Is this just a scam ? Job guarantees / training

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

I just attended the interview with apprenta. And i paid a deposit of £300. They said i need to pay another £700 pounds to start the training.


I am also looking for a break into the industry. I have never been called to any job as i have no experience. i have been doing admin jobs and i am very very frustrated.

and by the way i do have programming skills? Does anyone think its worth going through with this

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

thing that concerned me was the difference in the amount of money people were saying they'd been asked to pay.

mine was £1500 up front with 4500 if i get a job.

others say they get 1000 discount if they pay 5000 up front.

others say 6000 in one lump sum.

i went to the interview 2 fridays or so ago and they asked me to call in on monday.
i didn't.
he spoke REALLY fast. it didn't seem like an interview. more, that he was trying to sell me something.

 

i looked at it as
'what would i loose if it went balls up'

if i didn't get the job and it was a scam i would loose £1500
not really a big deal.
at least it wasn't the full 6000.

the clincher was that i would give up my postie job at 20k a year.
if it went balls up i would lose that. i would lose the regula money

 

This apprenta thing puzzles me.
There have been a few posts on them recently. The 'interview' that isn't an interview, the money, the promise of a job etc.
The only thing that nobody seems to be talking about is what course you're supposed to be doing, what the teaching methods are or what you'll actually learn.

It sounds to me that people are trying to buy themselves an IT job and the actual training is a minor hurdle to overcome during the process.

And why do the students seem to be doing all the running around? They want to sell you a course so they can have your money. Yet you drag yourself over to their office, then have to call them back to see if you've been 'successful', then drag yourself back to the office with a bundle of cash.

All this time they sit behind their desks and I suspect that they are trying not to laugh at you. I would be.

I'm not trying to say that they are dishonest, or even that they aren't a decent training provider - I don't have any facts either way. I'm just saying that the whole process seems a bit cocked up.

 

I agree Johnny. No one ever seems to think they can buy their way into an accounting, business, medical, or legal career but yet a whole lot of people seem to think they can buy their way into IT. I wonder why that is? Does everyone think IT people don't need to know anything or that it's a 'career for dummies"?

IT is every bit as highly skilled of a field as acounting, business management, many parts of the technical end of medicine, or legal careers. Everyone seems to acknowledge that they would need a good bit of education to enter those fields yet people seem to buy into these con artist scams that you can enter as a mid-level IT technician with only a few months of book training that takes place on a part-time basis. I really don't understand it. Why does everyone conclude that they are enough of a computer genius to do the equivalent of a bachelors degree from a university in a few weeks or months?

 

Well said Freddy, and Jonny.

I think that because IT is not a regulated area, i.e you don't need to be registered with anyone to do it, people fail to class it as a profession, and as such think of it as an easy career option.

I have a PC, I can type and install programs, I think I'll be an IT Professional - Yeah Right!

 

You're probably right. It was a lot like that in the HVAC and refrigeration business too. There were a lot of guys who figured that since they could remove and replace a fan motor they could be a service technician.

It was kind of fun to take them out on a repair job after they swore up and down they knew how to do the job, put them in front of a complex piece of equipment, hand them a multimeter, and then stand back and say, "Ok. What's the problem? What is wrong with the system?" You could almost smell the fear and the sweat would literally roll off their foreheads as they realized how very little they really knew.

That was my favorite thing to do to those who were obviously trying to B.S. their way into a job. Those who were honest got a lot of help.

 

Well said you three, I agree totally with all the issues you raised

 

Freddy, this is the only part of what all of you have said above that I would mildly disagree with. I don't think people are reaching this conclusion - they are being sold the conclusion. They have a passing to middling interest in break/fix of theirs and family's (etc) PCs, small home networks, then maybe make an enquiry to find out about learning more about it, maybe for the short to medium-term future. Next thing - wham, bam thank you mam, several grand lighter, in too deep, and posting on here about being conned etc.

 

I have no disagreement that people are being sold on the idea that they can basically buy their way into IT, but why? Would they accept into the idea that they could buy their way into a career as a radiology technician or an accounting career? I don't think so, and there lies the clue to all this to me. It's because so many people think they are computer geniuses.

I did before I really started to work, study and learn. I was sure I could do anything in this field with very little trouble. I thought I could step into it with just a small learning curve. I figured I was some kind of computer genius because I could point and click. Microsoft sells the idea that running Microsoft networks is a piece of cake, so to speak. Their advertising campaigns have sold this basic idea for years, and they have been very effective with it. It's not just the "training providers" that advance this idea. They cash in the concept through their dishonesty, but they are not the ones that really plant the idea to begin with.

All I can say is if I had given some critical thought to the idea I would have discarded it, but I didn't. I wanted to believe it because it made me feel so good about myself..... I never stopped to think about how long I had spent learning in the HVAC/Refrigeration field. I never stopped to think about how much training and experience it took to be successful and make money in any field other than IT and wonder why this concept was not true of IT too....

 

I agree with you completely Gav.
I'm not trying to blame anyone, including the salesmen.
Life is like that, we sell things, buy things, religions and political parties try to convince us to see the light... It's all one and the same.
The only thing that annoys me is people buying into an 'easy' solution. Surely that's not what made mankind what it is?

Sometimes people are like sheep. It's mad.
Has anyone ever stood outside a shopping centre that has about ten glass swing doors?
Invariably, one is broken or jamed open. There is always a queue both ways to get through this door, prams, wheelchairs the lot.
Sometimes I feel like a freak when I push open one of the nine remaining doors and walk through...

 

Freddy makes a lot of sense here - people do seem to leave their critical faculties at home when using IT - and not just for looking at it as a career either... look how many idiots do stupid things online etc...
But regarding IT training - it does seems true that all credulity goes out the window with the promise of a 'rewarding career in IT"

ho hum.. those that can, do well, those that can't learn an expensive lesson

 

I for one do not believe that there is *good* money to be made in IT anymore and I am therefore looking for a career change.

I have heard that accountants earn good money and I am good at maths, and can add up, subtract and use Lotus 123. I often help my friends with their Excel spreadsheets too.

Can anyone recommend me a good training provider, that can teach and give me the experience and knowledge of an accountant with a guaranteed job at the end of the six week course?

 

and I'm good with animals and have nursed some kittens. I don't want the hassle of a traditional vets career path of college etc... I want to get certified in a few short weeks with a guaranteed job too!

 

I think several of you are missing the point here. If you don't have much knowledge of a certain industry and wish to work in it, it is not unreasonable to seek an entry point via a training provider as a means of gaining that first job. I don't think anyone with an ounce of common sense would expect to gain a very well paid job with just a few weeks training. Some people seem to be adopting a defeatist/sarcastic attitude which IMHO helps nobody.

 

To be honest this thread is so long and so old I am no longer sure that the OP is even interested in it anymore. We are just musing things over and trying to get a better handle on things.

No sarcasm at anyone is intended. We are not salesman and hence we do not see the world through rose tinted glasses. I have been in IT now for eleven years, I am an MCSE and I can't earn the kind of money that I see banded around by so-called training providers. I have been ripped off by them too. Why should I not feel defeated. ffreeloader is a brilliant person IMHO, he hasn't been able to find a suitable job in IT. He lives in the US, I live in Oz. It is the same the whole world over.

Keep it real

 

Really? Do you think it's possible to become a qualified radiology technician in a few weeks of part time or even full time training?

Do you think that you can become an accountant participating in part time training that takes between 6 weeks and a year?

Do you really think it is a defeatist attitude to say that IT is a highly skilled profession that takes a lot of training and experience to be successful in?

Do you think it's being defeatist to acknowledge that a few million IT jobs have been shipped to Pakistan, India, China, and a few other 3rd world countries in the last 2 or 3 years, and that most of those jobs were the entry level jobs that most people used to break into the IT field?

Is it a defeatest attitude to say that because a large percentage of the entry level jobs have been sent overseas that it's now much harder to break into IT?

Those are the realities of the IT job market. Many of us have been looking for an IT job for quite a while. Some of us have been studying quite intensely to accumulate skills and yet getting beaten out of entry level jobs by people who have been in IT for a few years already. It's no accident that most jobs require at least 3 years of experience, and those are the entry level jobs.

I ran across a job advertised as entry level the other day that required a minimum of 5 years experience, scripting knowledge in Python and Perl, AIX knowledge, Unix knowledge, and knowledge of Active Directory and Exchange. These were the requirements. The pluses added to that list. Just what noob is going to come anywhere close to fulfilling this list?

Acknowledging the difficulties that are involved in getting into IT and telling people what the realities are is not defeatism. It's reality.

You won't find one person on this site who works in IT who will tell you that it's a wide open job market with lots of places for people to get their break. They will instead tell you it takes hard work. Lots of study, effort, discipline, and time to get into the field. Most will admit it takes a certain amount luck too because many times it just comes down to being in the right place at the right time or finding someone on the inside who will fight to help you get that first job.

 

I think it's important to make a point here that there is a fine line.

There is nothing wrong with paying for education/training. When you go to University, you pay fees. If you go to evening classes to learn Spanish, you pay for it. Want to learn to drive? You pay an instructor.

That's the way of things and it's fine.

What is fundamentally wrong is paying for the 'end result' rather than the bit in the middle. That would be like a driving instructor saying 'look, it will cost you £10 per lesson over 10 weeks to learn how to drive. Or, just bung me £500 now and I'll give you your driving license.'

It's that kind of mentality that I think most of us are objecting to. If you find a training provider with quality training material, solid tutor support and an ethical approach then fair play to you - go for it.

 

I'll do it for £6000.

Of course, I don't know what I'm doing and it will be *real* distance learning as you are in Oz. So don't expect me to answer the phone. But I've got a leaflet about 'difficult sums' here somewhere...