Essential IT Tools for Beginners to Learn in 2025

Why Learning the Right IT Tools Matters for Freshers in 2025

The IT sector is growing at an unprecedented pace, meaning that newcomers in 2025 will need to learn about the tools of the trade early in their careers. While degrees were once the indicator of future success in the industry, these days, employers are looking for candidates with tangible skills and experience using real-life IT tools to solve problems and contribute to team efforts right away. If you learn the correct IT Tools early in your career, you will have a greater level of confidence, be prepared for work, and stand out amongst the thousands of other first-year IT graduates whose only exposure to the industry comes from reading theory and definitions in textbooks.

When entering the IT industry in 2025, understanding the correct IT Tools for your role as a software developer, tester, analyst, cloud engineer, data scientist, or user interface (UI) designer will provide you with the tools you require to manage your workload, write code, test applications, work with data, and work collaboratively with others. Learning about the tools will also reduce the time invested during the interview process because you will already understand how to operate in a real-world workflow. Ultimately, tools will take the place of theoretical knowledge and will provide you with an effective and efficient way to elevate yourself as you pursue a long, successful IT career.

Programming Tools: VS Code, GitHub, Postman & Basic IDEs

Tools used for programming include VS Code, GitHub, Postman, and IDEs that have limited use. Newly hired IT Employees should familiarise themselves with the offered tools within a development workspace. The most commonly used Development tool by 2025 is Visual Studio Code (VS Code), which can be used with all programming languages, is equipped with thousands of extensions to help developers increase the efficiency of their work, provides accurate feedback on coding errors, provides guidance on how to find solutions to coding issues, and helps increase developer productivity in coding. Furthermore, VS Code is designed to be easily accessible to novice programmers.

Following VS Code are Git and GitHub—the two primary tools for managing source control.  Another powerful tool, Postman, assists developers and testers in working with application programming interfaces (APIs). Given that APIs provide communication between applications, the majority of apps created for IT positions use APIs.With the help of Postman, a developer can create and execute requests to any API with ease, making it easy for developers to perform all three of these operations in a single environment. Typically (but not always) new programmers learning to use basic programming languages (e.g., Java/C++/Python) will learn how to use IDEs such as IntelliJ, PyCharm, DevC++, and Eclipse to develop their first applications, as well as how to debug their applications. Using these IDEs, students gain an understanding of the industry's best practices and codes. In order to pursue a successful career in development, testing, or analysis, you will need to learn these tools very early in your career.

Tools and Technologies You Need to Work With to be Successful

By the end of 2025, companies will demand that their employees possess cloud skillsets to be valid for consideration for employment.Amazon Web Services (AWS), Google Cloud Platform (GCP), and Microsoft Azure are the leading three Cloud Services Providers(L3CSP). By understanding the key concepts of using each major CSP, you have an advantage over the other candidates that are competing with you for jobs.

Once you have a basic grasp of the three major CSPs, the next step is to learn more about some of the DevOps Tools. Today, more companies are now adopting DevOps Tools in order to improve the speed of creating and deploying products. Having hands-on experience with Commonly Used DevOps Tools like: Docker, Jenkins, and GitHub Actions (for automation), and Kubernetes (for container orchestration) will provide you with a considerable amount of leverage when applying for jobs against candidates who do not have this type of experience. 

The prevalence of productivity tools in Tech is expected to continue to increase through 2025. By then, all teams involved with a project will utilise productivity tools to organise and communicate with their team members during every stage of the project development process. Trello, Notion, Jira, and Slack are wonderful examples of productivity tools which support a project-focused work environment. Understanding how to use productivity tools will enhance your organisational capabilities, improve your productivity, and provide you with the ability to work well with other individuals. If you have no interest in becoming a DevOps engineer or Cloud Engineer, you will still benefit from becoming familiar with the various productivity tools and technologies which are currently on the market prior to 2025.

Essential Tools for Data, Test Automation and Cyber Security Professionals

As more companies rely on data to drive their business and function, IT professionals entering the industry will need some level of familiarity with data-related software applications. Users of software applications such as Microsoft Excel and Google Sheets (spreadsheet applications), SQL (Structured Query Language) and Python libraries (e.g., NumPy, Pandas, Matplotlib) and Tableau (a web-based application for visualising data), will often be required to be able to open, clean, analyse, and create reports to forecast future events based on past performance. In fact, even software engineers use SQL and Excel these days; this doesn't just apply to business analysts (BA's). Professionals entering a Software Testing career will also need to learn to use software testing tools such as Selenium, JUnit, TestNG, Postman, and JMeter, to name just a few. 

These tools help automate the process of writing, executing, and reporting on test cases for performance testing, API testing and bug tracking. The testing profession still continues to be one of the most popular and fastest-growing professions for individuals looking to begin their career in the IT profession. Having the knowledge of and experience with the right tools will definitely make it easier for you to succeed in this profession. Finally, for those interested in a Cyber Protection career, it is essential that you have a working knowledge of Wireshark, Burp Suite, Nmap, Metasploit, and basic tools of the Kali Linux operating system, since this type of software will help you understand how networks are structured, how they can be exposed to vulnerabilities, and how ethical hackers secure networks. Additionally, Cyber Protection is a high-paying career, and most employers want to hire someone with hands-on experience and not theoretical knowledge.

How to Get Hired Faster in 2025 With the Help of These Tools

The main benefit of learning IT tools is that it prepares you for employment. Companies want to hire entry-level positions with people who are prepared to be trained, but not perfect. They want someone who's familiar with various tools and has the ability to learn. If you know GitHub, VS Code, SQL, APIs, the cloud, and testing tools, you have at least half the skills required for entry-level IT jobs. You can display that you've built these tools by showing the projects you have created and uploaded to GitHub as well as using them during an interview when answering technical questions so that you understand how real systems operate. Furthermore, having these types of projects on GitHub, dashboards built with Tableau, and/or scripts written in Python usually give you an edge over your competition.  Recruiters can determine that you will be a good fit for their company based on the fact that you will have experience using industry-standard tools. In the competitive environment of 2025, knowing the basic IT tools gives you a significant advantage over your peers.