Another lamb to the Slaughter

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Hi there,

due to leave the Army next year after 24 years service, always been around computers but not too in depth, upgraded the odd drive and fixed the odd problem for myself and friends and family and now looking for a new career.

I'm looking at a desktop support/field engineer type role and have recently been to open days, and passed evaluation tests for both JBC and Cerco (as these are both recognised training providers for Forces Resettlement) haven't made my mind up who to go with yet and am open to recommendations/alternatives.

Be gentle with me

Daz

 

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Welcome to CF!

As long as you like beer you'll fit right in!

Take a look around our forums, I'm sure that you will find some answers.

 

Welcome Daz to the forum.

Someone will be along very soon with some good advice.

 

Welcome to the mad house Daz, if your after a field/support role you might be best off starting with your A+ and Network+ as these are good entry level certs for these types of jobs. You might want to start by looking in the A+ and Network+ sections for more info.

 

Stand by yer beds!

Welcome aboard Daz!!!

 

Greetings, Daz. Welcome to CertForums.

 

Hi and welcome to CF, Daz - hang around here and you'll be whiter than white !!

 

Hi Daz,

Welcome to CF. Glad you found us. I met someone who was about to leave the army the other day funny thing and he said they put a good package together to help you find a new career. If it is down to them someone like Cerco is probably your best bet.

All the best, let us know how you get on.

 

Hello Daz!
Welcome to CertForums and all the best to you
in your future IT career!

 

Hi Daz and welcome to our world.

Wow 24 years in the army. Thanks for looking after things for that long, we all salute you here

I agree with Slypie, go for the A+ we have a forum here dedicated to it, so be sure to read through the old threads.

Good luck

Pete

 

Greetings

 

'ow do daz? and welcome to the forums.

i'm leaving the army next year too but haven't done nearly as long as you, so i'm sure your resettlement grant will be a lot bigger than mine!

good luck in whatever you decide to do.

 

Thanks for the friendly welcome and advice .

So, the question is, cerco/JBC or the A+/network+ route, which will offer the most job opportunites?

Both Cerco and JBC say they could train you for these certifications but, employers are fed up with people turning up with bits of paper and no actual hands on experience, whereas their courses are hands on and are therefore preferred by employers?

Can anyone shed any light on this?

Daz

 

It's a tough question to answer tbh it depends on the employer some employers are so pro certs and some aren't. My manager thinks certs are a waste of time and I think he's an idiot Personally I feel a recognised IT cert does help with employment oportunities.

I'm not going to lie and say getting into IT is easy as it isn't but if you keep plugging away you will get your foot in the door. I've never heard of Cerco and JBC so maybe someone else is better answering if they are any good or not. If you can afford it maybe buying a couple of cheap PC's from somewhere like ebuyer to set up a mini network would give you a testing lab for you to practice on and learn skills you can pick up a new PC now for £150 without the monitor. At the momment I have 3 PC's and a laptop with different Operating Systems on and that allows me to test things and mess around with permissions and Active Directory without using the Businesses Network and I find it invaluable.

To sum it up as my answer is getting a bit of track it depends on your skills now and how good you are with general PC engineering to which route you should go down. If your pretty good around PC's and are self motivated then A+ and Network+ if your a bit unsure about a lot of aspects on PC engineering then go down the training route. A+ and Network+ can easily be self taught if you have a bit of knowledge and are commited. The good thing about these forums is there are a lot of highly skilled and knowledgable people who will help you if your stuck and need guidence.

 

This sounds like more "salesman talk" to me. If you will spend some time on these boards reading you will find that many of us earned our certifications in a hands-on manner. We set up labs and worked our way through the concepts by applying them in/on our lab computers. As such they aren't really "paper" certs in the way "paper" certs are usually referred to.

A cert recognized by the industry such as Nework+ and A+ is going to be recognized by far more people than one by Cerco or JBC. Why? Well, I've been around certification sites and certification now for several years and this is the first time I've ever even heard of them. They can't be very widely known as other people who have been around IT for a while have said the same thing on this thread. No matter how good their certs actually are, if they aren't an industry standard as Comptia's are, well, they aren't going to be as widely recognized. That really lessens their value in the overall job market.

Employers are not going to go out investigating a cert they don't recognize from a potential employee to find out if it has real value. The way the job market is they have no need to. It's an employers, not an employees job market. Even the employers who do value certifications aren't going to place much value on something they haven't heard of before, and the human resources people will use the anonymity of your certs to eliminate you.

You have maybe a minute at the most to catch a prospective employers eye so make sure your certs will be the most widely known that you can find.

 

He doesn't say which army...

Tee hee, I've been dying to use them!

Welcome mate, it's a good crowd here.

 

Hi Daz,

As was mentioned in this thread experience goes a long way too.

<edited to remove spamming content> -Trip

Ta, and good luck!

 

Hi and welcome to the forum.

 

All advice taken on board and thanks again for the warm welcomes

Daz

 

hi everyone, Im also a newbie, but not to I.T.

I have to contradict the above statement just a tad, as jbc start chuckign your money back at you at a rate fo 200 quid a month after you go thru their training program for each month you remian out of work. Im about to attend their open day in coventry this coming tuesday, to see and GRILL them first hand, after speaking to someone for almost 45 mins to see whether it was worth a trip in the first place. The other thing I ascertained was that the poor sods picked up the peices from the cerco bankrupcy scenario back in 2003 as well. Furthermore, so far there's NO STIPULATION OF relocation or 50 mile radii for jobs unlike some other trainers. In fact, the guy i spoke to burst out laughing when i mentioned this, and said its a bit ludicrous to make people go through that AS WELL AS paying for the training as well?!

Having had my "share of fun" with computeach- i did the CIW back from 2002 to 2004 and it was one of THE biggest WASTES OF MONEY i've had the misfortune to participate in- I'm relieved that at least some of the others dont shovew you in at the deep end with self study etc, which defeats the point of why you pay such huge sums of money in the first place.