As much advice as you can spare please.

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Well I think cost is probably the overiding factor for most people, but also a lot of people have trouble finding the time to study so cramming it all into a time span can be difficult, granted you can get extensions, but again it's all money.

The main reason I went for a training provider was there reputation, and I thought this would hold sway with perspective employers, but this dosen't seem to be the case.

Let's face it, at this moment in time it's an employers market, there are employers out there wanting MCSE and only offering 15K, I think it's an insult. Half these employers don't even know whats involved in obtaining MCSE.

I suppose for J Bloggs in the street, a training provider is the best choice, as you have peice of mind, but is it value for money?

Well I would say it is relative, if you do 2 years training and end up getting your dream job, then you probably wouldn't mind paying £6000, but if on the other hand you struggle to find a position then it's a waste of money.

This is why I think it's important to do a little research in your local area and see whats on offer, then you can set your sights on a realistic target.

On final peice of advice which I'm about to do myself, is to get my CV professionally authored, it might cost 50 quid, but I think this is where I have been failing.

 

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Yesterday I went to a local recruitment fair and as an exercise went to a stand of a local IT company and told them that I already had the qualifications that I thinking about taking but had no experience and his reaction was somewhere along the line of 'not another sucker'.He asked me where i had taken the qualification and how much did pay,i continued the ruse.He asked me what i wanted to earn and said at best he could take me on as an trainee IT support engineer but it would be minimum wage !. He told me that on several occasion he had taken on ppl under similar circumstances and ended up having to send out quote 'lads half their age and with no qualifications' to do remedial work on the systems that they worked on. I then explain my deception and his answer was a firm 'dont bother cos there will be kids out there of 19 with 2 years experience who will have more chance of getting a job than you will'

I have in addition to that rung a number of recruitment IT recruitment agencies and when i said that i had no experience they just said that it was no point in registering with them cos they wouldnt be able to help.

If salaries of circa £15k are the best i could expect then i not gonna bother i was earning more than that when i started my present job 11 years ago !
(my current basic is £28k +overtime as a shift supervisor in organic chemical manufacture)
l
Yes ok so i am being made redundant in about a years time but I wont be wasting my time.Id rather spend £400 at the local building trade training school learning bricklaying.(I had a wall built at my house last year and the brickie was on £120 a day !)

I have spent about 5 hours a day on the Internet for about the last week,rung loads of ppl etc reasearching to find out whether this is worth over £4k of my money and will be telling the CT rep not to bother me again.

My advise to anyone on here who is in the same position, unless you have no skills at all dont bother !

Jolly(but now not so)green.

ps That probably means that I am not gonna be back at this forum again so I will say you have all been very friendly and imformative and i thank you sincerely for your help.
Richard.

 

I'm sorry this cretin put you off. You have to make your own decisions but I'm sorry to see you go so soon after arriving. If I were in your shoes, I sure wouldn't have taken this jerk's comments too seriously. Often, with enough hard work and persistance, you can find the job you want in spite of the odds, recruiters, and anything else. However, most people are happiest walking the path they choose for themselves. If you ever want to hang out here, you'll certainly be welcome. Good luck, Richard.

 

Man if I could get my hands on that lying Rep b@st@rd ...

Richard - if you do look back in, good luck in whatever you do. It was a pleasure having you here.

So long

 

You must really not want to get into IT enough to give up so soon. If you expect to walk into a job after completing your MCSE then your heads on cloud nine.

You've got to work at it if its what you really want to do, but again reading you previous post its not. Don't believe the rubbish any of the sales reps tell you about earning high wages when you've completed your training. In the "real world" as in not the sales worlds you need to prove yourself and the piece of paper is the first part on the road to achieving that goal.

You have to start somewhere in this trade and if you have no experience then training is the best start but don't expect everything to be easy because it wont. Ignore all the sales rubbish and focus on you final goal and how to get there.

Just my opinion
JK

 

I agree JK, I don't think he wants to work in IT, but does want a good wage (don't we all ). Once we have knowledge, exprience and certs...... thats when you start to get the better money!

Its an interesting situation, in that if you do evening classes to become an accountant (and pass the exams) and have no exprience a company may well take you on and you'll learn the in "house systems" as you go, but your expected to know your job. If the person makes a mistake it can usually be rectified and not many people get to know about it.....
Some people expect the same situ in IT with the "I've got my cert so let me in please, cause I know the job". When a mistake is made in IT it is very rarely a mistake that is small. The mistake is usually made with servers and networks, cause the "I know what I'm doing I've at an MCSE" line comes out. Even if it is a small one, the knock on effect is usually very visable and that is the key difference.

Mistakes are not as easily forgotten about as success, its the way were made.... Off Topic here......and IMHO it comes from the humans survival insinct. Unfortunaltly we don't need it that much these days for survival and the ones who don't have it haven't been eaten so they flop around making silly mistakes that would have cost them there lives once upon a time.

 

Interesting point, Japes, worthy of a lot of thought. I recently made a ****-up in handling a case at work, and the effects were ultimately fairly serious (I got off with a "clip round the ear" ) But as a result, I am now ultra-careful in how I proceed.

Anyone else got a take on this ?

 

Jakamoko I would say you have survival instinct.... you've taken action afterwards to (hopefully) not let it happen again....

Don't get me wrong, not a day goes by without me looking at what I'm about to do and saying "Whats the outcome of this" as I've done some stupid stuff myself in the past (beleive me on par with yourself) and this is where the benefits of survival instinct comes in, learning from our mistakes.

 

Done both classroom (work paid for them at the time, had to pay some back when I left.... such is life) and home study. I've not had the need to use any we'll teach you the whole of the MCSE in X weeks/months or for that matter bootcamps.

Classroom has the advantage in that if you have an "on topic" question the
lecturer (should) know the answer and you get told what its all about, or at the very least s/he should go away and find out and come back to you. This for me is also a down side. All the best study I have ever done, is when I've dug deep (usually at 1 or 2am) into microsoft.com/ cisco.com/
google.co.uk to find the answer, this then flows into work as I go find the answers there as well.

Home study has the disavantage of you and only YOU doing the work and this takes disapline. I must admit its easier to do follow up study after a course than to pick up a book and start at page one. Done this for the last 2 exams on my MCSE and doing so on my CCNA.

HTH

 

From what you say, Japes, it sounds like you are comfortable with the methods you have decided to study with. I guess that backs up what the general feeling here is - find out what suits you best and stick with it.

HEY - I didn't think it was THAT stupid at the time

Only kidding, mate