For people with a different basic education, there are other ways to switch to a career in IT, such as a trainee programme, a SIZ certificate (siz.ch) or a more complex and more in-depth IT apprenticeship for adults (ict-berufsbildung.ch). In addition, federal certificates, federal diplomas, higher technical college diplomas (HF), CAS, MAS, bachelor’s or master’s degrees can also be considered. As a general rule, the more in-depth and advanced your basic training is, the more professional opportunities there are for your future career.

The choice of a second qualification in the ICT field ideally builds on a person’s initial training and professional experience and represents a logical development of existing knowledge. For example, the federal certificate ‘Digital Collaboration Specialist’ was created for people who have commercial or business management knowledge and would like to develop their IT skills.

The following table shows examples of which secondary ICT training programmes build on different initial training or specific professional experience:

With the ‘ICT Career Changer’ tool (currently under development), career changers can clarify which tasks within IT best match their own interests and find out more about entry and development opportunities.