Getting into IT as a career
 

I wondered what sort of ideas I coudl get off some of the people on here - I have been a teacher for 10 years, and have just about had enough of the paperwork. Holidays are great, but bringing loads of paperwork home on a daily basis isn't.
Anyway, I contacted advent who talked about setting me on a network maintainance type course, which would eventually quality me for network overseeing. At a cost of about £5k.
I know of a lad locally who does network maintenance for the nhs on reasonable money, and he apparently only did a college course.
Any suggestions? The plus/downside is that I am in Cornwall, so guess I may have to relocate to somewhere else with more possibilities.....

tbh, at the moment, Education is a bl00dy sight more secure than most other industries.

Depends on how risky you want your life to be......

The other option is to move into IT, but in Education (FE, or HE)......best of both worlds..... plus no taking work home ;)

Dan

Ummm.. It's not as rosy as a career as people make out. Depends on what type of field you want to work in. You mentioned Networking as an example, depends if you want to be a technician or a support person. Something to take into account, not all IT jobs are 9-5, and may mean depending on the company you work for there maybe a clause that says you work overtime, on-call etc.. Can mean late nights/early mornings, weekends. If you like that sort of things then it's something to consider. At the moment the company I work for has just shed 480 staff from the I.T side of things, and BT are also doing the same, and they are used by quite a few companies for Network set-ups and support. Sorry to give you a downer, but that is how things are at the moment. Maybe worth doing a bit of research on what takes your fancy and then look into getting some training in that field. :thumb:

in my opinion those IT training courses that, no doubt gurantee you a job in IT at the of the course are little different from the "inside track" property courses

I know this is a bit of a broad brush view, but every time a friend has wanted to get into IT, these courses seem to crop up, and you look into them they don’t offer tha much for the money

In terms of qualifications Microsoft do some called MCSE (Microsoft Certified System Engineer), as we speak to be replaced by MCITP (Microsoft Certified IT professional)

Cisco’s exams are well respected in the industry and concentrate more on the networking side.

Nothing beats experience really – which does put people coming to IT late as a disadvantage

I have had a similar conversation with a friend recently – my advice to him was to do something call the A+ exams (get the study material of amazon – search the internet for other exam resources ) BTW the WWW is 50% porn 30% IT technical articles and 19% IT exam related – the rest takes up the other 1%

Then get an account with Prometric Services: Testing and Assessment and book the exams

Obviously get some PC’s and networking kit – but this is much easier now with virtualization – you can build complicated IT/Networking scenarios on a single PC

http://www.microsoft.com/windows/pro...c/default.mspx

good luck – if you are good a IT you will always find work

As has been said, if you think paperwork in the evening is a drag you need to think long and hard what it is like in a commercial environment. You may get better pay, but you will have to certainly work for it. 9-5 jobs are becoming a rarity in the service industry and that is what ICT is.

I have been in the ICT Industry for nearly 19 years and it gets worse every year. The current climate has compounded that. It can be a very stressful environment, if you want to earn good money.

Personally I would suggest anyone that thinks about changing jobs, thinks long and hard in the current climate. Maybe you should look at options but ride the wave for the next 12 months, to see what happens in the market.

Sorry to say this but you will be swotting up on material at home just to keep up to date with new technology and also if you intend to keep your qualifications up to date. I have spent spent the last 6-8 months completing my Cisco CCNP mostly in my own time late at night, got a little one to look after too.

Just to add, we get alot of people coming into IT after taking very expensive training courses, often leaving jobs to get a career in IT. They tend to get paid around £15k for a years service at our place, some stay on and make it others leave to find other jobs when they can't survive on this money.

Become very good at something not many people can do.

Cheers for all the replies! I can see pros and cons of all of it, still frustrating in a job where the paperwork is so mammoth. I appreciate that initially I will need to use my own time to learn the ropes to gain qualifications, but would like to think that I wouldn't need to bring my work home with me much from that point onwards! Will have a think......

I'm in IT (I write software for a living). I frequently bring work home, and have been known to work 16+ hour days (including weekends without overtime pay). Our support folks often have to work shifts to ensure constant 24x7 coverage. It's certainly not a "cushty" job, and with IT job market being saturated with reduancies recently, it's not very secure either...

Good DBAs get very good money and there are always contracts for them.

What is a dba?

Database administrator I think

Yep, that's right :). If you know your stuff then you can earn big $$ apparently. Not sure how well you'd get on coming into it with no experience though...

it's a pretty tricky game to get into these days.

As Iain says, if you know your stuff - but there are so many 10+ year devs with vb/c#/c++/java who do know their stuff and, considering the climate, are probably available at much lower rates than 2 years ago.

just having a skill is not enough.
as a c++ dev, i'd expect 20-35K pa
a c++ dev with financial asset management knowledge should get you 35-45K
a c++ dev with investment (derivatives) knowledge 45K+
if that derivatives knowledge is OTC, then £70K

as well as an IT skill, work out a niche area where that IT skill really works for you.

5 years ago, the DBA working behind me was doing 60+ hours a week, but at £120ph. This was in a london based Hedge Fund.

More and more support jobs are going overseas now as well, company I used to work for moved huge number of jobs (not people) to Poland, Bahrain, Dubai, Hungary, Spain and of course India.

Support used to be a route in to interesting things but not anymore.

You might want to look at things like service delivery (ITIL certification) or project management (PRINCE certification) as there is not as much of a technical requirement and the skills learnt can be used in a much wider marketplace.
IMHO, someone from a non IT background will have more chance of getting an "IT" job with Prince and ITIL than with a stack of bootcamp technical exams.

Companies are looking to save money but they still need project and service people on the ground, junior PM will open way more doors than junior support (if you could even get one because they can get about 7 experienced Indians for the cost of one you with no experience).

I am a PRINCE 2 qualified Programme Manager. The more and more people you speak to in the industry the more and more people will admit that the PRINCE 2 Practitioners qualification does not always make for a good Project or Programme Manager. There is more to managing projects than knowing a methodology inside and out.

ITIL may sound all well and good (and I am certificated in this as well), but to implement ITIL you need resources, which require money. What is the key issue at the moment..... contraints on spending. I will let you decide which way that *may* go in these uncertain times and what area's may get dropped if push comes to shove. Saying this, it does not hurt to have it on your CV.

Regardless of all this I do agree with what the above poster has said regarding PM stuff. It is not directly relational to only ICT and can indeed be associated to any kind of Project work in what ever scenario / business. But be warned.... PM's have been the buzz for the past couple of years, so expect a lot of qualified PM's around either looking for work or contracts. A good PM is niche, PM work itself is not imo.

Also.... if I employ PM's they need to show excellent track records with experience and refs etc. Not something you would gain in less than 12 months imo. It is as much about person spec. as understanding methodologies.

I started with a call centre job .. and that was after completing my Informatoin Systems Degree and 4 years of retail management.

I lasted 6 months and then got promoted to networks, 10 months and then onto 2nd line and I have just passed the first stage of a Problem Management application .. all within the same company !

If I get this job I almost double my wage !!

Its **** at the bottom but it's easy to move up !! if you're willing to work !

Like me, Oracle and SQL server, I contracted for a while but took a pay cut to go permie again, slumming it on 50k now :D

I'm at the rougher end of the networking stick lol! Worked with my father for 17years now building a network design, installation, support and consultancy company. All our work is contract. Not proud, go where the money is!!! The dirty end of the industry (the physical install) is slowly winding down at the moment so we've taken to covering other network related technologies including network camera systems and digital signage solutions aswell as small a/v systems i.e. projector installs etc.

Unfortunately the nature of our work particularly with the related technologies tends to be bespoke designs which in turn means more time spent on it - as an example, the run up to xmas just gone i worked on a project for a signage system that had to have design approval before the holiday. Ended up logging two and a half months worth of hours in one month ...... my mates thought i'd emigrated! lol!

Technology as an industry is getting bigger and bigger but people don't wanna spend money at the moment so the peeps like us already in it have to be willing to work harder and be better than the next man / woman.

By the way, the college courses aren't worth a fig to many employers (the actual words of an i.t. director in one of our bluechip clients) and the Cisco courses are known and acknowledged but are also statistically the lowest paid return qualifications in the industry apparently :) .... even worse if you got the qualification at a college :)

Well....I've put this on the backburner for a couple of months but am now thinking about it again. Just re-read the thread and particularly interested in what you've said. I have NO formal IT training but am now thinking of doing supply teaching for 12 months whilst doing some sort of IT training for that time. I like the idea of network/system support, what's the best plan?

just make sure you dont get sucked into one of the many shoddy commercial training companies that charge you a fortune and promise you a job at the end of it

DON'T DO IT!

I.T. ruined my life:cry::cry::cry:


Seriously though, I got into I.T. by accident, via electronics and telecommunications. It started as working on call logging equipment because I had to, in '89-'90. Here I am 20-ish years later working for a global financial company, helping to support 450 or so users in 3 geographical locations, about 70 servers, jack of all trades, master of none. Like all jobs it's ****e at times, and definitely not the career I expected to be in. However, it's been good to me, kept my wife in the manner to which she's become accustomed, and provided 4 Scoobies.

When I was younger .. (god I'm only 26) there were maybe two people in my school who could operate a PC .. I was editing the autoexec and config files on my first PC just to get games to work ..

By the time I finished school the generation after me was writing programs, cracking phones and basically running rings around me ..

Unless you start from very young you're never going to become the best at IT .. IMO .. however the people who are really good with PC's tend to be **** at life in general (no offence) they have no social skills and very little common sense .. (this is obviously not true for all) so they require managing ..

I'm not the best but I know what my company wants from its IT and I know enough to stop people taking the piss..

My advice to you would be to try and get into IT management .. you can learn the IT bits as you go, its good money and you will raise through the ranks very quickly !

All my opinion.

i have just done my ccna

starting my ccnp on wednesday

cisco is one of the most secure jobs in the world

if you look up cisco contract jobs you will see what money people get paid

my cousin works for NHS contracting he gets paid £280 a day

my oldest cousin works for lastminute.com he gets paid £300 a day

our family friends who told us about the course both work for sg investment bank one is on 380 a day and his uncle is on 400 a day no problem getting jobs at all btw all these are ccna ccnp ccsa ccsp qualified

one of my mates who was learning ccna with me did his ccna started ccnp and got a job wth AT&t in birmingham for £30000 a year he is only 20 his brother who is 26 he also went for the job he has ccna ccnp ccsa ccsp and is currenty doing voice got turned down for the job.

i go to a private college these guys are awesome its a proper college, they have all the equipment you would find in the industry and you work with real routers and switches which really helps

i had to move to london to do the course and before i moved i looked all over to find a place where i could do ccna ccnp ccsa ccsp voice etc with equipment available and i couldnt find one any where

the college charge £7000 for ccna ccnp ccsa ccsp and voice

i think they are going to change the structure now

these guys are really good and i would say its worth a visit

any questions feel free to get in touch and good luck

cisco is the way to go :thumb:

Cheers for all that advice matey, so it looks like I need to find out more about CCNA then? Sounds like living in Cornwall will be a disadvantage!

it certainly is a disadvantage

just have a look at the job market you will also need ccnp to get a decent job i think

its not easy but i think you will be good at it

good luck

As agent x has pointed out, you need ccna and ccnp for a decent job, what he is overdoing is the price a contractor gets, considering contractors can just be booted out of a job with 1 days notice (and they do) with no job security, plus contractors are the first to go at the moment with reductions in workforces as they cost the most, so dont think contracting is an option, its not, its very short term and very insecure as any IT guy will tell you.
Now a very big down side about IT is that you can outsource it to india quite easily (and most major companies have/are doing) but some of the best area's to look for IT work are your local councils believe it or not, see what vacancies they have, not the best paid but its work :)

Tony:)

tony yor quite right they are first to go

my cousins are signed up with agencies and there getting offers every other week

even if they get kicked out and dont work for a few months its still well worth it considering what companies pay

one of my mates contract finished it took him 2 weeks to find a new contract

Put myself through ccna at night school, and when I finished it, it got me an amazing job in telecoms VOIP.
Started at the bottom and worked my way up.
Love the job and it pays well.

how long ago was that mate if you dont mind me asking?