Hi another newbie (sort of)

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Hello all.

First time post but here goes.(gulp)

Im 43 self employed and have been running my own pc retail business since 1994. Im based in a small village on the outskirts of Doncaster and the "credit crunch" is finally taking its toll. Bearing this in mind I decided to look at possibly packing in the self employment bit and getting a job using the 15 years or so experience I have gained in building,repairing,upgrading and maintaing pc's as well as dealing with customer support. Let me just add I have no formal qualifications at all. Simple init? I looked on the local It recruitment sites and all I can say is why didnt i take my MCSE 10 years ago when I had the chance? It would appear that getting a job without any Certs is nigh on impossible. So here I am about to attempt to gain certification hopefully mcse and honestly at this moment I feel out of my depth. Im glad I came across this site because I was about to jump in with both feet and sign up for a fairly expensive home learning course.

Sorry for the long winded first post but any help/advice on the best place to start would be appreciated.

 

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Hi and welcome to CF !

I'm a few years older than you and in the same boat. By IT Support co went down around a year ago and, as I employed staff, hadn't bothered myself to get on with MCSE and other certs.

I wouldn't worry too much as there's a lot of other stuff you can do - join the BCS (British Computer Society) - you should gte at least MBCS and if you've been employing staff and providing IT solutions to business customers you may even quaify for CITP (PM me for any info).

Were you a Microsoft Partner ? If so, don't forget to detail that on your CV and make a note of any tech training you did with them. Might also be worthwhile looking at Cisco certs too, depends where the focus was in your business.

Hope that helps and don't be afraid to shout for help or info !

 

Hi, phew someone older than me lol.

Seems we followed a very similar path, I employed people and business was booming till a few years ago so I never saw the need to gain certification. The main focus of my business then and now was 99.9% domestic with a smattering of small business's thrown in, I never did any training with MS although I did train my staff(when I had them).

The trouble I have now found is with 99.9% of the work I did being domestic Im soooo out of touch with the win 2000/2003 networking and server stuff. I did a mock comptia A+ exam online the yesterday, I aced the hardware but I think my 4 year old daughter could have done better on the O/S /networking questions which I failed miserably


Oh well theres always McDonalds ;) Thanks for the reply BTW.

 

Hi & welcome to CF

NB

 

Hi NB


Thanks for the welcome.

 

Hello and Welcome, good luck with your job search and gaining your certs!