getting back into IT

[leiela]

Hi,

im currently a software engineer and my career is going great having recently graduated university im exactly where i hoped to be at this point in my career.

However...

My significant other half sacrificed his own career to get me here and looking for suggestions to help him get back into IT.

when we met he was a IT engineer / network engineer primarily he povided network and computer support for a small company setting up pc's and dealing with basic day to day issues.

However the company went bust and his job fell though, because we where expecting a baby he took the first crappy job that came along just to pay the bills, and although for a while he tried to get back into IT ..the time was never right, i started collage then uni and we couldn't risk him being out of work.

9 years later he's still doing the same crappy dead end job with no prospects and all of his IT skills / qualifications are so out of date he has nothing relevent to offer to get back into IT.

I know he needs to basically go back to school needs to get relevent and upto date qualifications but we still arn't in a financial position that we can afford for him to spend time / money getting pointless training employers don't want and all the collages seem to be pushing qualifications i've never heard of and im not sure are worth the time/effort and cost.

Having wracked up a number of these pointless bits of paper myself before uni i don't want him to fall into the same trap.

So whats the best way of working out which qualifications are worth the paper they are written on?? and whats the best and most affordale way to get back him into the IT job market.

 

[RiverGuy]

It would probably help to have him talk to someone with a wide array of knowledge of your local IT job market, such as a reputable recruiter. They should be able to tell him which related skills are in demand in your area.

 

[spamly]

He could also try getting a job as a business analyst in an IT shop. This is somebody that coordinates business projects/IT requirements. He would gain experience on the "business" side of the house and get exposed to newer IT advances. Something like this may allow him to eventually move over to the IT side of the house.

 

[DonQuichote]

Where I live (the Netherlands), there are grades for IT people, but not every company takes them equally serious. The most accepted grades are Microsoft ones, and they are not always held in a high regard, but are used by recruiters or personnel managers who want an easy way of filtering people out.

That said, experience is much more valuable. That need not be experience in other companies, experience at home can be valuable as well. People who built home networks are valued better than people who only clicked together some pre-installed systems at a training.

It may not be good for your relationship to convince your partner to become a nerd, but it can help with gaining some experience.

Furthermore, I do not regard official training that high. Most available commercial courses train "old and safe" skills and will never get you to the front line of IT. If you really want to know the state of IT today, there's no place like the internet. Especially usenet can be a good source of information, if you can filter out the garbage. At the very least, you can find people there with a sound attitude who can point you to books, sites and maybe even courses.

It may also help to find a not-mainstream market to operate in. I started my programming career as an AutoLisp programmer. That is a highly specialized and small market. But if you are willing to learn, the entire market will know you if you are getting good. I work now as a PHP programmer for a company that does mostly network installations, of which a lot are Linux based. Other companies are literally begging us to outsource our personnel, because people with good Linux knowledge are really rare.

Finally, just don't give up. The real answer to getting a good job is not to give up trying.

Good luck!

+++ Despite being wrong in every important aspect, that is a very good analogy +++
Hex (in Darwin's Watch)

 

[norteldude78]

first of all, its not too late. I suggest focusing on what part of IT he wants to be in (network admin, engineer, windows, cisco, linux, etc). It's hard to be a jack of all trades when you have been out of the game so long. I went to a tech school. I owe a lot of money, but it was worth it. I was 25 when I started and I felt old starting out. But there were people in their 30's and up starting new careers. Never give up. education and experience, get them however you can.