Hello, everyone! I’m hoping to get some advice on how to make a career in the technical field without any advanced technical background.
Just to show how little technical background I have: Website creation was more of a hobby than a path to a job (mostly because my family discouraged it). I’d spent most of my working adult life in retail and customer service. After quitting my job a couple of years ago, I used the extra free time to become better acquainted with my hobbies: website creation and art.
Rather than return to the drudgery of retail, I want to use these minor skills to build a career I actually love.
The minimal experience I have:
- I’ve done HTML and CSS coding since the mid-90s for personal websites.
- I occasionally use Javascript and PHP for snippets like showing the date for copyright purposes and including files so I don’t have to repeat code.
- I have a few self-hosted Wordpress sites. I’ve edited theme code, created child themes, created backups, and changed passwords through the MySQL database.
- As for art, it’s comics and illustrations, but I can adapt to most styles and art software.
Here are my main questions:
- Would it be easier to get into website maintenance or technical illustration? Which has a minimal barrier to entry?
- What kind of work or portfolio would I show for website maintenance? Would it matter if my portfolio consisted of my own websites?
- What do hiring managers look for in technical illustration portfolios? (How many pieces? Do they have to be very technical? What about help manual illustrations or step-by-step instructions?)
- Is it going to matter that most of my work history is retail? To be honest, it’s not something I’m very proud of, especially at my age.
- Since getting a job anymore is more about who you know, where I can find other website managers and technical illustrators?
Thank you for your input!