people are receiving more job offers than those with just liberal arts, arts, or financial skills. Kim Hall, 28, graduated from the Atlanta College of Art and worked for four years at an ad agency doing graphic design. But then she got caught up in the dot-corn fever, and went to a small Web-design firm. She lost her job when it went out of business. "No one's calling me back" she says about her job-searching efforts. "I'm about to throw my computer out the window."

On the other hand, workers with two or more skills are in demand. Andy Warner was the director of an Atlanta, Georgia-based Internet consulting firm. Andy had experience shopping around for Internet access on behalf of many dot-comes. When his firm began running into financial problems, Warner quit but was quickly snapped up by another company. What made the difference? Warner's computer science degree and Internet experience impressed his new employer.

Dot-common Sense

At least 642 Internet companies have closed since January 2000, according to Webmergers.com, a clearinghouse for technology companies. Many dot-coms have folded or merged with other struggling dotcoms. Others have survived on a shoestring budget.

The bottom line? The era of "get-rich-fast" Internet jobs is probably over. Dot-corn employees will have to cope with less job security and smaller salaries than their counterparts at established companies. And as the industry itself shrinks and consolidates, fewer jobs will be available, especially for entry-level applicants. But, say experts, there is a silver lining to this dark cloud. More reasonable Internet salaries will make it easier for biotech and bioinfonetics startups to hire programmers, network engineers, and Web developers--people with strong hardware and software skills. "The main layoffs in the IT [information technology] sector were... mostly in marketing, advertising, and strategy," says Scott Shamp, director of the University of Georgia's New Media Institute. "Programmers skilled in ASP, ColdFusion, CGI Scripting, or Java servlets/Java server pages are still in demand."

Education is key to connecting with employers. And some colleges are helping out by adding Internet-specific courses to their curriculums. For instance, the University of California, Santa Cruz, offers Internet and World Wide Web courses, and Marquette University in Milwaukee, Wisconsin, and the New Jersey Institute of Technology offer Webmaster certificates. Some colleges and universities also offer graduate courses in E-commerce with their MBA programs.