The 5 year plan to £50k

[dowie]

Do employers really care about gaps in employment history? I'm sure the answer is "yes", but I genuinely don't understand it.

If somebody decided to go for a 6 month round the world tour between jobs that would probably even be a talking point on a CV, but if somebody just takes 6 months off and "chills", that's suddenly a big no-no.

depends - it isn't just whether employers care or not but also that you're in a position to be taken advantage of too. If you're in employment and you want a new job then they're going to have to usually bid an amount higher than what you're currently earning. If you're not in employment and you've got a gap that you've got no real explanation for then you're opening yourself up to being valued less. I mean you could try to explain it away as a deliberate gap but the perception is that your previous employment came to an end and you've not been able to find a new job. This might not matter in some place where there are set pay bands but even then could matter in some cases just re: where you fit in terms of banding. It can certainly be a factor where a hiring manager has a wide salary range for a position, they'll see that you've been unemployed for a few months - not much risk of losing you as a hire by giving you a lower salary than they could otherwise offer as you'll probably take it anyway.

Someone going traveling doesn't have that perception issue compared with someone who has been sat at home 'chilling'.


you might well need to get a job and then look for another job in a year - tis much better to job search when already in employment as they have to incentivise you to leave

 

[FurryLemon]

Do employers really care about gaps in employment history? I'm sure the answer is "yes", but I genuinely don't understand it.

If somebody decided to go for a 6 month round the world tour between jobs that would probably even be a talking point on a CV, but if somebody just takes 6 months off and "chills", that's suddenly a big no-no.

It's like we as a society want to punish people for not working solidly from 18-65. I just don't get it, when other countries like Greece (maybe bad example) don't seem so hung up about it?

Appreciate this is a slight tangent.

Depends on the work you do and how much you make. For a contractor like me who bought in 30k odd a month, the odd gap wouldn't even be bought up. Someone making 25k a year with a 6 month gap, that looks bad. Difference being, I could afford to take 6 months off, someone on 25k yearly cannot.

 

[FoxEye]

depends - it isn't just whether employers care or not but also that you're in a position to be taken advantage of too. If you're in employment and you want a new job then they're going to have to usually bid an amount higher than what you're currently earning. If you're not in employment and you've got a gap that you've got no real explanation for then you're opening yourself up to being valued less. I mean you could try to explain it away as a deliberate gap but the perception is that your previous employment came to an end and you've not been able to find a new job. This might not matter in some place where there are set pay bands but even then could matter in some cases just re: where you fit in terms of banding. It can certainly be a factor where a hiring manager has a wide salary range for a position, they'll see that you've been unemployed for a few months - not much risk of losing you as a hire by giving you a lower salary than they could otherwise offer as you'll probably take it anyway.

Someone going traveling doesn't have that perception issue compared with someone who has been sat at home 'chilling'.


you might well need to get a job and then look for another job in a year - tis much better to job search when already in employment as they have to incentivise you to leave

Thanks, that makes a lot of sense.

 

[RoboCod]

All of my jobs have been in my comfort zone. Is that bad? Should I apply for jobs that are out of my depth? Would I even have a chance of getting them?

No.
Yes.
Maybe - you won't know if you don't try.

 

[RoboCod]

you might well need to get a job and then look for another job in a year - tis much better to job search when already in employment as they have to incentivise you to leave

My GF did exactly this. She joined a company employed to manage their intranet pages, she expected some good hands on work. She was disappointed to find that the company didn't actually have the intranet, or funds for it, in place yet so found herself with very little to do and soon got fed up of that. Needless to say she was on a reasonable salary and it just so happened that another company head hunted her to work in a support role for one of their systems. She attended an interview and had a few phone calls with the bosses and salary was discussed. They stated a salary 'range' for the role and asked her to submit what she expected to be paid for her role. My obvious response was to demand the maximum and let them negotiate back from there. The point being, they wanted her skill set and she was in the commanding position of being able to negotiate a salary relative to her current wage. They didn't need to know that she hated her current job, they just needed to know that if the offer was good enough, it would entice her away.

One other thing, and this is from someone who never has and never will work in IT as such, but I'm pretty sure the industry isn't fixed on this terming of 1st, 2nd and 3rd line support you keep mentioning. Those terms are only relevant to the company you work in. I mean, sure someone might state they're 3rd line support, but what if he is only one of three people who work in IT support for the whole company. IMO it just sounds like people who want to fluff up their positions... am I wrong?

 

[FoxEye]

Just to answer your last point Robo, 1st line is generally first point of contact, ie helpdesk. They usually have a maximum time they can deal with any incident, before handing it over to 2nd line.

The distinction between 2nd and 3rd line is a bit more organisation specific. But 1st line normally equates to helpdesk, 2nd line would be field support/remote support, but will have more time to analyse and fix problems than helpdesk.

Helpdesk normally can only look at calls for a couple hours max before needing to hand over. Depends as you say on the size of the organisation and the team structure they have in place.

 

[dowie]

One other thing, and this is from someone who never has and never will work in IT as such, but I'm pretty sure the industry isn't fixed on this terming of 1st, 2nd and 3rd line support you keep mentioning. Those terms are only relevant to the company you work in. I mean, sure someone might state they're 3rd line support, but what if he is only one of three people who work in IT support for the whole company. IMO it just sounds like people who want to fluff up their positions... am I wrong?

that is what it seems like to me

though you do see people saying they do 1st line and 2nd line etc.. on here for example - which suggests they have some set criteria re: the sort of jobs '1st line' should do and the sort of jobs '2nd line' should do

in my previous firm that wasn't the case - if you were in the team that was responsible for answering the calls from clients then you were '1st line' there was a 2nd line team but there was no 3rd line. No one could be both you were in one team or the other, you answered calls or you didn't. So someone joining from another company who'd done 1st line, 2nd line and 3rd line could well end up int he 1st line team... though it perhaps wouldn't be sold that way to them when interviewing and would likely still pay more than their previous job.

 

[dowie]

Just to answer your last point Robo, 1st line is generally first point of contact, ie helpdesk. They usually have a maximum time they can deal with any incident, before handing it over to 2nd line.

The distinction between 2nd and 3rd line is a bit more organisation specific. But 1st line normally equates to helpdesk, 2nd line would be field support/remote support, but will have more time to analyse and fix problems than helpdesk.

Helpdesk normally can only look at calls for a couple hours max before needing to hand over. Depends as you say on the size of the organisation and the team structure they have in place.

if I give you an example where I worked - I started out doing support then moved to dev. First line would take a range of issues and while some would only take a few hours to solve others might take days or weeks and involve liaising with dev, speccing a fix etc..

The second line team didn't exist when I first joined but was eventually created by taking one person from each of the dev teams... so they essentially had one specialist person(ex developer) for each area of the application who could handle deep issues with that particular area and was already familiar with the code base.

 

[sports_brah]

if I give you an example where I worked - I started out doing support then moved to dev. First line would take a range of issues and while some would only take a few hours to solve others might take days or weeks and involve liaising with dev, speccing a fix etc..

The second line team didn't exist when I first joined but was eventually created by taking one person from each of the dev teams... so they essentially had one specialist person(ex developer) for each area of the application who could handle deep issues with that particular area and was already familiar with the code base.

Out of curiosity what do you do now? I remember you talking about some IB experience.

 

[dowie]

Out of curiosity what do you do now? I remember you talking about some IB experience.

at the moment, nothing... which I guess is slightly ironic considering I've just spoken out against employment gaps

am still debating my next move am just coming to the end of a non compete period and have been offered a couple of roles but also have the opportunity to study for a year

 

[FoxEye]

I'm guessing dowie that was either a fairly small IT dept or a fairly specialist one?

Our organisation (county council) had several thousand users (slightly less than 10k), and perhaps over 100 IT people (don't have exact numbers, but helpdesk alone was about 30 people).

The majority of helpdesk would only look at calls for a couple hours max. There were some who alternated between helpdesk and being the people who would take calls from helpdesk. Then there was our team which was a mixture of field support and remote desktop support. We took calls from helpdesk that they either couldn't fix or had run out of time.

There was a clear divide there between what we called 1st line (helpdesk, time limited to a couple hours) and 2nd line (our team, no time restrictions, work to completion).

In our place we had separate teams for everything. A network team, a server team, a DBA team, etc, etc. These specialist teams were what I'd personally refer to as 3rd line in our organisation, and we'd often have to involve them where we didn't have either the permissions or specialist knowledge they had.

We were very task-oriented in our structure. A helpdesk guy could not do anything to a server or look at any network equipment. We could, but with very limited permissions. The specialist teams were the only ones who could really change anything relating to their field.

 

[dowie]

I'm guessing dowie that was either a fairly small IT dept or a fairly specialist one?

it wasn't an IT department, it was application support at a software vendor

 

[sports_brah]

at the moment, nothing... which I guess is slightly ironic considering I've just spoken out against employment gaps

am still debating my next move am just coming to the end of a non compete period and have been offered a couple of roles but also have the opportunity to study for a year

Studying seems pretty good. Have you done the CFA? Seems like there are good avenues to go after that. ^^

 

[FoxEye]

OK. As another distinction, and not being mean here, helpdesk had different criteria for recruiting than we did. Helpdesk often took people who by their own admission weren't IT people. They followed scripts.

All the people in our team came from previous IT roles and backgrounds.

I think that is another reason for the distinction between 1st and 2nd line. If you say you're 2nd line it gives the impression you at least did real IT work

I don't think terms like 1st or 2nd line were official, however, so you're probably correct there.

 

[tres]

I have successfully completed the '5 year plan to £50k'!!!

I did it in only 3 years as well.
I still have 2 to go. I'll have reached £70k ish by then. Can't wait to start repaying it all back.

 

[sports_brah]

I have successfully completed the '5 year plan to £50k'!!!

I did it in only 3 years as well.
I still have 2 to go. I'll have reached £70k ish by then. Can't wait to start repaying it all back.

You seem to have a chip on your shoulder about your debt.

You entered as a mature student, surely you were aware of it.

 

[FoxEye]

I have successfully completed the '5 year plan to £50k'!!!

I did it in only 3 years as well.
I still have 2 to go. I'll have reached £70k ish by then. Can't wait to start repaying it all back.

I was about to say "nice, grats!" until I figured what you meant

Sucks, man. But it's not real debt, as that guy from MSE has often said. A lot of people will never pay it all back, and it doesn't affect credit scores, etc, etc. In many ways it's just not real debt at all.

 

[Elixir]

Other people just seem to know exactly what they want to do. I have never known what I wanted to do.

From my experience it is very rare that people "know" what they want to do, most people tend to end up going down a certain career path based on personal interests/skills like you mentioned, then identify what they see as the most interesting part of that career path and work towards progressing in that direction.

 

[dowie]

Studying seems pretty good. Have you done the CFA? Seems like there are good avenues to go after that. ^^

nah that's not really my thing, I think if I am to stay doing something related to finance then ideally something a bit more quantitative and not in a bank

 

[dowie]

I think that is another reason for the distinction between 1st and 2nd line. If you say you're 2nd line it gives the impression you at least did real IT work

I don't think terms like 1st or 2nd line were official, however, so you're probably correct there.

well I guess that is partly why we didn't emphasise it much when recruiting - for a technical person with zero finance knowledge and coming from a generic IT background we wanted people with what you'd call 2nd/3rd line experience for our 1st line team... but if you tell them they'll be doing '1st line support' it gives the wrong impression.