I was basically where your friend is when I decided I didn’t want to be a waiter forever. Maybe something here will resonate with her?
For me it took two tries to get to something I really enjoyed, but went something like.
- drop out of school as an MIS major to have some fun (or because I’m a big idiot, your choice)
– wait a lot of tables, have a lot of fun
– decide I don’t want to be a waiter forever
– put “Customer Service Superstar” on the top of my resume and start applying to help desk positions for anything I thought I could learn quickly
– get a job at a small software company that wasn’t going to find people that already knew their particular set of software anyway
– support that software on the phone all day, figure out what it means to work in that sort of setting, ask tons of questions during my “off” hours, sign up for anything they’ll let me do, get promoted to actual technical staff (quality assurance)
– decide QA wasn’t my thing and go back to waiting tables Friday – Sunday while I took any freelance web development gigs I could find M-Th and taught myself (not that hard to get started)
– get better until I have more options while paying the bills with as many shifts as I could cram in around the edges.
– rinse and repeat with “get better until I have more options”... if you stop getting better things get hard, it’s easier just to keep learning
I would imagine Starbucks is a little like waiting tables, she has other time if she decides to do something else, and it’s flexible enough to accommodate, so first thing would be to identify what portion of IT she really either finds enjoyable or has an aptitude for and make that her center, then try for to get her feet wet with anything that touches that while getting better.
Tips would be
– build a “portfolio” proving your work… depending on what she chooses that could be custom boxes and servers of her own, a github account (code samples), references, a blog, or her own product/game/service/etc…
– Small companies tend to care less about degrees and more about skills, below a certain size they don’t have an HR/hiring gatekeeper that just checks credentials for applicants without understanding the requirements
– an awesome portfolio trumps any set of hiring requirements
– many IT communities are absolutely awesome about sharing knowledge, once you learn the basics people will share the rest for free all day long
I wish her luck.