thinking of doing MCSE with advent, advise please

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hi all i am new on here and was hoping for a little advice.

i done A+ about 2 years ago, foolish i was to think i would get a job in IT as a result, that didn't happen and i am working at my old job as a printer/boookbinder.
recently i started to think maybe if i can get some more IT qualifications under my belt i can get on the ladder of a career in IT, this is where advent came in. i went for an interview with an advent rep who seemed ok and really bigged up the course and thought that the MCSE would be the right choice for me, he also told me that it would take about 3 years to complete if i put the work in and that it would cost me £6000.
i asked him if i could see some examples of the sort of things i would have to do to obtain the MCSE and i didnt hear from him again until recentley (after about 3 months). now the guy seems more like a salesman getting a little pushy trying to get me to sign up.

i am at a bit of a lose end as to what to do, the course sounds good but it seems very expensive and would i have a good chance of getting a good career out of it? i have a 9month old baby boy and £6000 is a lot of money at the moment but if it would provide me with a good career in the near future it would be worth it.

here is a link for advent MCSE course

http://www.adventtraining.co.uk/it-courses/microsoft-certified-systems-engineer-(mcse)/

sorry for going on and on but if any1 has any advise it would be greatly appreciated

many thanks

j

 

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Search the forum for previous threads on 'Advent'. They're probably the most frequently referenced Training provider on here.

Let me be the first to give you some advice that several others on here will probably give you pretty quickly - getting more certifications without actually working in IT is NOT the way to go about getting a job. Around 90% of working in IT is experience - you'll only learn 10% of what you need to know from a book and employers are not stupid about this - thwy won't hire you without experience. I know it's not what you want to hear, and it can often seem like a vicious circle (no job without experience, no experience without a job) but you really are in the position, with your A+, of looking for your first job in IT already. You might want to consider augmenting this with a Network+, but that won't get you a job in anything other than first-line support.

Unfortunately, Training providers sell you all the old bull**** under the sun about certifications being the path to IT riches. As you;ve found out already, nothing could be further from the truth - the only way you get into IT is by working your way up from the bottom. Thew silver lining is that, once you do get your first IT job, you're over the hardest hurdle in the industry. So long as you love working in IT and are competent at it, you'll always have a job - there are so many piss-takers in this industry that those who genuinely like it, and are good at it, will have a massive advantage over those who just got into it because they bought the bull**** line that all you need to work in IT and earn 40 grand a year is an MCSE

Do NOT waste your money. Do NOT do an MCSE without working in IT. The two best bits of information you will ever receive.

 

Hi and welcome to CF!

Have a look through this site for the general view about this, as this question has been asked many times.

Main points are:
You can get certs without paying so much if you self-study
Going for an advanced cert will *hurt* your chances at getting a job.


At the moment things are very tight in the job market - but as you already have your A+ I'd suggest that you 1) start looking for *entry level* jobs, and 2) consider getting your N+ via self-study.

Harry.

 

thanks a lot for the advise, after i posted i found tons of threads about this issue, sorry for wasting anybodys time, do you have any advice on how to get a foot in the door? i tried with some agencies for helpdesk jobs etc..no luck, i have even called some companies and offered to work for nothing and still no luck.
may seem a bit of a no brainer but i am just not sure where to look or how to go about getting a start, maybe somebody has been in the same situation and can help.

thanks again

j

 

You haven't wasted anyone's time! We're used to new people on the forum asking the questions you've asked, and are pretty well-versed in giving the same advice! Besides, we're here to help people out and don't mind taking the time to offer advice to people worried about spending a massive amount of money on - well, not very much really!

Best advice I could give for getting your foot in the door is to register with as many agencies and on as many jobsites as possible. Be reasonable about the amount of money you're asking for, if you don't live anywhere near a major city say you are prepared to travel, tailor your CV to make mention of ANY experience you have in IT in non-IT roles and write to local charities & community organisations to say you're willing to work ina voluntary capacity. You may not believe it, but a lot of people have got their start in IT from working voluntarily for a charity then getting taken on as an employee.

 

thanks for your time zebulebu, will give it a go.

j

 

That sounds like it came straight from the New Testament!

 

I am doing an MCSE with Advent at the moment and for the number of hoops I have to jump through to get the funding for exams I am starting to wish I didn't - but that is a separate matter.

If you have read the other threads then you will have seen the headline - it costs far less to buy the books and sit the exams then what you will be paying for Advent - considerably less. Assuming you pass all the MS exams first time they will cost you £792 at todays prices (£88 x 9 exams)

The books at approximately £45 cost you £405

A life time MS membership to someone like examforce for the preparation software will cost you somewhere between £600 - £1000

So throw all that togther it will cost you £2297 to get everything Advent offer bar the classroom days which, to be fair, I normally come away going I didn't know that for at least one piece of information.

So bar the Classroom days you are saving just shy of £3800. That is the headline figure most of the forum will tell you. There is however another side to this.

By registering with a training provider you can say to a prospective employer "I take this seriously enough to go out and study in my own time and have registered with X company and this is the course structure etc etc" which combined with some prior experiance is a very good thing

However as the others have said having advanced certs without experiance is silly, your training wil not be worth the paper of the certificate that microsoft don't give you without the experiance to back that up.

The same cannot be said however of the entry level certificates - which as they say on the Tin are entry level. I would take some of the money you save, go to your local college of tech/ buy the books and maybe look at the MCDST which is a good entry level cert and will stand you apart from some of the people looking to get their foot on the ladder. Its worth noting that a Microsoft Certification was often a (stupid in my opinion) entry requirement set by HR teams even for entry level jobs.

What I am trying (in a very round about way) to say is a Training Provider are there to make money, they are a business after all, they do charge for the service they provide and it is not always worthwhile. However attempting to self study where you do not have the tools to practice your practical skills it is equally hard. Take a long look at what you need from your training, and by all means ask more questions here, look at the options (training provider, Self Study, taught sessions etc) an see which is best for you.

Good Luck

 

Yup, kissing arse is definately the place to start!

 

Dammed funny

 

If you don't yet know anyone in IT, get out there and meet them. Networking - with people, not with wires - is one of the single-most overlooked aspects of career development. People who are already in the industry know when and where jobs are opening up, often before the positions are officially listed. As a result, you're not competing with a billion others who see the same job advert... you're competing against, at best, a handful of people who have similarly discovered the "hidden" job opportunity.

So how do you "get out there and meet them"? Well, here's a great place. The gang here meets up every now and then to hang out and enjoy each other's company. There are also numerous IT professional organizations that hold meetings on a regular basis where you can not only learn about all things IT, but also interact with others who are in IT or want to be in IT.

 

I understand what you're saying. However, studying with a training provider doesn't automatically mean that you "take this seriously enough". In fact, if I had received two similar CVs, but one individual had studied on his/her own and the other had used a training provider, I'd lean towards hiring the one who learned on his/her own. It takes discipline and perserverence to study on your own without the prompting of a class schedule or the constant, nagging fear of losing the money you spent on classes. Plus, from an employer's perspective, I'd rather hire someone who can learn on their own, not someone I'm gonna have to send to expensive classes to learn new things.

 

And that indeed is the other side of the coin. That particular example was actually said in my interview for the post I am in at the moment, and while was not a deciding factor it was one the boss said to me later impressed him. However the commitment to stufy in your own time - assuming you can back it up as a very impressive thing, and in the case of my employer the backup of the training company provided the backup i didn't have (as I hadn't passed an exam by then)

The other point I was also making was that there is more to the training provider then just the cost involved and this is normally overlooked.

 

Why would you not be able to "back it up"? Having the certifications is proof enough that you have the commitment to study.

One of the things that a training course gives you that self-study cannot is being able to network with other people who either want to be in IT or are already in IT. This can help you find job opportunities that you otherwise wouldn't discover. I wouldn't buy into any guarantees of jobs that a training provider uses to lure you in... but even so, there are other ways of finding a job through a training course! ;)

Another thing that a training course gives you that self-study cannot is instant access to an instructor. That said... everyone on THIS forum has nearly-instant access to a number of well-qualified and experienced instructors, so that shouldn't really be a deciding factor for you fine individuals!

 

At that point I had no IT qualifications so that was where that came in useful.

And as for the Networking - you are indeed correct - I met Tbone on one of the advent courses!