New CERCO graduate here

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.

Hi All

Just thought it would be good to join these forums to contact other CERCO graduates to see how the job hunt is going

 

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.

Welcome to CF!

 

Welcome!

 

Hi and welcome to CF

 

Howdy,

I'm completely unfamiliar with Cerco other than seeing someone ask here about them.

Could you tell us about your experience with them? Cost? Materials supplied for study? Computer labs provided for study? Subjects covered and in what kind of detail? What you think of your level of knowledge now that you're done with their program? Time it took you to complete the course?

 

Its a four week intensive course designed to get you an entry level job as a field engineer. Course materials are two large A4 lever arch files with all the course notes and end of section questions. I completed the course in O ctober and have yet to find any IT employment. The recruitment team at Cerco have come up with nothing so far so no interviews as yet. they keep telling me its a bad area where I live for entry level posts (East Anglia) but they were quite happy to take the £4000 for the course.

The course itself is very good with lots of practical work and problem solving but the recruitment service is pants.

 

Where abouts in East Anglia do you live if you don't mind me asking?

 

I live in a village 6 miles from Diss in norfolk

 

To be fair that is probably not the best location for IT jobs but they should still be some about and if you are prepared to travel a bit there should be quite a few around. Cambridge is not that far from you (I think about an hour or so) there is LOADS of IT jobs there. If they are not very good at looking for jobs for you, you can use some of the recruitment websites mentioned on here and have a look yourself.

 

One of the guys at my work sat the Cerco course. Paid 4k for an inhouse certification (useless really). He said that the lecturers were pretty good, but it was useless overall. He wouldnt be going back for the A+ course at a grand. Going for selfstudy I believe.

He also said that they promised a job within three months, nothing materialised - their reason? He wasnt in the correct area code to qualify for that promise.

Whilst its not really indicative of the provider, he seems good enough. fairly new, so time will tell.

 

Hi Welcome

Quel suprise (thats French for what a suprise)

 

Welcome

 

I always wonder why anyone without experience would pay £4k for a 4 week course with no resulting qualifications. Four weeks just isn't enough time to learn IT or set yourself apart from the competition, there are many many people since the 1970's that have grown up with computers and devoted their life to them. Whats wrong with the regular college options, I don't know why people don't consider HNC/HND, It probably will cost you less than 4k, will give you 2 years training instead of 4 weeks and a recognised qualification.

Cambridge is a big research centre, loads of IT jobs, especially if you know your stuff, they do automation, robotics, language development, loads embedded dev etc.

On a lighter note, entry level jobs do exist and people without much formal training do succeed in the industry, but they are often lucky to get their first break. Goodluck !

 

Hello and welcome,

Don't worry there are IT jobs in East Anglia, but as previously stated if you're happy to commute to Cambridge then the pay and number of available jobs is much higher.

Good Luck

 

A Grand!! I still can't believe the price some of these companies charge for courses they provide, when all you need is a few books from Amazon and a bit of self discipline...

 

For some reason I've missed your response until now.

You paid a 1000 a week for your training and ended up with nothing but a piece of paper saying you got 4 weeks of training? Do you realize what a lab you could have built for yourself, the number of training materials you could have gotten, as well as paid for the exams and ended up at least with an A+ and a Network+, and still had quite a bit of money left over?

I hate to tell you this, but as far as I'm concerned you got taken in big time. For the equivalent money here in the US I could have built a server capable of running a half-dozen virtual machines with a terabyte or so of storage using good reliable components to add to my lab, a fantastic monitor, bought at least a dozen books on subjects I want to learn, and still had money left over to fund my way back into my photography hobby by buying good, very sharp glass with a focal range of 35mm - 450mm+ in two lenses and a 1.4x teleconverter, and a good, DSLR that gives professional level image quality.

I could learn far more from the set up I just described than you could possibly learn in 4 weeks of training time, and had a computer system and a very good photography system to use for the next few years. In my book you might just as well have burnt about 750 of that money a week for what you got out of it.

All I can say is I hate seeing newbies get screwed by these so-called "training providers". Promises of jobs with the built-in excuses to get out of actually finding you a job. That was the only real value they "offered" and 9 chances out of 10 you'll never see anything of it. They knew where you lived to start with, and made the promises anyway. Sue the bastards.

Seeing this kind of stuff just infuriates me. The executives running these companies need to be sitting in jail for fraud as far as I'm concerned.

 

When I look back now I realise how foolish it was to expect to learn anywhere near enough to get a job in four weeks. I was taken in by the advertising and the open day speel. To be fair they did state that I was in a bad area for entry level positions but they were confident that they would find me a position within 3 months. Its almost 3 months now and no leads or interviews set up by them in fact very little contact from them. I have had a couple of ad hoc jobs but all interviews i have been to have been organised myself. At all 3 interviews the feedback was lack of experience and not enough indepth knowledge. Its amazing the things you believe when there are few job prospects and the only positions available are very unattractive wish i could turn the clock back 6 months as i am now in debt with only a part time low paid position and all i have to show for it is a useless piece of paper to say i attended a course.

Another thing to say about the course was, although it was intensive and enjoyable and I did learn something,
all of the end of week test questions we had already answered at the end of each section. They made no secret of the fact that all you needed to do to pass was learn the answers to these questions. All on my course passed easily which should come as no surprise really. Even the practical test on the last day was almost identical to the practice one a day earlier so no probs there either.

Unless Cerco come up with something very soon I assume I have lost £4000 and still have no job prospects. If anyone is considering taking this course read other posts on this forum first and please dont waste 4K if you dont live within m25 or in Birmingham or Manchester.

 

I feel for you buddy, I really do. There are so many stories of people paying money to training companies who don't give a damn about them or their job prospects, knowing that there is little to no chance of them finding a proper job, but also confident that their small print guarantees they will be able to weasel their way out of any commitment to them.

It sucks, but I'd put it down to experience and start studying for a 'real' exam likew the A+ or Network+. Both of them are recognised as entry-level certs and well thought of in the IT industry - whereas Cerco seem to be one of those companies that have 'agreements' with companies to place people in jobs that have little or no prospects just so that they can get them off their stats sheet. In fact, you may find that, after Christmas as their 'guarantee' period clicks in, you might miraculously get offered a job with one of their 'partner' companies. Of course, that may be 100 miles away from where you live and only be a three month contract, but it will discharge their responsibilities to you.

The A+ is where most bods seem to start and you can pick up study guides for it for less than a tenner on EBay. If you have the money, the considered advice of most on this forum seems to be to splash out on Mike Meyers' A+ Study Guide - it's apparently considered the 'bible' of A+ study. Self-study will also look pretty attractive to a lot of employers as it shows you are enthusiastic enough about your career to dedicate your own time to getting certified.

Above all, don't get disheartened. If you love IT enough, you WILL make it in the industry. There are a LOT of chancers, piss-takers and cheats working in IT - sooner or later they get found out and end up on the scrapheap. You just need to make sure you are there ready and waiting when this happens!

Oh and PS: Don't make the mistake of thinking the streets are paved with gold inside the M25. There are more applicants per job in London than anywhere else in the UK - and a bigger percentage of the people applying are pretty good - that's just a fact of life living in the city.