Hey

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Firstly Hello

I'll just give a brief history, I'm 23 and live in wolverhampton, I went to Uni not being sure what I wanted to do and ended up studying photography (yeahh took the fun option) anyways, I've always been good at IT, its easily my strongest subject (I really do regret not doing computer science at uni, but ha ho.)

So after uni I worked in Next for a while, and boy retail blows, so I got out of there after a couple months and ended up being unemployed for 5 or 6 months. I ended up on the future jobs fund scheme at the jobcenter (now stopped with all the cuts) which lead me to working at a small theatre & rockschool company for the last 6 months as an IT technician. This was pretty small based though, 30 machines, all xp connected up to a master server. I found that well and truly enjoyed the job, ended up upgrading a lot of the hardware/software, fixing several issues that cropped up along the way.

So now I'm at the point where my contract is close to finishing (4 weeks), and so I'm looking at trying to get into IT properly and plan on getting myself certified with CompTIA A+ to begin with maybe? As my current IT qualifications are just a GNVQ and an AVCE done in 6 form. Would I be best to do the CompTIA ones or start on a Microsoft certification?.

I've started applying for lots of junior/entry IT roles this week and looked at several apprenticeships but I can see the fact I'm 23 and have a degree count against me for those. I also had a response from Netcom in Birmingham for an interview tomorrow, but having read the posts about it being a scam to sell you training I'm going to not bother going.

Any advice of the next steps in terms of Certification or some general direction of what I should look at/do would be very grateful.

Thank you in advance.

 

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Hi & welcome to CF

I would recommend starting with the CompTIA A+, followed by the N+.

These can be self studied, and the recommended book for the A+ is the Mike Meyers all in one.

HTH

NB

 

Welcome to CF!

I have been pretty much in the same position - I've done a degree I didn't enjoy (albeit slightly more related) and I'm now working as a Helpdesk Admin with no certs. If you've got a good 'learning' attitude, with a focus on customer elements of the support you should get your first line roles without any problems.

Keep applying, and start with the A+. As Notes_Bloke said, Mike Myers is the best book for the job and when you're bored of reading there is also Professor Messars videos (Professor Messer, CompTIA A+, Network+, Security+, Microsoft Certification Training) to give you a bit of variety.

From there you should either do the N+ or a MS course, depending on where you are with your job hunting and experience. If you've got a first line role and you're working with Windows 7, go for the MS 7 configeration course. If you're still looking for work, perhaps go for the N+

Good luck with it

 

thanks for the reply guys

Yeah I'm going to self study for A+ ordered a few of the books recommended on here. I'm applying for lots, just thinking, is it worth me doing a voluntary IT role while out of work ? just thinking it might be good to do for more experience while I'm still looking / studying towards A+