It can be done....

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I just wanted to post up that I've just been offered a 1st Line support role. It's nothing special and the salary is fairly poor. It's telephone based and will be a 'test of endurance' I'm sure, but I'm posting this to tell those thinking of trying to get into the industry or change careers that it is possible, even in times like these.

For me, this job is a foot in the door with a big organization. I have no IT qualifications, but hope to do the A+ exams in the next few months. After that my goal is the MCDST.

(I hope this doesn't sound like me giving myself a pat on the back. I seem to have read through lots of threads recently with people saying how difficult things are at the moment. I just wanted to post some encouragement to others thinking of taking the route I have. And there's a good chance I'll want to shoot myself in the head after a few weeks chained to a phone and resetting passwords. )

 

congrats.

 

Congrats, how was the interview like?

 

Congrats on the job

NB

 

Congrats thats great , it must take a lot to change careers!!

 

Hey, at least you'll be getting real-world experience! Major congrats!

 

Thank you everyone for your responses.

I hope others thinking of doing what I'm doing see this and it plays a part in them making the decision that's right for them.

The interview was fine. I didn't have to jump through any hoops and it seemed that their priority was to get people in who could communicate with their customers. I say this because there wasn't really a technical side to it. The 1st Line fix issues on 90% of the calls that come in and that's what I'll be doing after the 2 week training period.

As I said, the pay is poor, but everyone has to start somewhere....

 

The pay won't stay poor forever.

 

Well done mate!

 

Well done on the job mate!

I'm in a similar boat, not much experience or qualifications and i'm hoping to do some help desk work and work my way into a better position when i've got some experience and qualifications under my belt. Was just wondering, how did you go about finding the position? Was it just a case of routing through job adverts or did you target specific word patterns i.e no experience required etc?

 

Congtrats mate. Kinda sounds like when I had the interview for my job, very heavily customer service orientated. But i think getting your certs and technical knowledge will put you above the rest.

 

You can certainly use online and offline adverts to find suitable tech jobs using any number of search methods. And although you can get jobs scanning job adverts, everyone uses them... which means competition is likely to be extremely fierce.

Sometimes, it's not where you look but who you know. Techs in the industry know where the "hidden jobs" are - positions that are about to open up or are available but have not yet been posted. You can sometimes get the jump on your competition, and if you interview well, you can cause an employer to hire you without listing the position at all. It works absolutely... most of my IT jobs (including my first "real" IT job!) have come about because of relationships with people in the IT industry - they knew me, and they knew what I could offer to their companies.

 

congrats

 

Thanks for the advice mate!

 

Congratulations and best wishes in the new role and welcome to the world of working in IT

 

I looked at a number of job sites but eventually decided to concentrate on what came up on Reed.co.uk - as they seemed to be the most relevant. The searches I did were mainly for "HelpDesk" and "1st Line Support". There were generally quite a few 'realistic' jobs to apply for each week in 1st Line support. One other place to look as well would be the job center site - that also returned some good matches.

Good luck.

 

If you search the forums several of us have posted (numerous times) lists of jobsites and recruiters to use. I wouldn't say Reed is that good (except they tell you how many have applied).

 

I've spent a fair bit of time searching through these forums and there are a lot of good links already posted. I have sites like purelyit bookmarked for future reference.

I was just answering the question from NewBee asking what I did and Reed did throw up some good leads (for my very basic level of experience) every week.