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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?"
The downside is that you have to leave Boston. Well one of many downsides......
I only got a good job going through the "front door" approach once in my life. I was 14 years old.
20 years later, everything worth getting came from being aggressive with marketing myself and finding unexpected leads. I would recommend possibly getting a book about Cold Calling. There's one especially good called Cold Calling for Women that's really good for men or women. There's also a classic book called What Color is Your Parachte. It's geared toward people who maybe want to switch careers, but it's got good discussion of finding jobs as well.
It seems to me that going the "normal career route" in the I.T. field is inherently problematic simply because our field changes so rapidly, and few employers want to keep up with constant retraining. So we've got to think differently from other workers, even if we're slogging through the office right next to them.
The way you get the big payoff is you think outside the box. Become your own entrepreneur. If that's too much hassle, enjoy your $13/hr wage.
Murray Todd Williams
I was able to get out of that trap by doing volunteer stuff at night to get experience and references.
to find a rich woman to live off of. I don't know where to get certified for that though.
You kill your boss to move up the ladder. I suggest this for a poor economy, too.
If you don't have a degree, and you can't seem to get anything better than entry-level and dead-end jobs, going to college would probably be a good idea. The degree alone won't solve your problems, but not having a degree gives the overworked HR drone sorting resumes an easy way to categorize yours... as a NO. Which could explain the lack of any interviews. (By the way, picking up a book on resume-writing might be a good idea as well.)
Furthermore, if you're going to go to college, the best time for that is during a weak economy (like now). You don't want to spend that occasional window of 4-5 years when everyone else is making money, by sitting in classes and paying money instead.
http://alternatives.rzero.com/
Learning more and more languages/technologies/protocols
In my opinion, a mile wide/inch deep skillset gets you nowhere. If a resume passed my desk with 50 million skills and 5 years total experience, I am going to question that resume right to the circular file. But maybe that's just me.
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
Would it be worth it to get a degree in MIS or CS?
I really hope this isn't serious... how exactly did you plan to get very far in a field you have no formal education in? Trust me, I am a firm believer that "clues > certs" but in the case of a university degree, it's a no brainer. I really hope this was a troll submission...
You ask whether it's "worth it" to get some more training or a degree. In return, I'd ask what you're trying to accomplish. Do you want to be a software engineer, given you don't have a computer science background? I've known a few excellent people in that situation, but they are VERY rare.
Also, before blaming the economy: is your resume excellent? Please post it online and I'm sure you'll receive some constructive criticism from the Slashdot crowd....
I don't know about that. The more skills you have the better. But no one wants a mediocre employee to begin with, no matter what the skill set. The more skills and experience with those skills you have, the more employable you'll be. It also gives you more spin options for your resume. And in this job market you're going to need to spin your resumes in as many ways as possible. If I were in this guys shoes, I would spend some serious money on certification. Nothing, not even formal education is more voluble than a high level certification in your chosen area. If you have high level certification and education... all the better.
This signature has Super Cow Powers
I'll second that. You don't find jobs by sending in resumes these days, especially if the resume is sent electronically. At most companies, electronic resumes (even .DOC files) are put into a database, and most are never read by anything but a computer.
The fact is, you need to get out there and talk to people, make some contacts, and make the most of your network. If you're going through HR, it's pretty unlikely you'll ever get an interview, nevermind a job.
Not having a degree can be a real career limiter/killer. I don't know precisely what kind of work you do/want to do, of course. For software developers, there's really no question unless you have some sort of fantastic background doing the core development of something really important (ie. if you're the equivalent of Linus Torvalds, then ok fine, I don't care if you went to college). Barring that, even if you want to do sysadmin/network design work, a bachelor's degree is pretty important, preferrably in CS or EE. If you're doing PC support tasks (of the "re-install office" type), then sure, no need for a degree, but then the opportunities for advancement are very limited. If you want to continue without a degree, then I think it really comes down to having some good connections that will take a risk on you. Don't expect a move up to management but at least move to salaried pay and then move on from there. BTW, it's been my experience that it's often not enough that you have a degree - it has to be from a great school with a good GPA. I'm not saying it necessarily makes you better, but it's often the filter that companies are using. Certifications usually don't help. For designer type positions, I think that they are actually a hindrence instead of a help...
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.
Real Headhunters work for companies to find the right person to fill a slot, whereas one of the other kinds throw as many bodies at a slot hoping that one will stick. The key difference between the former and the latter is that you don't contact the former about a job, they contact you.
Yeah, right.
Emphasis mine.
An RHCE is worth more than a Linux+ because its a damn site harder.
A CCNA is worth... well.. not much... except as the prerequirement for a CCNP. An MSCE is fine if you want to support windows, but the combination of an MSCE, A+ and CCNA isn't really that great. You are better off investing all your time and effort into one stream. Generalists are dime a dozen.
Note that if you are a support engineer, these certs are good for you. If you want to code, get a degree.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
555-1111...ring...ring...
Hello! My records indicate that this number is registered to an eligible single female in my area code. As an eligible single male, I wanted to take this opportunity to extend a special, one-time off...*click*....
sigh...
555-1112...ring...ring...
Let's try not to let fact interfere with our speculation here, OK?
Agreed. I pretty much *expect* people to have some sort of a college degree...and personally, at least a 4-year, and not from DeVry. If you don't, I immediately think "Why not?" Since I don't tend to think of the default human condition to be one of brilliance, I'm sorry to say that my prejudices do not lead me to believe that you're just too smart for college. ;)
Also, there are limiting social aspects to not having a degree, and if you come off like a troll in interviews, you are not going to get hired. Being able to talk about college experiences--which your future boss and interviewer probably had--is one way to find common ground. My current uber-boss is from near London, and being able to just chat with him about where I lived in that city when I did a semester abroad allowed us to establish some common ground that made the interview go must more smoothly.
Anyway, go get that sheepskin.
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
The value of certs varies depending on the audience that's seeing them. If you're one of several hundred applicants for a position, a head hunter will use certs/college degrees/years of experience to whittle that number down to a reasonable number for them to look at. In this case the certs are worth something.
However speaking as a hiring manager, I basically ignore them. I am more interested in past employment history, the candidates ability to solve technical questions given during the interview, and a general feeling for whether or not I think the person will get along well with the team.
Having military experience will definitely work in your favor, I found that the best candidate was someone who spent some time in the military, and has then had a couple of years inthe civilian world to adjust to the differences. Plus, the military experience, especially if you do tech work in the military, will many times get you past that initial culling the headhunters do if they don't get too many responses.
Never underestimate the power of human stupidity -RAH
You probably know a few people in your field who left the service before you did. Give them a call. Networking gets you jobs a lot more reliably than headhunters do, especially dumbass headhunters who ignore qualifications like yours.
Information wants to be anthropomorphized.
I was in california and could not find a tech job to save my life, so I moved to colorado. Same deal there. An offer from a family friend to move out to a small town in Arkansas turned out to be the best thing ever. There was a major shortage of knowledgable people here and finding work didn't take very long. My first job only paid $12/hr but consider that I also rented a 3 bedroom house in a nice neighborhood close to shopping and schools for $550 a month and gas was a good 50 cents cheaper than california.
I did my job, met people, tried my best to get known as a great tech and I now have a great job as a System Admin that I love to death. The cities are full of people looking for your kind of work. Get out of there and go somewhere that needs people that know the things that you do. Of course, you won't find any software companies in small towns but you will find TONS of businesses that have to use computers and networks to get their jobs done, and all those people need someone to work on their computers.
Most small towns have a few computer repair businesses that take care of the businesses but the days of walking in and fixing a computer quickly are over. It takes time to get to know someones network and software and you can't do a good job if you're charging an hourly rate like the small computer support businesses do. These areas are perfect for convincing a business that they will save money and get better service if they hire you as their admin. Show them all the things that need to be done on a daily basis like following security advisories, updating computers, checking security, etc.
The company I work for pays me quite well and they said their past 3rd party support cost them 3 times as much as I do, and more gets done quicker. Before they would have to wait to get something fixed, sometimes up to 3 days. Now things get fixed immediately and revenues are up because of it.
Just out of curiousity, how did you end up with a "bad" reference? If it was a former employer, you should know things like that are actionable. I've fired people for cause before, and even if someone calls, you can't say: "We fired him because he was a drunk". The best you can say is "Things did not work out with him".
(Here's a reference at FindLaw)
So, if this wasn't a business reference, was it a personal reference that went sour? That would be really sad... but I would have thought you might have known that this person was somewhat sour on you...
Not knocking you, just curious how this came about. I would never give a reference that wasn't a very positive one; I'd just omit those entirely! There's no rule that you have to give contact information and references for every job you've ever had.
It's a strange world -- let's keep it that way
The CCIE has no prereqs. It states that on the website. This is for historical reasons.
The CCNA has no prereqs. Its the entry level cert.
The CCNP and CCDA require the CCNA
The CCDP requires a CCDA.
Cisco won't send you the certificate if you don't fulfill the prereqs.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
This answer is going to cost me an arm and a leg in karma, but what the heck. That's what it's for, right?
Show some employer loyalty.
I just did a hire about 4 months ago. We chewed through resumes for about 6 months before we found someone that we felt would fit. Something that we noticed and ended up using as a filter rule was whether or not a person would stick with a job for more than 6 months. Generally as a rule of thumb, you really want to stick out a job, unless its absolutely hellacious, for about three years. I'd really recommend five, to be honest. That way you're not viewed as someone contaminated with the so-called 'Dotcom Disease.'
We really wanted someone that once we've invested time, money, and training in to make a contribution to our projects for more than the time an intern would. Most !Dotcoms are similar in their opinions.
Actually, upon considering it, what this really ought to be relabeled as rather than 'employer loyalty' as 'resume care and feeding'. Your career will live and die by it. Take care of it and it will take care of you. Taking lots of short gigs to try to climb quickly scares off a lot of hiring folk.
I could go on ponticating, but I am sure that you're sick of it already. ;)
Do you know why the road less traveled by is littered with the bones of the unwary?
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!
I'm thoroughly convinced this is a stupid attitude to take, but it might just be my experience.
I couldn't count on both hands and both feet the number of people who have tried to tell me that the way they do something is better. I ask them where they learned "their way", and they say they saw it in a book or some teacher told them. Then, they do it, and it doesn't work very well. They ask me where I learned my way, and I tell them: I screwed it up a bunch of times until I got it right - experience.
There are benefits to a degree, of course. If they have good marks and all that from a good school, you know they were a studious worker and kept priorities straight and they're well-rounded. However, when it comes right down to it, 8 years of theory packed in and put up against 8 years of solid experience are no match. Eight years of good experience, with or without prior education, will mop the floor with theory.
I think hiring "lower" jobs on degree is fine. Hiring higher jobs on degree is stupid if you let it become a major obstacle to people who may have a ton of experience, but no degree.
And no, I don't have a degree, but I have experience. Factor that in to my credibility on this statement as you see fit.
Alito: A vote for Alito is a punch in the eye to put that bitch back in her place!
> I think most managers up the ladder are
> generalists, not specialists.
I think most managers are useless.
A good manager is a specialist... in management.
To be a good IT manager, you have to let the al lot of the tech stuff go. Its not like "hey, I know a bit of windows and a bit of cisco and a bit of Solaris" its "I know how to define goals and how to best use the people and resource I have to achieve those goals".
This does not mean getting the whip out.
I was cynical about the value of an MBA until I started one. There is a lot of sound management theory that is actually based on real things like psychology and mathematics. It not a "science", but its consistent.
Norman Cook's Ode to Sl
Or "perhaps"... have you ever considered the possibility that the explanation is over your head? Perhaps... that you might need to spend four years studying the theory in order to "get" the explanation? What, exactly, do you think we were doing for the four years we spent getting our degrees? Do you think you're so infinitely smarter than we are that you can grasp in a fifteen-minute overview concepts that we spent four years just learning the basics of? And the funny thing is... if you respond to this, you'll probably respond in indignation, with no clue as to why I find this attitude so insulting. (Don't worry, though - the "sum up the knowledge you've spent your life attaining in a 30-minute overview" attitude is common - very prevalent among management).
Usually, the reason the book or the teacher told them to do it that way has to do with increased flexibility, better resistance to change, better memory management, faster processing, etc. These are things that you don't learn by trial and error alone. What's that you say? Memory management and speed optimization is a waste of time? Processors are so fast that it's not worth saving a couple thousand clock cycles? Memory is so cheap you can just use it as you need it? Portability is for canoes? Yeah, I've probably spent many, many years of my life cleaning up the mess you left behind doing things "expediently".
I guess I should be fortunate, though - with enough people running around doing things wrong because it "looks the same to me, and I should know, since I've been looking at it for a while now" leaves plenty of job security for those of us who understand the theory and can apply it.
Proud neuron in the Slashdot hivemind since 2002.
Hm,
... and?
... there is so much more.
generalists are a dime to dozen. Probably you are right
In 10 years it is irrelevant wether you are a MSCE(what ever that is) or a CCNP(what ever that is) or a A+ or a CCNA(what ever that is).
Do you know:
a) CORBA
b) SQL
c) UML
d) Java and/or C++
e) assembler (regardless what proc)
f) J2EE/SOAP/an OO data base
g) CVS or an other revision controll system
h) RUP/XP/SCRUM (regardless what)
i) COCOMO/FPA or any other
Do you have any clue about systems architecture?
Well, some people might call that a "generalist". I call it a basic education in Software Engineering.
Frankly:
1) I would try to get any job which you find interesting. Put it on your resume as further reference for your next job after that one.
2) if you lack money I would ask your parents/friends for a loan and try to follow 1)
In the long run nothing is more revarding, than a general education about EVERYTHING.
Computers, CS, programming, is not just programming in your 1st language you met in school
angel'o'sphere
P.S. I would never hire a specialist except probably for a decent DBA.
Cost free eBook I read (by iBook/Kobo/Amazon/ObookO/Gutenberg etc.): "The Green Odyssey" by Philip Jose Farmer.
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.