Lost in my career and not sure what my next move should be.

Based on what you've said you've got an undergrad degree and two years in IT. You're also in a grad program studying IT Management. That's a pretty good starting point if you're looking to eventually get into management or transition into another field. However, most places will ask that you have quite a bit more experience or at least demonstrated experience supervising or managing before putting you into any real position of power. Moving forward I'll assume your degree choice is indicative of where you want to end up in the future.

In your current environment, I'd say take any opportunity you get to mentor coworkers, work as a team lead in projects, or just try to take initiative in making positive internal changes that will boost your credibility to your current and potential employers. In addition to that, I'd say try to move up internally at each potential opportunity that presents itself, as this is where showing initiative and being a natural leader in your current environment will help you move up. Just don't go rogue and take initiative without getting approval, as you'll likely be moving down instead of up in that case. If you end of moving out of your current environment the initiative and lower level leadership experience will help you to move into other roles if you're able to use your current coworkers/manager as a reference, so it definitely won't hurt in the long run.

If management isn't really your thing or you still want to experience a technical role/get more experience before transitioning into management, it really is time to move up and specialize. The answer from HappyBearIT has some really good information in this area so you can read that answer if that's the path you're looking for.

However, to expand on this, If you want to move into management or a soft skills type of position and don't want much to do with the technical side of IT you can always look into sales of IT products/services, training for IT products/services, or just an external role that you have gained valuable skills for (maybe not even in IT?).

There's also project management/program management that will allow you to use your technical knowledge, management skills, and be in less of a technical role and more of a coordinator/manager type of role if that's something that interests you. It can also eventually lead to a position of management that you seem to be looking for based on your resume. For this look into things like PMI certification, Scrum certification, PRINCE2 certification, etc.

Other than that, you have to really take an introspective look and determine what field you want to be in? For some, they will be complacent and stay in the help desk role, others may transition into a more specialized position, others may move into a supervisory/management type of position, and others may completely leave IT. It comes down to doing what you're passionate about and knowing that you can truly do anything with your life and career. The first step is knowing what you want to become and where you want to end up.

Don't let the burn out get you down. We've all been there. It gets better!

/r/ITCareerQuestions Thread