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Recent Grads and Experience Beyond the Desktop?
over_exposed asks: "I'm a recent college grad (B.S. in C.S.) and have been on the job hunt for about 6 months. I've been playing around with tech toys as long as I can remember, but it all focuses around the desktop environment. Desktop-grade routers, switches and wireless as well as any/all desktop PC (and some Mac) hardware is what I could get my hands on with my limited budget. After looking through hundreds if not thousands of job postings, everyone is looking for 3+ years of network admin experience or 5+ years of C++ experience even for an entry level position. How is one expected to gain that kind of experience when no one will hire you without the experience? What kind of (part-time) work can you get as a college student to gain experience (Cisco, Exchange, SQL, etc) that will be marketable in the real world? Any suggestions from the Slashdot community will be of great benefit to myself and thousands of others who will enter the 'real world' in the next few years."
But then you'd take my job.
All joking aside, those of us with IT jobs are becoming more and more protective of them. The sad truth is that helping you (and "thousands of others") out with advice is, in my opinion, just as bad as training my replacement.
Good luck.
If you go back in time to 1999, companies will pay you a nice salary to come in, be a warm body in a chair, and go to lots and lots of training.
Nowadays I'm surprised you can find even 100 job postings nationwide.
Move to India! Or Russia, or Singapore, or the Phillipines, etc...
Not to mention, LUGs are a great place to meet angry white male geeks just like you!
Signed,
Pardeep
You're basically toast. The dot-com crash followed immediately by the boom in outsourcing means that you're competing with no real credentials against people with a great deal of experience and proven track records who are now willing to work for a fraction of what they were earning a few years ago.
Simply put, the demand for skilled IT staff is now much smaller than the supply, and that isn't going to change any time soon. It's not even worth submitting your resume. It'll get pitched by a credentials-oriented HR dweeb before anyone in IT even sees it. For every available job, there are hordes of people more qualified than you are, and they're willing to work for peanuts. They have mortgages and kids in college, and they have to take what they can get.
The most you can probably hope for is an unpaid intern position. A few years ago, such positions often led to full-time paid employment, but nowadays they're basically just going to take advantage of you for the duration of the internship and then discard you rather than hiring you for a paid position.
It's hopeless. It really is. Change to a different industry now, while there's still time. Take a course to become an auto mechanic or a plumber or something useful. There's certainly no need for more inexperienced IT people.
Have lower expectations- go work at McDonalds and stop trying to compete. Give up and accept the low paying jobs and don't expect tips. The world does not really care, so start smoking, get an apartment, and think that Republican's care about you.
a Microsoft user group? There usually friendlier, dressed better, better connected, and they feed you better.
I have been to a lot of user groups, and every Linux user group I have gone to spends more time bashing MS that doing anything interesting with Linux.
I mention this, but then every one gets pissy at me becasue I want to discuss Linux, and not bash MS.
Admittedly, it's been 3 years since I've been to a LUG, some maybe it has changed.
The Kruger Dunning explains most post on
When they laugh at a joke, they're doing it because everyone else in the room is laughing, not because they get it. Laugh last, laugh least, that's their motto.
...at least you're not a Java developer. Companies are looking for 10+ years of Java development just to get an interview!!