UK IT Job Market

If you start at a large company you'll end up at the lower levels for longer in my experience, more potential to do hands on stuff at a small company. On the other hand, people seem to pick up bad habits in terms of design and configuration from small companies. But if you start out working for someone big you'll have to be pretty talented to advance very far in a reasonable time frame...
 
On the subject of 1st line support and entry level IT/Networking jobs, it's a little early for me to realy look as I don't finish my degree till the end of the year, but does anyone either know any good companies to try and start off with, or happen to know a good list of companies? I ask because I have never had to job search before, and although most IT type companies I have looked at have a careers link on their website I am most likely overlooking a large portion of decent IT companies simply because I have never known about them (such as ISPs or companies that deal with other businesses rather that to a home user). Also, those here who have started a IT career in 1st line support or similar, do many companies allow you to advance to better positions or do most people just work in support for a few years to get the require experience to leave and hope for a career at a better company? Tr
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Try some of the better known IT job sites, there are usually companies looking for graduates be it permie or contracting roles. After graduating, i picked up my first job working for a large company this way , a contract role (lasted 18 months) and have been contracting for the last 12 years, suits me at the moment but contracting may not suit you but it can be a good way to get yourself through the door for the all important hands on experience you need to move on to better things..
 
fabkat said:
All the MS Certs are just a money maker for MS, its a pity to get some jobs you need them, as someone pointed out earlier just because you are MCSE, mcp etc etc it doesnt mean you what your talking about with all the braindumps about it makes it pretty easy to do. IT job market way up North is pretty dead.
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The thing you fail to see when reading the job adverts is that they require that AND experience. I have yet to see a job that just wants a MCSE with no experience.

I'm very lucky in that fact and have both and I would never say that the qualifications are useless. Yes MS make money as do VMWare (who force you to do the course) RedHat, Orion, Uni degrees, etc. but if they weren't required then people wouldn't do them and upskill themselves and thus you'd have a rubbish workforce.

I would say, especially 'up North', don't bother - unless you're very, very lucky there is not enough work up there. But I would say to continue with the qualifications sooner as they won't hurt where you are now or where you might be in a few years time.



M.
 
m4cc45 said:
The thing you fail to see when reading the job adverts is that they require that AND experience. I have yet to see a job that just wants a MCSE with no experience.M.
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Yes experience is everything and did not mean to imply that with no experience and an MCSE you would walk into a job so its something that i didn't fail to see. All i am saying is that it can stop very experienced IT folk for applying for a position because the job advert says you must have it. Worked for lots of companies 12+ and i can't remember having to to prove my 2003 status, strange i know but they kind of take it for granted.

Example.

IT person ten years experience working with global companies.
MCSE NT4

Now a job states mcse\mcsa 2003

They will not get an interview, why cause they have not updated there NT4 exam >2003 although they have experience working within a AD environment, servers etc since Server 2000 upwards. It’s just a bit of paper after all.

Someone applies and has 2 years exp + MSCE 2003 they get an interview and Mr NT4 doesn’t but I know who I would employ.
 
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Well it depends what that ten years was doing if he was doing 10 years on NT4 and you're fully 2003 then yes, he could probably do the job fine, but someone who has a 2003 qualification should know the benefits and how to implement them over NT4. If someone has been heavily envolved in IT then they really should have the qualifications to back that up is my opinion - it's only £120 an exam after all.

With regards to if he gets an interview it's purely down to the sifting process, if HR get it then they probably won't interview him. If IT get it then they may well think it's worth the risk. I was employed with an MCSA on the proviso that if I got the job then I would upgrade to an MCSE within six months.




M.
 
So nobody has any direct experience of the market up north then? I'd be specifically looking at Leeds or Manchester and wouldn't be averse to contracting, for the right money of course.
 
I would like to add my story -

I have been around computers since a little boy - aged around 7, moving up in the IT world the same as my Dad. I enjoyed computers at school and excelled. I went to college to take Computing / ICT to prepare for Uni, the practical work was easy however when it comes to exams my head explodes and forgets everything!!!!

I pretty much failed in my eyes C / D, so I thought that Uni (degree) would be too much of a waste of my time to do. So i started to seek IT Jobs...

I looked everywhere to come across a job in the Public Sector - IT Systems Administrator, so I thought that I would apply with no in-work experience or qualifications or degrees in IT.

I wizzed through the interview and 2 weeks later I had a phone call to say I got the job, I was utterly surprised seeing that 26 other candidates applied and im sure their would have been people with lots of experience due to it being April 09.

Im now in 1st/2nd Line support 70% support / 30% Project work and I really love it. I have been put on two Microsoft courses - Windows Server 2003 Upgrade to 2008 and a mixture of different courses bundled into one as well as two Solaris courses - basic systems administration and shell programming.... my future is definitely leading towards the world of Unix.

So it just goes to show qualifications or degrees go no-where these days.
 
jaket said:
So it just goes to show qualifications or degrees go no-where these days.
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did write a bigger reply but re reading it makes me sound like I'm having a go, which I'm not!

Basically I'd disagree with that statement, it's too much of a sweeping generalisation.

26 applicants is pretty low imho, our last trainee position drew over 100 applicants. And even though it was advertised as a trainee role we had lots of people already in similar jobs applying as the money was better than what they were on.

Sys admin jobs are pretty easy to get into with no quals or experience and are a good entry into an IT career.
 
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jaket said:
So it just goes to show qualifications or degrees go no-where these days.
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Maybe when getting your foot in the door for a basic 1st line position. Try finding a decent 3rd line position though that doesn't require an MCP as an absolute minimum. You'll be struggling.
 
ethos said:
You think a system administrator is entry level?
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Not all of them no, but this one clearly was, as are a whole lot of others.

Sys admin is one of those terms that's used so loosely it could mean a wide range of things and it's a role a lot of people start off in.
 
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Ev0 said:
Sys admin is one of those terms that's used so loosely it could mean a wide range of things and it's a role a lot of people start off in.
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So generally people in IT start off being a systems administrator for a business? Rubbish.

Most people start off working in small IT shops or as 1st line support
 
Guest2 said:
So generally people in IT start off being a systems administrator for a business? Rubbish.
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Er well this chap did, and in my experience a lot of people I know started their careers off in a basic sys admin role.

His job title is systems admin and in the next sentence he says his job is 70% 1st/2nd line, with the rest project work. I'd say that's like a hell of a lot of entry level jobs.

And I said sys admin is a role a lot of people start off in, that does not mean generally people start off their careers in IT as a sys admin.

I'd say most people start off 1st line, with basic sys admin jobs (which in a lot of places are mixed in with the 1st line teams, as this chap has said) coming in not far behind.

My first role was a sys admin type job, no experience, first IT role. My wife's first IT role, basic sys admin stuff, no experience.

No one I know in IT ever started off working for a small IT shop, but I'm not i any way saying that a lot of people don't...

I'm only going on my experiences and view of the IT world.
 
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jaket said:
So it just goes to show qualifications or degrees go no-where these days.
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Sorry to say that is not quite the truth, at least with most public sector jobs. Most jobs will require some form of certification or relevant experience in the application stage. The qualification can initially be a boon for you, as if you have 50-100+ job applicants and you are looking for someone with 'MCSE/PRINCE2/ITIL etc qualifications or relevant experience' it's far easier for the interviewer to quickly scan through a CV/application and put you in the 'interview' pile if you have the relevant qualification than it is for them to wade through, what at times can be, a mountain of waffle to actually find out whether or not you have the experience. You may be the most experienced person on the planet, but if you are piece of paper 100 then by that time the person doing the sorting may just have had enough, whereas if you had bothered to do a bit of studying and a 2hr exam you would already be in the 'right' pile. Use qualifications to supplement your experience.

Once they actually have their 'interview' pile that is where the qualifications start to mean less and the experience starts to count. That said, i have generalised this, it really depends on the role, if it is a specialised role then i would pay more attention to the experience when doing an initial sift but it would generally be the case i would get less applicants. If it's for a standard role such as service desk, desktop support then i would do an initial sift for quals then just skim read any CV left to see if anything caught my eye.

As for the Systems Admin side of things and starting off, i agree with Ev0, administrator/engineer/analyst/technician etc can mean a whole host of things. We have Systems Administrators who arent even in IT for some systems whose sole task is to 'administer' the system i.e. create/delete user accounts and grant/revoke permissions. Why? Because that is how the business wants it, and the business drives IT, not IT driving the Business.

It's basically a job title, what matters is what the roles and responsibilities of the job are that counts.
 
kefkef said:
As for the Systems Admin side of things and starting off, i agree with Ev0, administrator/engineer/analyst/technician etc can mean a whole host of things. We have Systems Administrators who arent even in IT for some systems whose sole task is to 'administer' the system i.e. create/delete user accounts and grant/revoke permissions. Why? Because that is how the business wants it, and the business drives IT, not IT driving the Business.

It's basically a job title, what matters is what the roles and responsibilities of the job are that counts.
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Exactly, as I said the title sys admin is such a general term it can mean so much.
 
The 2008 MCSE (MCITP:E) is much easier than the 2003 exams, if you are familiar with 2003 or 2008 the exams shoould be straight forward. Just get a few brain dumps and anything in the dump you don't know look it up and learn about it, fastest way to get the qualification.

The wort part of the exams is getting round to MS thinking, a lot of the questions exam how you understand a question rather than actually knowing the content. You could know the stuff inside and out and still fail the exams simply because MS asks some questions in such a convuluted way......
 
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