Good article Brandie. I would add to this that a good place to start "at the bottom" would be at a nonprofit or small government agency. In many cases, these types of organizations are not able to attract highly experienced IT workers due to salary constraints of their limited budgets, so it can be a good place for a person with limited experience to get his/her foot in the proverbial door. My career as a database dev started this way - I worked for a nonprofit as a systems technician and volunteered to administer the lone SQL Server in the place. One SQL Server became two, two became four, and suddenly I'm a DBA.