It was winter of 2022 and Carrie Persichitte, who had spent more than a decade teaching kindergarten, second grade and fourth grade, was considering a big change. She had just received notice that 16 schools in the district, including hers, were slated to close. Persichitte’s father had been a teacher, and her grandmother had been as well. Teaching was a job she loved, a career path she had been on since high school and an area in which she held a master’s degree. The news of the closures, though, after a hectic few years of teaching during the pandemic, had her ready for a new career.
Teaching was not Persichitte’s only lifelong interest. She was a computing fan dating back to her childhood, spent dialing into Prodigy or playing Sierra games on her father’s work PC. Fast-forward to March of 2020. With the whole world learning remotely, troubleshooting technology was suddenly a big part of leading a class. Persichitte, then teaching kindergarten, needed to be creative to get kids to explain the tech problems they were experiencing, and work with parents to fix them and keep the Zoom classroom running smoothly.
When she returned to teaching in person, she began helping less tech-savvy teachers troubleshoot basic computer issues so they did not have to wait for an IT ticket. By the time she was ready to move on from teaching, she realized tech troubleshooting was what she was really enjoying.
“I remember talking to my husband and I said, ‘If I could just help people with computers all day, that would be great,’” Persichitte said. “He said, ‘You know, there’s a job for that!’”
It seemed obvious. An IT career was calling to Persichitte. But with no formal experience in the field, she needed to figure out where to start.
“I have a friend who is a systems administrator,” Persichitte said. “I said, ‘OK, if I were to walk in and say I want to work for you, what would make me appealing as a candidate?’ [The answer was,] ‘You need to take the A+ certification.’”
CompTIA A+: Flipping the Switch
In December of 2022, Persichitte left her teaching role and by January she was preparing for her CompTIA A+ certification. Knowing her own learning style, she pursued the exam objectives with a clear, effective study strategy. She downloaded an online course and spent three or four hours a day at the library, reviewing it, taking notes, making flashcards and drilling herself on the material.
All the while, Persichitte was checking LinkedIn, researching jobs and sending out applications. She honed her resume and cover letter to be as appealing as possible to an IT hiring manager, leaning heavily on her ad hoc troubleshooting experience. She sent many out and did not hear back. She understood why. When it came down to it, she had a teacher’s resume. Having no experience in a tech job role seemed impossible to get around.
In March of 2023, she earned her certification on the first try. She added it to her resume and things changed. She began hearing back from potential employers almost immediately.
“It really was like flipping a switch,” Persichitte said.
A Worthwhile Chance for an Employer to Take
Persichitte landed an interview for a service desk technician role at Professional Case Management, a company that supports nurses working in areas like home care and drug trials. With a great deal of respect for the nursing profession, she was excited at the prospect of using her newly developed tech skills to support them and give back to the community.
In her interview, her CompTIA A+ certification jumped out. Her interviewer was impressed with her first-time pass and, while he said hiring her with no prior experience would be taking a chance, the certification, her enthusiasm and her ambition made it a chance worth taking.
In May, she started the job.
You Can Take a Teacher Out of the Classroom
The Professional Case Management office is a much different, certainly quieter, environment than the classrooms Persichitte was used to. Each day, depending on where she is in the rotation, she might be assessing tickets to assign them to the appropriate technician, diagnosing, troubleshooting and repairing laptops or getting them set up in Azure and deploying them. The CompTIA A+ objectives she studied, she finds, come in handy. She even keeps her study materials at the ready.
“I’ll look back at those notes to make sure that I’m able to troubleshoot or solve a problem or figure out how to update a system,” Persichitte said. “I’m still going back to those notes today.”
Persichitte also sometimes, naturally, finds herself encountering higher-level networking concepts that CompTIA A+ did not address. Even then, she finds her A+-level knowledge useful. The foundational certification gives her a framework to understand how the full network ecosystem fits together; it provides a preview of what is to come in the field, and how to learn it.
Whether she is in the office at her desk or working from her comfortable home office setup, her favorite part of the job is walking users through troubleshooting by phone. There, her lifetime of teaching skills kick in. Keeping interactions calm and productive, knowing the right questions to ask to extract necessary information and scrupulous documentation are as critical at the help desk as in the classroom, and these skills have been serving Persichitte well.
“I’ve been getting really good feedback, I’ve been learning a lot from my colleagues and I’ve been loving it,” Persichitte said.
A Tech-Focused Future
Persichitte does not know exactly what her future holds, and that is a place she is excited to be.
For now, she plans to learn more about networks and cybersecurity, and possibly pursue a CompTIA Network+ or CompTIA Security+ certification to build that same confidence CompTIA A+ has given her on the hardware basics. In the longer term, she might even combine her skills as an educator with her newly rediscovered love of technology, getting into tech training.
“Right now I am working on gathering more tools in my toolbox, and hopefully, eventually, I can help other people learn how to use those tools,” Persichitte said.
The last few, exciting months in her new career have represented a big change for Persichitte, but they have also kept bringing her back to something familiar. She has discovered ways that IT is not so far removed from teaching. For those interested in making a similar career change, she advises one starting point for bringing those two worlds together the way she has.
“I would tell them to look into the A+ exam,” Persichitte said. “It was work studying for it, but it was also fun … it didn’t seem like something I had to do, it was something I got to do. If you’re having that feeling, and you really love technology, I would say go for it.”
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Matthew Stern is a freelance writer based in Chicago who covers information technology and various other topics and industries.
