tried to hustle up some business

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So, sick of not having any work i decided i use my initiative and try and get some

Went into 3 seperate repair shops that are fairly local to me and asked if there were any oppertunities to either work for them, be a sub contracted engineer as they didnt offer a callout service and even some voluntry work!

the response i got..."we would love youngsters to work here, but we cant afford the insurance"

balls

i didnt think 19 was THAT young

they all took my number down anyway but im not going to hold my breath seeing as they turned down my offer to work voluntarilly

back to the drawing board

 

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So does that mean the shops are operating without insurance at all or does it mean that it would cost them too much more to insure with you working there?

 

i think its safe to assume they are all insured

i guess id be bumping up their premium too much

 

are we talking about full time employment here, or work *experience*? If the latter, then as soon as word get's around you will spend as much time as you want repairing friends and families machines!

 

Sorry, mate... repairing PCs for your friends and family is not typically considered "real-world experience" by employers. Does it help you learn new things and techniques? Absolutely! But it's not considered experience. If it were, I'd have had 18 years in the "industry" (going back to age 10) before getting my first IT job at $11/hr.

 

Perhaps not Mike, but it's better than no experience.

 

Im already "the IT bloke" to my friends and family, and most of them dont have computers believe it or not so i dont get asked that much at all from them

My intentions were to offer my services to their shops, either by being a field engineer for them as they didnt currently offer this service or to even work voluntarilly just so im doing something with myself as i find myself sitting in this seat for 12 hours a day doing bugger all recently, but no one was throwing me a bone

i already have public liability insurance which i informed them of, but this wont cover me if i was working in their premises..i think

 

It is... however, I thought it best to be clear about that before someone lists it on their CV as "Work Experience" or attempting to apply for jobs that require experience when that's all they have...

 

I agree!

 

that would make for a classic resume / CV

 

My daughter is 19. Guess again.

 

Im getting the same kind of responce from people i ask at the moment.

Your oppertunity will come. Just keep plugging away!

 

Hmmm.... Wrote a long reply yesterday and it seems to have disappeared. I'll give you the short version.

In my opinion you're asking to fail making the requests you are, to the businesses you are talking to. Why would a business, in the business of providing computer repair services, want to contract work out to you, a probable competitor? They aren't about to help you take business away from them, and that's how they see you.

You need to be talking to businesses where they will be looking for a company/technician to do repair/service for them because they don't have the ability to do it for themselves. You're still cold calling which is very difficult, but at least you're not trying to compete with the people you're talking to. You're offering them a service they don't provide for themselves.

Also, talking to only 3 or 4 businesses is not enough. You need to be talking to 8 or 10 a day. Salesmen who cold call, even the very best of them, fail 90% of the time. Don't be a bit surprised if you fail at least that often. You're new to sales, new to the industry, etc....

Your best chances are going to be when you find a business that is very upset with their current vendor. So, just keep on talking to small businesses. If you're turned down, but turned down very nicely, as what you need to do improve your chances of getting their business.

Look professional when you go out. Have your business cards available. Make sure you rehearse what you want to say before you start out. Unless you're really good at communicating with strangers while under pressure you'll need the practice.

A week after you go out and hand out business cards, make the rounds again. Just stop in and say, hi. Don't be pushy. Just be friendly. I can't tell you how much business I drummed up that way as an hvac technician. Most of the time I found a reason to stop a store a few times before I'd even hit them up. I'd make sure they had seen me a few times. Then I'd just leave them my business card so they could think about it. Later I'd go back, find a noisy fan, evidence of dirty condensor coils, etc... and then tell them about it in a friendly way on my way through checkout and tell them I could most likely save them some money on their utility bills. Sometimes I'd sell them on the spot. Other times I'd need to go back a few more times, but I always did it while buying something from them. It lowered the resistance, and it showed them I wasn't there just to high pressure sell them.

Once I got good at the above routine I had results well above 90%. I didn't start out with that kind of percentage of success though. I was lucky to get 10%. I just kept on keeping on, and kept on learning.

Now, I know you won't be able to use that exact way of introducing yourself, but look for ways. Get to know people. That's a must.

 

Do you have any charities locally(who doesn't) who may need IT support, if so why not approach them and ask if they need your services for free, this would be classed surely as REAL world experience and the fact you are doing it charitably would look V. favourably on anyone's CV. maybe worth a try!

 

A mid-sized to large business might hand over their IT needs to an experienced IT services company... but a small business just MIGHT allow a 19-year-old to provide inexpensive support if he/she can gain their trust! Small companies don't want to pay high hourly rates for experienced techs... they'd rather pay cheap money for "good bargain" techs. Certainly this bites some of them in the butt when they get a tech who THINKS that they know what they're doing, but really know very little... but when you own a small company, you take calculated risks.

 

Umm..... You're reading a lot more into this than I ever suggested.

This is the second or third time this subject has come up, and as far as I know, Shaggy is looking for computer repair, not any networking, not any server administration, etc.... He's basically looking for workstation, PC, repair. I do not see that as an impossibility for him to get. Is it going to be difficult? You bet it is.

But, he's set his sights pretty reasonably as far as what he's looking for. He's never said he was trying to go into a medium sized business and be their main IT support. I certainly didn't encourage him to do that either. I encouraged him to go to small businesses where he would get a chance to talk to the business owners, where he could start out small, with the low hanging fruit.

 

Spot on Ffreeloader, no way could i handle any server admin or large networking support at this stage as i simply dont have that sort of knowledge. i would only look into something of that scale once i have relevant experience within a company for some years.

I wasnt going into these local repair shops as a competitor looking to steal work away from them, i knew they didnt offer a callout service to their customers, so i offered to be the person that did this and as a result of that i would take a percentage of money raised from such callout, so in effect id be making them more money

Good call on the charity shops, my mums a manager of one so ill have words with her later on!

In regards to contacting local businesses, who would i get in contact with to obtain such a list? ive had many people call me offering accountancy and advertising since i registered as self employed so they must get my details from somewhere. i assume the council? had a look on my councils website but couldnt find anything relevant.

Got a leaflet drop planned for this week, apparently i can expect around 3% of people who recieved my leaflets to call me so fingers crossed i can land some work!

Thanks for all the replies, really appreciated.