The average salary for a networking consultant is £30,000 per annum before tax in the UK so you can see why more and more people are looking to train and become qualified network consultants.

However, it takes a little more than qualifications to get the job and there are a few personality traits that you might already have that put you in good stead for a long career in the IT networking industry.

Traits to consider when your training:

This week we’ll look into what we think are the 5 most important personality traits of successful networking technicians and how to become a network consultant.

Being patient is a priority:

Unfortunately, your day to day tasks as a consultant or engineer isn’t going to a breeze, so if you wanted to get yourself a high paying role for little work – you’re better off looking elsewhere already.

If you have ever tried to resolve your satellite signal problems to your TV at home then you’ll understand how frustrating things can get when its not quite going your way.

As a network consultant you’ll need to be able to keep your cool and work patiently. Not everything happens at once and sometimes a small period of waiting time is required to notice the improvements that you’re making to a networks structure.

Become a Network Consultant

Organising your time and tasks:

As a network consultant you’ll work with a real range of network sizes, with some being large corporate installations and others being local, small businesses.

However, all of them need to have the same level of professionalism and use a reliable networking infrastructure. It’s important that you’re able to manage your tasks in order of priority and ensure that the most important are completed first.

You’ll need to have the ability to identify key tasks and schedule them into your planning to ensure that any installation or maintenance visit is completed on time and provides minimum downtime for the clients.

Understanding what you’re working with:

90% of networking consultants will have a solid understanding of complex IT networks, security systems, installation types and general software. They will also have a solid understanding of CISCO and how their products and hardware combines to make networks work so efficiently.

If you’re unable to confidently work with CISCO products, and understand how they can work with each other and different forms of hardware – you’re going to struggle.

I’d suggest that you spend any spare time you have studying the CISCO range, getting to know what’s popular, how installations are completed and what most networks will include from their product range.

Networking Consultant Working

Keeping calm and not losing your temper:

We touched on this briefly before but being able to keep a cool head in an increasingly frustrating environment is going to go a long way in networking consultancy.

If you’re approaching a project and your already frustrated, you’ll tend to look for any reason to blame something else instead of trying to diagnose the fault at hand. This article by Harvard Business Review goes into great detail on the effects of anger and frustration during work.

Remember to keep a cool head, as you’ll be able to make better decisions, work smarter and diagnose faults a hell of a lot quicker.

Having the ability to work on stressful environments:

As we said before, one thing that consultancy isn’t, is easy. There will be occasions when you may think that you’re leading the high life, with everything going your way. However, one day a little project could quickly bring you crashing back down to reality.

Networking installations and surveying is predominantly a deadline driven industry. We’ve been fortunate enough to work on projects for some of the leading communications providers in the world and they all expect tasks and installations to be completed when we say they will be.

If you find stressful environments a tough place to operate – then you might want to reconsider your career choice.

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