Getting your foot in the door of an IT career

[Black Dynamite]

I think sometimes experience counts for much more than a degree.

Sometimes you can have too many qualifications and not enough experience. If you plan on moving to more of a managerial role further down the line, get a degree but if you want a more hands on job role, like a network engineer, try to get your CCNA / Microsoft certs while looking for work.

For the sake of 3 / 4 years I wish i'd have got a degree looking back!

 

[psyk_one]

Do a degree with a sandwich year - best of both worlds, you graduate with one year of work experience and a degree.

Mates GF did one year with Intel as part of her degree, got paid reasonably as well.

You might be able to get a job with some non-degree courses under your belt, but you'll stand a batter chance WITH a degree.

 

[cHk4]

I don't have a degree and I'm a technical consultant now, I did however have to do 5 + years of tech support (2nd line)

 

[ubersonic]

If the interview/recruitment is being done by a non-IT type then they will only care about seeing a degree (in anything) and won't understand what a CCNP or MCP are. If its being done by an IT type they won't care about a degree (even in I.T) and will much rather see real world experience or I.T qualifications.

Luck of the draw.

 

[wozzizname]

Got a degree but doing support, as its about the only way to get your foot in the door these days. Just hope I can break out before too long.

 

[Crafty]

My 2p worth, probably mostly applies to SW Dev..

Show me two people that are pretty equal other than:

One has 3 years of relevant experience
The other has been ****ing it up at uni for 3 years and came out with a 2:1

I'll take the first guy. I've seen quite a few employers do the same.

The vast majority of post grads I've seen come in to the workplace whilst academically clever have struggled, some were pretty useless in all honesty.
If people have relevant experience you can ask them to find out how much they do/don't know and work out if they are useful to you.

Personally I think even my working life (about 17 years) the value of a degree has been devalued, its certainly not the accolade it was 30 years ago.

If you want to go down the networking route I reckon industry specific qualifications will go much further - some Cisco qualifications for example will open doors that a degree wouldn't. If you are administering Microsoft stack there are qualifications there too.
They aren't the be all and end all but I reckon they give you a good start.

I don't have a degree - I worked out at the time it wasn't worth it.. Post grads starting salaries were not high at the time. I found a job and was earning more than post grad entry salaries within 18 months IIRC, stayed about 2-2.5 years and moved. My second employer told me that experience was more useful than a degree and hence I was offered the job.
Just under 2 years ago I moved to my current job and quite a few people have degrees, again I was told that my understanding/knowledge gained in the workplace was the primary reason for my employment. Quite a few people I work with have degrees and other colleagues (not strictly IT related) have PhDs in subjects like pure maths.
We all work pretty well together and value each others opinions/thoughts/knowledge as well as working with well educated colleagues overseas.

My point is a degree is not the be all and end all. If you have aptitude and are reasonably intelligent it will be evident to employers who will value you and your skills.

 

[Nitefly]

The only thing that going to university will increase is your post count.

Jokes aside, it will open up a few doors.

 

[NinetyOne]

Thanks for the input. Need to give this some more thought!

 

[Ev0]

Well it sounds like it's not development work you want to do, more hardware/network stuff, so I'd say a degree is less important than if you we're going for a software dev role.

Uni and a degree have their benefits, but as Rotty says take a look at the apprentice schemes run by some of the big boys.

Unlike Rotty's place I know IBM take apprentices on directly and have a decent scheme.

Or the other route could be go to uni and head for a grad scheme after.

Personally I went to uni and got a normal, non grad scheme, IT job and progressed from there.

 

[MikeTimbers]

If you want to be a techie, go get technical qualifications such as the CCNA that was suggested earlier. But sooner or later, if you find you want to move up into IT management or to join a consulting firm, not having a degree can be a drawback.

I'm lucky in that I do not have a degree and yet have done well in the IT world but it's much easier to get away with it when you've been in the industry nearly 30 years!