Positive experience at last!

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Hello again you lot!

I haven't posted for a while but I've been around, lurking in the shadows. As most of you will know I got the big heave ho in September when I was made redundant from my Desktop Support job. I've been searching for a new position ever since with little success. I've even been applying for part time jobs, mostly in schools as they seem to have an IT recruitment drive on the go at the moment locally. The salaries are truly awful, the two applications I have going at the moment are for Technician/It support and IT Technician/Web designer (for the school's website). They are both term time only and carry £11800 and £10500 salaries respectively. And they want the candidate to do both jobs (technician AND IT support, IT tech AND web design) for that. Hmm.

But I'd go for either of them just to be in a job involving IT.

So I was pleased to have a very positive experience with an agency today (positivity has been in short supply just lately!). I met with a very upbeat chap who knew his onions and gave me some much needed (and free ) advice on massaging my CV and we have arranged to meet again once we are both happy with it so he can start putting me forward for 'proper' positions (read paying decent, £20k+ salaries). I understand that the agency will be making money out of finding me a placement, but hey we're all in business to make a quid/buck.

Please guys and gals, you know me well enough, I hope, to know I am not trying to spam you here, sometimes agencies etc. get bad press here and on other sites and I just wanted to report a good experience rather than the doom and gloom that is prevalent at the moment. If you are in the Midlands I'd certainly recommend them for a chat. I'll let you know how it goes, impartially of course.

Cheers,

J.

 

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Firstly, Sorry to here about your redundancy. All swings and roundabouts
Secondly, Congrats. Good to here that you are getting somewhere. Agencies are not all bad, i got my current job from one. Nice to here you are getting somewhere though

 

Sorry to hear about yor redundancy pal, ive had nothing but good experiences with agencies in my time, im 22 n when i was 18 got my first job doing tech support in a call centre though an ageny then got my next 3 jobs all in IT through an agent, one as a field technician and two doing heldesk support in a hospital and office building. it was only last year that i though i had enough experince to start going for jobs on my own. but hope all works out for you

 

In my experience 90% of IT jobs can only be accessed through agents, this is normally because companies don't want to have a large HR department or their HR department doesn't like to do recruitment.

This does not necessarily make them good in of itself, it just makes them a necessary evil.

My current agency is trying to get everyone to take a 15% pay cut, there are tales of agency margins being between anything from 5-50%, make no mistake they are a business. Most 'recruitment consultants' would sell their own grandmother...

Keep your friends close keep your enermies closer, they go on NLP training to learn to manipulate, they will promise you anything just to get a lead, often there is no job at all.

These are my experiences in 14+ years of dealing with them. Yes there are probably a few good ones but they are very rare in my experience.

There were some rather good links posted recently about them on this forum.

http://www.certforums.co.uk/forums/showpost.php?p=244625&postcount=13

I wouldn't count your chickens until the agency gets you the job.

Best of luck with the job search.

 

A bit of a backup for schools here:

I am on that sort of salary level juice (its appaling but. I knew It was that level when I joined. Benefits and reasons?

1) Fulltime where last job was part time working at Infant and a junior schools.
2) Closer to home
3) Big domain 500 desktops/200 odd laptops/ then 40 odd printersd etc
4) Good experiance
5) Great holidays so I can do more travelling - flexbility. All school dates + paid. I wanted a job which allowed me to have the holidays.
6) Natural career move
7) People nearer to my age and doing the same job as me - I wanted to be in a team.
+ One of the few schools in the U.K. with a virtual reality suite

Sometimes you have to take a knock down the scale etc to get the experiance needed. Also if those are the only jobs going, sometimes you gotta take them. Also working in a school can be a rewarding experiance at times. Giving a bit back to the community as such, plus helping the kids now and again.

 

Best wishes and don't get too disheartened if it does not work as planned. But nice good positive attitude and keep on plugging away as your break would come

 

Thanks for the kind words folks!

J.

 

I'd agree with this. Working in a school is great for it's holidays and hours, and the wide range of equipment and software that you have to work with makes for great experience. One minute you can be configuring a WSUS server, or testing Exchange, and the next, removing sandwich wrappers from a CD-Drive. In my first week in a school, I installed 15 new laptops, configured an access point for them to connect to, including meeting the DHCP server for the first time to reserve an IP, created new users in Active Directory, and helped a student create rollover images in dreamweaver for an assignment. Then my second week, things got busier.

The kids are great, and can really take the edge of a bad day. They can really keep you on your toes.

Granted the pay is rubbish, but as a stepping stone, you can't go far wrong.


Jiser - Very jealous of the Virtual Reality suite.


Maria

 

I can say that not all school jobs pay crap.

My first IT job was in a private high school as the junoir IT tech. Ok the pay was peanuts (11k) but i was fresh out of college with my GNVQ IT and No real world experiance so i was greatfull for what i could get.

Like other have said, the technology in some schools is great.

I left my first school to join a primary school about 2 years later. The pay went up to 17k.

I'm still at that school now (only tech there) and have been promoted to network manager on just under 25k a year. I get all the school holidays and work 8-4 monday-friday.

 

I was on equivalant pay of about 17 k if i was full time at my last school job. I left for the reasons above tho. An I.T. career in schools isn't really viable from your mid 20's in schools unless your a network manager. Theres just no money, CPD or career advancement really. Also most people arent your own age in schools, so less chance to meet people.

Also building schools for the future will remove a need for the way the current I.T. structure/support works in most schools so jobs will be redundent soon enough.

It depends what sort of life style you want really.

 

Best of luck Juice

I'm also working in a school at the moment as the only full-time tech there, so I'm doing everything by myself for most of the week, and on similarly terrible pay as already mentioned in this thread (which is also less than my predecessor started on as well). It's good experience I guess - I've learnt so much in the year I've been working here, and working with the kids can be terrific sometimes.

But it's hard not to feel envious of my friends who are also in IT (not support, admittedly) and earning higher salaries. To make matters worse, I do feel like I'm taken for granted a lot of the time and most of the other IT staff do my head in, especially my manager. Needless to say, I'm looking to get out of here ASAP...