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Moving Up the IT Ladder in a Poor Economy?
Andy asks: "As almost anyone who joined the IT industry on the tail end of the Dot-Com boom can tell you, trying to move up in the industry for the past couple of years has been like jogging up-wind in a hurricane. I have sent resumes to countless numbers of employers only to still be working in the same $13/hr. low-end outsource support job as when I started (and $13/hr. doesn't get you too far in Boston these days). Learning more and more languages/technologies/protocols has merely resulted in a larger skill set on my resume, with pretty much the same level of experience, and no new interviews. Has anyone else been able to get out of this sort of slump, either during this economic slump or a previous one? Should I just continue the path of learning as much as I can and applying for jobs? Would getting a cert (maybe an RHCE or some Cisco certs) help? Would it be worth it to get a degree in MIS or CS?"
Move out a Boston.
Big cities think in big company ways. You have management and underlings.
Get to some smaller city where you can work for a smaller business, learn the entire business and move up from there.
At aim for smaller companies ones without a set corporate structure that has no room for you anywhere but the bottom.
t
2 things:
1) Certification earned in the military most likely was tough to get, and thus is respected.
2) There are a lot of worthless IT certs in the civilian world, that's why we disrespect them. The poster mentioned "technically adept and smart employers"... headhunters rarely (at least in my experience) have a clue, they're just trying to match technology names to a resume. I once had this fellow quite confused, as it took 5 minutes to explain, that coding Java, and "writing java scripts" were not related. stoopeed headhunter...
"Faith: Belief without evidence in what is told by one who speaks without knowledge, of things without parallel." - A.B.
The one thing that's better to have is a DOD security clearance. In the DC area, if you've got a security clearance, you can score a job in the low $60s with barely any experience. Since it can take upwards of 18 months to get clearance, most employers want new hires to already have clearance.
No boom today. Boom tomorrow. There's always a boom tomorrow. - Cmdr. Susan Ivanova
I agree... a cert won't mean much once the interview process starts, but it could make the difference in getting the interview in the first place.
I worked as HR Database Admin for a fairly large (6000+ employee) manufacturing company with plants all over the US. A monster ad for a new Network admin brought in 500+ resumes.
The position reported directly to the CIO, so he was running the hiring process. You don't drop 500 resumes on the CIO's desk. You don't even drop 100 resumes on his desk.
We told him how many applicants we had, and he basically said "OK, throw out everyone who doesn't have a degree, everyone who doesn't have a certification, and everyone who doesn't have a stable work history and at least 5 years of experience. Let me know how many are left."
That got us down to about 60 or so. Did we toss out the best candidate? Very likely. Did we have the time and manpower to give each of those resumes the attention it deserved? Hell no.
I am NOT a man!
I am a free number!
P.S. I would never hire a specialist except probably for a decent DBA.
Amen to that. When I see people with 5-10 yrs experience doing one type of work, I run. This typically means that they either can't or won't learn new things. I've been a tester for a diverse set of projects, but there are others in my group who have been working on the same set of technologies for 10 years. Guess who understands the company better? Guess who is more employable (especially outside of telecomm, where I currently work)? Yep, me. I have a lot of knowledge and I've proven that I can and will learn and improve.
So to the question at hand. My advice is do something to show you want to do more than what you are doing now. All you have proven is that you can handle a $13/hr support job. Fine, I have no problem hiring you to do that for me. But you want more. If I were interviewing you, I would want to know what job do you want and what have you done to prepare yourself for it. With the way support is being outsourced, you can't expect to stay in that field and make more money. You need to do _something_ to move yourself where you want to go. Certs? Degree? Depends on what you want to do. But if you aren't willing to go get some of the easy certs how would I, as a hiring manager, know that you will really stretch yourself at my company. I've seen a lot of resumes and everybody with a few years of experience can list lots of technologies, even if they don't really know them. You have to do something to prove you are different.
I personally think a degree is the way to go. It gives you the background you need for other things and shows you are willing to work hard to improve yourself. It is the key to most of the higher paying jobs out there. Without it you will always be chasing after the latest certificate.