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How Will Recent Financial Downturns Affect IT Jobs?
An anonymous reader writes "So, with the financial crisis and loss of jobs everywhere, what are the chances of getting a good IT job? I'm going to graduate this year with a BS in Software Engineering majoring in Network Security. I'll be looking for a job as a penetration tester eventually, but I hear that is hard to get right out of college so I'll be looking for a job as a Junior Network Admin or similar type of job to start off in. Is there a lack of jobs in this field? I figure computers always need fixing so they have to have some sort of IT personnel on staff to maintain the core of their business. Anyone have a good insight on this issue?"
I was a new grad once. It was horrible: it took me 10 months to find my first job.
I'm sorry to have to be the one to break the bad news to you, but your grades in school don't matter anymore. What recruiters look at is your experience. Which, by definition, you don't have. So your resume ends up at the bottom of the pile.
As soon as you have some kind of job, then companies are much more willing to take you seriously. It's stupid but it's true. I make the same mistake now when I am the one hiring.
Now I'm happy to also give you some good news. You're probably not graduating until the summer. That's great. First of all, the economy will be just about to turn around (the media won't tell you, but they also didn't tell you one year ago that we were in a recession). Second, it gives you some time to add experience to your resume: internships matter a lot, volunteer for an open source project, etc.
Don't have the time? You really have two options: play by university rules and be a bland student, or stand out and go the extra mile. Guess which ones gets the job?
--
FairSoftware.net -- the community where software developers start fair businesses
Depending on where you live finding an IT job isn't going to be easy...
I'm up in Redmond and am witness to Microsoft laying off 15,000 people, just imagine how other companies are handling the bad times...
The economy globally has tanked. My firm has just shed *another* 400 IT jobs. I know many people who got made redundant just before Christmas. Firms are collapsing left right and centre and those left are cutting right back to keep afloat.
Personally,I'd take pretty much any job you can get right now,IT or otherwise. It's not a time to be picky.
I want a list of atrocities done in your name - Recoil
As the CEO of a small IT company in the US (mostly Midwest-focused), I'd say we hire more out of experience than education. We're consultants, though, but we have helped hire full timers for our customers who want someone there manning the stations all the time.
For those in college now, GO INTERN. It doesn't matter how much you make, but how much you can mark up that portfolio. If you're graduating and can't find work, then WORK SOMEWHERE. I can't begin to tell you how many people I've interviewed who are 5-6 months out of college but aren't working anywhere, even Starbucks. The lack of showing responsibility by not doing something is a turn-off.
For us, business is way up. Clients are keeping their hardware longer, which means more maintenance work. They're getting more focused on information security (external and internal), as well as keeping what they have in tip-top shape. We're turning away work.
Here's a big part of being a successful IT employee: be mobile. Fully, if possible. Try not to sign any long term leases, and DO NOT BUY property even if mom and dad or the grandfolk offer to get you something. I took on work in LA in 2008 because they couldn't find a decent consultant locally, even paying for my flights and hotel stays. If you're mobile, your chance of getting work goes way up. Once you move, stay mobile-capable if other jobs pop up. Don't just look close to home or close to school, look everywhere.
One area that is seeing rapid growth is in health care clinics (not big hospitals). I think we field a few calls a month from possible clients who have to maintain a large infrastructure and are sick of high priced consultants. That's when we usually try to place full timers rather than work a contract out in an environment that really needs full time management of IT.
I personally would stay out of software development if you don't have any real portfolio of work done, but in terms of maintenance, the job market looks pretty reasonable in the 4 markets I monitor. It's just a matter of that dreaded experience that most college graduates have none of. It would be very hard for me to hire someone on degree alone. My last 3 hires didn't even graduate college, but are phenomenal at showing up on time, doing their job right, and giving our clients 150% of themselves when needed.
Get involved in some open source project, not just as a peripheral person but **really** get engaged and make a very useful contribution. Show that you can word with others, solve problems (the fun technical stuff), help finish off documentation (shows you can also do the boring stuff that is important) and get some references from the project leads.
What most employers really look for is the "bushy tail factor": people who are flexible, practical and can learn new stuff fast.
Engineering is the art of compromise.
I have a couple friends graduating this year, they are in a bad way... Last year graduates from the same school, with the same degree all had 3-4 offers and could basically pick where they wanted to live and what company they wanted to work for...
This year students are lucky if they've got 1 offer, and the offers are 30-40% below last year's offers. All the big companies have hiring freezes or are outright laying people off.
Just read an article on CNBC about how graduating in a recession will hurt your earnings potential for as much as 20 years... I'd recommend staying in school til things recover.
Not to be rude, but, if you were to click on the link to the section titled 'Developers' or the section titled 'Ask Slashdot' and read the various posts, and I mean actually read every post, your questions probably should be answered.
Topics of notice are: ('getting started with part-time development work' and 'balancing performance and convention' and 'software development predictions for 2009' and 'interesting computer science jobs' and 'study abroad for computer science majors' and 'are my ideas being stolen? if so, what then?' and the one about MS letting people go and the one about abused IT people).
To actually answer, yes.
My advice is to volunteer for stuff. Something. Anything, even if it's not directly related to your major. Take an internship course even if *that's* not directly related to your major. Get help making your resume -- the same person, with a good resume, will stand out a lot more than the same person with a bad resume. Work part-time in school. Better yet, start your own business. As you said, computers pretty much always need fixing, and 95% of the population can't fix them when they break. Having been laid off for Christmas, of course, I'm looking at doing the same things. Best of luck!
Life without real world experience is a bitch. In the near future Wal-mart jobs might be looking really great compared to starving and I'm not kidding. You may be surprised at the kinds of valuable experience you can gain from a shitty job.
I have mod points. The reign of terror begins now.
Maybe it will go down like this in some places:
1. IT seen as an expense of questionable benefit. So it gets greatly cut back (e.g., layoffs).
2. Company discovers that some (probably not all) of those cut-backs caused very painful results. Those people are hired back. (Hopefully the managers/executives involved don't bitch about the cost of IT for a while afterward.)
3. Economy recovers. Company gets deeper pockets, and stops being so lean on IT again. Projects with speculative payoff are once again funded. IT department gets back to point where it has more staff than needed for skeleton operation. So next economic downturn, go to Step 1 above.
Obviously, there are some nastier possible outcomes as well, from the IT worker perspective. Company dies, or discovers it can get by with skeleton crew, or finds that some stuff like web hosting or email can be trusted to cheaper providers in "the cloud".
The good news is that there are some companies who'll see "penetration tester" on your resume and immediately hire you.
The bad news is that many of those jobs will involve creepy bosses and excessive amounts of astroglide.
I work at a company that uses IT jobs as the "slush fund" for layoffs. Not always the right thing to do, but that's how they do it. Nice thing is, they tend to offer early retirement packages first to the people closest to retirement age so "voluntary attrition" usually takes care of solving most of the problem. Then we hire younger, less experienced people because they are cheaper and train them to do what we need to get done. The people who retire have already trained the next wave and they in turn train the next and so on. Long story, short... Things aren't bad everywhere you just need to be sure your resume stands out for the right reason.
--I like turtles...
For now, your best bet is to stay in school and ride out this downturn. Expect the market to be soft for the next 2-3 years. Even if you can find a job now, it is likely to not be a very good experience. With the number of people out of work now, and the number of potential employers small, those that are hiring are paying low wages for very long hours. Don't expect any on the job training these days either. Most IT departments are shrinking instead of expanding. If you get a job, you will be expected to hit the ground running.
This happens every few years - last time was in 2001 - 2003 or so. The market was down for a couple of years and grads couldn't get jobs. The smart ones stuck with school and got better or additional degrees so when the market turned they ended up with better starting salaries that will allow them to pay off their student loans sooner.
Hang in there, there will be plenty of jobs again soon enough.
IT, because it's generally had it so good over the last couple decades, has never developed the notion that you have to "pay your dues" at the beginning, meaning working crappy jobs to build experience to get a better job. Other, more competitive fields, have long had this aspect, so the idea is more familiar.
With the economy in the toilet for now and the next couple years, new IT grads have to pay their dues. Grab the best job you can, which won't be great, do well in it, and constantly look for ways to move up the ladder. The first few years will probably suck in one or several ways, but you're suffering will be rewarded later with better positions. The days of college hotshots walking into six figure jobs are over. Get a job, learn your craft, build your resume, and always watch out for your career.
Bonus advice: the days of socially inept geeks are also over. Social skills are as important as programming skills. The geek who can make friends easily, express himself clearly to non-technical people, and generally get along with everyone else, will always have an advantage over the aspie nerd who can quote machine code but doesn't know to shower every day.
Anyone who loves or hates any language, platform, or manufacturer, doesn't know what they're talking about.
I'll be looking for a job as a penetration tester
You want a job masturbating?
Anybody want my mod points?
In my company (not a software company), people are most likely to be hired (and later let go) because of a new project. Many non-essential projects (i.e. just about everything) die and new ones become more sparse in a down economy. But, if you can show you know "the business" -- the way the company makes money and generates funding for new projects -- you can often provide more value outside of the project become a captain instead of a passenger on the sinking ship. A good goal these days is to be the last man/woman standing in hopes that the economy will pull up before the whole company goes under.
It's hard to do when you're first starting out, but I would be open to taking on non-IT tasks and kissing whatever ass you need in order to get out of the sweatshop. Start lunching with the people who pay the bills for your company and become their IT-bitch if necessary.
Good luck. Glad I'm not looking for a job this week...don't know about what I'll be doing next week.
When lay offs come, assuming you don't have the connections/get lucky and get in to one of the diminishing supply of equal or better jobs, what do you do?
Do you hold out, unwilling to sacrifice any of that seniority on your resume, hoping to get just as good a job - but losing money and gaining a big "unemployed" hole on your resume while you do?
Or do you suck it up, take whatever's paying, cash in some of your seniority for easily out competing everyone else for a more junior job that pays now and doesn't leave that hole?
Or there's always the third option: Leave the industry.
Quite a lot of people do leave. Quite a few have enough savings that they'll try holding out for as long as they can. But a lot will be taking that step down in exchange for still being able to make their mortgage payment, keep their kids in school, pay rent, etc. That means, in any recession, you're not just competing against your fellow graduates, you're competing against last year's graduates who can't get out of the positions and are still clinging on and the more experienced folk who're doing whatever it takes to survive.
So, yes, there are always some jobs - but less of them with dramatically stronger competition.
So, bad news: It's going to be tough.
Good news: In five years, we'll be out of this slump and the opposite circumstances will apply. There'll be less qualified people and anyone with qualifications and experience, being in desperate demand, will profit hugely from it.
Honestly, there's no better time to be poor than as a recent graduate. It sucks, sure. But it sucks far less than being poor again once you've got used to money and have a wife and kids who expect you to support them too plus a mortgage you now can't pay.
The trick is to weather the next several years as effectively as possible. No, you almost certainly won't be as well off as you imagined when you enrolled in that course. But, if you suck it up, if you do whatever you need to now, you'll be exceptionally well placed when the industry recovers.
Along those lines: Get that experience on your resume. If you can't get it as paid experience, donate your time as a sys admin to a charity, a community group, whatever. You want to know what's worse than being a graduate with no experience? Someone who graduated a year ago and still has no experience. If you can't sell your time, donate it - in exchange for that donation, you're getting experience that you can parlay in to a paying job later. Do whatever it takes, keep working even if it doesn't pay or doesn't pay as well as you like. Because, five years later, when the economy does recover as it always does, those few with the experience get to make a lot of money again.
You ask if jobs are available, and of course they are, its just that every job (theoretically) goes to the most qualified person. Experience is key to that, but you don't even have to find a job to get it. I spend all kinds of time poking around on google or hackaday finding neat things to learn about. I'm a mechanical engineer but i taught myself C# recently (hey, it works) and i can write some pretty useful apps for work now. I taught myself CNC programming because i didn't want to wait to take it as a grad student (and i never ended up graduating). I spent many hours in high school learning how to use basic stamps and build an omni-directional hexapod before i even got to college. My high school was a podunk mountain school with wood shop being the most technical class, but i went out on my own and learned what i need to know.
You should do the same, whatever field it is you want to learn, go practice it as much as possible. Be able to wow interviewers with your knowledge of things that you could only have by trying it, not by hearing about it in a classroom. Of course getting a job will teach you that stuff but a lot of things can be learned at home too, before you have a job. As someone else said, even starbucks is good because it shows willingness to commit, but if you do end up there, you can still get experience at home. Hell, freshman year in college i didn't drink, so most of my friday and saturday nights were spent programming. I eventually got a good social life (yay booze!) but i learned a lot that year.
My junior year i heard about a local place that needed a mechanical engineer, and even though i hadn't graduated, all of my personal experience is what got me the job. I ended up finishing my senior year but i still needed a lot more credits, and i was so burnt out i said screw it, started full time at that job, and now have excellent pay, flexible hours, and a sweet job in general.
Now i have even more experience from what i've done at this job, but i wasn't just sitting around before that, and you should make sure you don't either.
-Taylor
Worldwide Military budgets: $2100 billion. Worldwide Space Exploration budgets: $38 billion. Really, world? Really?
Yeah right, you and everyone else.. goodluckwiththat.
I worked as a pen tester a couple years ago. Some may not agree, but go for one of the Big 4 accounting firms or their sister companies. The company name is huge on resumes, you learn lots of business stuff. Knowing how to properly document, follow procedures, create repeatable tests is extremely important. You can learn this in both sides, either audit or implementation. I started in implementation. Knowing how to build something makes it much easier to take apart (pen testing). You learn how the technology is implemented and what mistakes are normally made. I went from there to auditing and pen testing. I was immediately the top "tech" star (which was sad), but I didn't know how to properly document. Audit firms are masters of documentation. From there you can jump into full on pen testing. People that don't have a rounded background are not good pen testers IMO. If you are in DC area, you have many options. Audit has sox and fisma, fiscam and a boat load of others.
Absolutely don't be idle. Do something that you can put on your resume that isn't laughable. The less you can show for a longer period of time the more untouchable you become.
Volunteer for an open source project. Or start your own company making websites, shareware, or mobile apps.
No matter what you do, you bust your ass working. None of this play video games and watch TV in your parents basement while you wait around for a good idea. If you can point to it on the web and demo it, you're as good as hired if you want a job. If it's just a line on your resume with nothing substantial to demonstrate in an interview, forget it. You might as well have watched movies.
Obviously if you can do all this and have zero time unemployed (i.e. graduate with open source and/or commercial projects already in the wild), you will do even better.
Please don't put the word "Jobs" in the title of stories. My brain is already attuned to filtering them out on the basis that it's yet another story about Steve's health.
"Wise men talk because they have something to say; fools, because they have to say something" - Plato
Go to grad school while you wait for the economy to turn around. In fact, you might want to go for a PhD.
[Insert pithy quote here]
With software "engineering", your options are a bit more open than most other BSc positions.
Think about the following:
Software testing
Entry level helpdesk
Software testing is the traditional entry point for software engineers. No programming, but lots of practice on test cases, methodologies, etc.
Entry level helpdesk is your other option. Easy to get in, and gets you some 'hands on' experiences dealing with users.
companies are hiring. If you lay off a hundred useless employees you're probably hiring twenty new people to do the jobs the laid off failed to do.
Hi, I have a similar problem. In a few month I'm going to take my MSc. in CS from a 3-tier Italian University. Now, I'm quite good in the fields I've chosen (Computer Security and anonymity protocols), and I've done an internship in a big IT corporation in Switzerland, so luckily I stand a bit out of the crowd. But I still have to compensate the fact that I'm graduating from a not well-known university. I don't want to remain in Italy, because it's a crappy country. For a series of reasons (family, bad advices from former friends, lack of entrapreneurness) I did not go to study in some better University, despite the fact that I wanted. So, I was thinking, after graduation, to go to Germany to study German for a few weeks (I already can read it to a basic level, but I need to improve my existing knowledge, expecially in speaking and listening), and then spend the summer in China, South Korea or Japan to learn Chinese, Japanese or Korean (which I don't know neither a word). I can financially afford this: In the latest years I saved some money, mainly because I still live with my parents, and I've not had the opportunity to travel a lot (for the same reasons as before...but that will change soon). But, is it worth it, expecially the trip to Asia? Would this really boost my resume? Maybe it's better to learn Russian? Thanks a lot
Major hiring industries for the next few years, are going to be anyone, directly or indirectly, who receives a slice of the pork pie that the US government will be distributing.
Follow the news, and prepare applications for any industry that is looking for government money. If the industry gets rebuffed by the government, oh well.
If an industry gets some pork, send them your applications immediately.
Good, healthy companies are just going to ride out the next couple of years with the folks that they have, and won't be hiring.
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
Right now is a terrible time to be looking for an entry-level niche position. Those jobs are being filled by mid and senior level workers who just got laid off and will work for an entry level salary to keep their family fed. And if you do get a niche job, youâ(TM)re likely to become the new senior technician when the more expensive hackers get laid off and their jobs are dumped on youâ"which is not a fun situation to be in.
What you need to do is get into a whatever IT job you can, keep working on security stuff at home or in test labs at work, and ride the recession out. Make connections. If you have security people on staff get to know them and show interest so that you might get promoted when something opens up. But whatever you do, donâ(TM)t sit around unemployed and hoping that the perfect niche job pops up, because in this economy thatâ(TM)s not likely to happen.
I can't begin to tell you how many people I've interviewed who are 5-6 months out of college but aren't working anywhere, even Starbucks. The lack of showing responsibility by not doing something is a turn-off.
That's YOUR opinion.
There are folks who worked their asses off in school and decided to take a break. Which is a good thing because, I don't know about you, I wouldn't want someone who hasn't relaxed a bit; otherwise, they have a tendency to burn out.
Many of those places won't have anything to do with someone with a BS or higher because they're "over qualified".
There could be family issues that is none of your business. Just because you're an employer doesn't mean you need to know every little thing about their life.
That's the trouble with employers these days, they have all of these "shoulds" and "oughts" about what makes a good hire that's based on nothing or worse, experience based on a previous hire or two.
And the trouble is, if there's the slightest non conforming aspect of someone's work history, they're marked for life. And yet, American business wants folks who "think outside the box". No they don't. Because folks who really do are rejected out of hand because "they're irresponsible" or some other asinine label.
Experience always trumps education.
Grades are important, but only while you are competing against other recent college graduates. If a company is hiring a new IT person and has 10 recent graduates to look between, the one with the highest grades will be an easy call for an interview.
But that isn't the situation now.
Right now, we have laid off IT workers who have already had a job, sometimes years of them, and that experience (and demonstrated success at holding a job for a while) is more valuable than your schooling, and a 0.5 difference in GPA.
Someone liked them long enough to let them keep an IT job for some number of years. You, however, are an unknown factor. Thus, they are the safer bet.
They have already proven they can stick to a college degree long enough to get it (as have you). They have also proven they can be successful in a real IT environment. Thus, they are 2 for 2. You are 1 for 2.
Just get any IT job you can find, at least for now. Trade up when options are better. Don't hold out for your dream job now, or you might not get anything at all.
IBM, Dell, Microsoft, and dozens of other high tech companies are going to close facilities and layoff thousands of people, or have already done so.
But they're building up their facilities in China and India where the cost of living is low and people will work cheap.
If you speak Hindi or Mandarin, maybe they'll hire you to work for them there.
Hey, don't worry too much. I just graduated in December from Michigan Technological University with a 3.1, packed up a U-Haul, and moved out to NYC without a job offer. No one's heard of MTU out here, but within a week I had two really good offers, and got my salary up pretty high by having the two companies fight for me. I had two summer internships, I was the GM of a student group, and I had a student job at the sys admin place on campus. Anyway, it's not so bad. I highly recommend you pick a place that you want to live (and that has a decent local economy), move there, and start pounding the pavement. I spent 3 months applying for jobs in NYC from Michigan, and it was essentially useless. Once you're local, you're golden. Good luck!
I read dice message boards fairly frequently. I could not help but notice how many college graduates could not find decent employment in IT. I collected some of the posts, and put them in a blog article:
http://techtoil.org/wiki/doku.php?id=articles:news_and_commentary
1 year ago, we had 12 people supporting our office staff and production systems. After 2 rounds of layoffs, we are down to 4. Which also means that the only people remaining are those of many hats.
So, just getting out of school you are pretty much screwed. There are a lot of very talented people with experience out of work. Don't expect to be making what the experienced people are making. Hell, don't expect more then a paid intern.
Get anything you can and hold out until the economy turns around then you will have the experience. You might need to move back in with your parents :D
FAs the CEO of a small IT company in the US (mostly Midwest-focused), I'd say we hire more out of experience than education. We're consultants, though, but we have helped hire full timers for our customers who want someone there manning the stations all the time.
For those in college now, GO INTERN. It doesn't matter how much you make, but how much you can mark up that portfolio. If you're graduating and can't find work, then WORK SOMEWHERE. I can't begin to tell you how many people I've interviewed who are 5-6 months out of college but aren't working anywhere, even Starbucks. The lack of showing responsibility by not doing something is a turn-off.
I did the Internship thing. Back when I was looking for my first job I was lucky, the .com bubble was still inflating so the internship helped me get a job. In this climate I don't think it will get you very far. By the time the .com bubble burst I had over 2 years of experience as a developer. It still took me months to find a crappy new job as a system administrator since the market was flooded with developers who had much more experience than I did. Every advert for developer jobs specified at least 4-5 years of experience, specified a list of MS, Cisco, SAP etc... certificates as a must-have and half of those adverts specified that people without University degrees need not apply. Everywhere in the region companies had gone belly up, others had started massive layoffs which were aggravated by a string of mergers with the resultant extra layoffs. In an economic climate like the current one, I wouldn't want to be an engineering graduate with only a diploma and an internship; even if I had a little OSS contribution to my name. Thankfully, I now have 10 years of experience which means that my CV stands a good chance of getting me to an interview even in the current economic blood bath. I do agree with you that it is better to work at even Starbucks or McDonalds than to sit around doing nothing and collecting unemployment benefits. As for experience, it is easy to harp on about business realities, how they force one to only hire experienced people. The problem with everybody only hiring only experienced people is that graduates still have to get experience somewhere, somebody has to offer entry level jobs, that's where experience begins. It is a bit farcical that governments (at least in Europe) have begun to legislate and offer tax breaks to encourage companies to offer entry level positions for the engineering graduates that the local universities are producing.
Only to idiots, are orders laws.
-- Henning von Tresckow
It's not a good time to enter job market. If you can find a job, it will be very unpleasant experience and you might burn out after a year. Stay in school, get a master degree or something.
The best advice I can give you is to not be discouraged, to know what you learned from your classes, your projects (more important), and perhaps your own self-motivated learning (development, playing around with stuff, whatever), and to try to show that in your resume and subsequently interviews. The last thing you want to do is think that having no experience is a hindrance to getting a job and ruin your confidence.
Note that contrary to what some people have suggested here, not all employers look for experience for all positions- though it might help (even if your experience was an internship). You have no idea how much someone brimming with ideas fresh out of college can contribute to a company - I personally have learnt a lot from colleagues who are technically less experienced than me.
I don't know if your college hosts a career fair, and if so, how many tech. companies visit, but if they do, that's probably your best bet. Both my jobs, first as an IT Systems Integrator at the world's largest chip manufacturer, after my BS, and the second as a software engineer after grad school, have been via career fairs, albeit in better economic times.
As far as I know, even companies who have frozen external hiring because of the economy, continue to hire (at least internships) from colleges because they want to maintain their relationship with these universities, so that they can continue to acquire good talent when things start getting better (sooner or later).
Fairs are easy, because you get to talk with the employers, understand what they do, and what they are looking for, see if you're a good fit (in your own eyes), hand a resume, and then hopefully be interviewed.
Even if that's not an option for you - some of my friends weren't as fortunate and didn't have on-campus career fairs, they were able to use their acquaintances etc. to apply and have their resumes noticed.
So don't think whether the downturn has a negative impact on the IT job scenario - instead, focus on honing your own skills, and present yourself confidently as the best candidate.
I have found that keeping a karmic approach (focusing on your duty rather than what the unpredictable end result might be) usually helps out even in the stickiest scenarios.
All the best!
Somebody typed all of that?
Don't you remember? Our government was BSing about "ooooohhh...we can't know yet, etc...", while all the "oh shit! recession!" stories were popping up.
You think the economy is going to turn around mid-2009? OK, I'll stick my neck out, you're fucking insane. You sound like a conservative talk radio pundit.
I may be wrong, but I'm pretty sure this one's gonna stretch into 2010.
Oh, and for the submitter, you've got an OK chance...you're young and cheap. Salary and healthcare-wise. Don't feel so glum.
Blar.
NSA
CIA
DIA
Dave Barnes 9 breweries within walking distance of my house
Learn Hindi.
I've been an IT casual laborer for about 8 years now, spanning the scale from administrating 1000 or so $5k/second servers to racking, cabling, and building data center servers to setting up ISP connections to remotely setting up replacement servers. What I have found is that if you do the work right, don't sit around waiting for orders, and kiss the right rear ends, you will do just fine. I pretty much gave up on certifications about 3 years ago in favor of outdoing others in the area of doing no harm to the bottom line of the people I work for. People around me are falling right and left because they are surly, unwilling to change their practice when they make mistakes, or just downright ornery about their way of doing things. Right now where I am working there are forces doing their best to torpedo the team I am with by finding flaws with what we do, and we are beating them back by demonstrating that they have connections but we have results. If you're good and focused on real results, it will show to those who interview you.
There are very few jobs out there. Right now pizza delivery/welding/dope dealing looks pretty good
Vote Quimby!
US IT workers are being priced out of the market. Even if the economy turns around, there will be no great demand for US IT workers - or any US STEM workers.
Maybe Americans should be looking into other career fields? Maybe healthcare, law, law enforcement, or military?
For others ( C, C#, Java, Python etc ) it is going to be a very very rough year. Believe me
When times get hard, they realize the nature of a person at the watercooler means little; that hiring large numbers of specialists has been costing them some real money. They start looking for single people with multiple skills. This is one of the reasons that, when there's a downturn, I get hired.
For well over a decade the media has told people they're on the "verge of starvation", the "biggest downturn since the Great Depression" and it's all because of a man named Bush being in the White House. (Yet it's the Congress that actually writes the laws and allocates money, etc). Nevermind them...
Well now that someone has come along that *promises* us CentralPlanning of a Soviet Government, and the intent to tax businesses out of business, everyone dropped out of the investment market.
Now, as we head BACK to a Jimmy Carter economy, we'll get the change you voted for. Thanks. Maybe now I can get back to work.
1. Experience: self-educate in an emerging technology in your chosen field. You have the advantage of being unbiased to legacy practices. With an emerging technology, no one has experience. In today's world of cheap hardware and open-source software, it has never been easier for motivated people to find a way to contribute. Treat the learning process as an extended interview, including your project emails and contributions.
2. People: you're already at the bottom, nowhere to go but up. Don't further handicap yourself with low expectations, reality will be happy to reduce your expectations for you. Aim as high as you can imagine and work down as necessary. Rank the top ten companies or organizations (globally) with people who are experts in your chosen field. Identify some of these people by name and learn about their career path and current projects. Find a way to contribute to similar projects. Work backwards from their social network to your social network and try to have F2F conversations with local contacts who are best-of-breed.
3. Budgets: use your F2F contacts to obtain intelligence on budgets. In a poor economy with layoffs, the remaining people often have too much work to handle. Creative volunteering and compensation ideas can get you involved in real-world projects where the experience is worth 10X the dollar value comp. It all starts and ends with people, be they HR, managers or customers. So focus on being useful and building relationships with people. The most valuable information is often very transient (e.g. time sensitive hiring opportunities) and communicated only by word of mouth.
4. Recession: some of the best engineering creations have come from highly constrained environments. If you can be successful in an environment of fiscal discipline, you will only be more successful when boom times return. The same cannot be said for those who begin careers in boom times and are shocked by their first major downturn. There is no better time to start working than now. It doesn't mean you'll find a job quickly, but you will learn much more than by staying in school (which also costs money, even if deferred).
10 years from now, business schools will have course material dedicated to the lessons of these unprecedented economic times. New grads have a once-in-a-generation opportunity to experience the kind of business environment where fortunes will be lost and won, as economic hierarchies adjust. Don't miss the excitement by hiding in school!
Make an accomplishments section on your resume and list some of the things you've done as major class projects. You don't have to mention that they were class projects in the resume. When the interviewer asks about it you can go into all the details and show them just how knowledgeable you are even without real-world experience.
You can get specific certs, CISSP, Cisco Security Professional etc. They are several $100s, but then your university degree probably cost more.
And if you want to be in security, why not either break some commercial product and call the manufacturer and tell them how you did it, or see if you can make a contribution to a security focused OSS project.
Nullius in verba
Good developers will get hired in any economy.
In order, the things people will take away from a college resume (other than an opinion on your ability to structure information):
Your goal early in your career should not be money. It should be getting the best experience possible. If you're unable to find a job in your chosen field then look for jobs where your daily tasks will be as relevant as possible or go back to school.
The suggestions of open source projects were spot on. An open source project can serve multiple purposes. You'll gain experience, make contacts, and show that you're passionate about your field. A personal project that produces something you can demo can also be a good option.
The recession is just about killing hiring activity, but there's a long-term depression of the IT job markets at work, too, with age discrimination kicking at about age 35, so, even if, after doing some volunteer/ internship, i.e. unpaid, work you manage to get your foot in the door, the odds are the floor will be yanked out from under you after just a few years. Once you do get on someplace, grab as much education/training/ tuition reimbursement you can and have a non-IT back-up career staked out. If you just "do what you love" (and what you love is IT) and expect your intelligence, talent and dedication to generate a positive recompense, you're dreaming.
Penetration tester is a pretty tight niche (no pun intended). There are very few companies out there that care enough about security to even know what penetration testing is, so I suspect that there are not a lot of positions. And even if you find a gig, you might get tired of it pretty fast.
My advice to you is to try to acquire a broad array of skills. At this stage of your career, I'd devour every manual that passes in front of you that looks even remotely interesting. Also, read Dilbert--the best and most entertaining way to learn about the corporate world.
I recall as an undergrad having a lecturer mention that out in the real world we'd be lucky to manage an hour per day of real programming, the rest of our time being taken up by meetings, paperwork, etc. I was probably averaging eight per day as an undergrad, and found this jaw-dropping. Damned if he wasn't right, though. It's not necessarily going to be like you thought it would.
"Not an actor, but he plays one on TV."
I am a former IT manager who went for experience when I was looking to hire someone.
One of the best places to get that, which is how I got mine, was as an Intern. When I stepped into the job market I was 21 with 3 years of experience and a secret security clearance. It opened a lot of doors.
And skip the certifications until you have some job experience and know where you degree is going or until the next job requires it. Unless someone had a CCIE or multiple MSC* with the experience to back it up, that paper meant nothing.
I never found a college degree to be particularly useful when someone came onto the job as candidates very rarely had the actual skill set necessary to fill the job we were going to put them in. They would still need further training within the company.
Instead, their degree showed that they had the capacity to learn and the theoretical knowledge to understand what we would ask them. Anyone can write an algorithm to search, but not everyone understand how to optimize it for a particular task or why one form is better than another.
-- You don't shoot to kill, you shoot to stay alive.
I graduate in May with a BSBA CIS degree (software engineering focus) I was fortunate to have three offers from recruiters before Christmas. I think what set me apart was my side projects, and internships. All of these posts about "grades don't matter" were not true in my case at all. Recruiters don't want to even talk to you if you have less than a 3.0, and to be competitive you need to be over a 3.5. My friends that simply went to class and are gonna graduate don't have any offers, but those of us that interned, worked on open source projects, or did anything else aren't having too hard a time.
"I was a new grad once. It was horrible: it took me 10 months to find my first job."
Seriously???
I had some prior work experience through college, but spent my last two years as a part time motorcycle mechanic and barely part time developer for my university.
I went to a couple of job fairs, went on a few interviews my final term and had a job waiting for me when I got out. It took at most 1 month to find a job and I wasn't trying all that hard. What I heard from everyone I interviewed with was how exceptionally personable and well spoken I had been, and that is what stood me apart from the crowd.
Experience helps a lot, but if you are about to graduate and don't have it, you aren't going to get it.
My advice to any soon to be grad is; start looking long before you graduate and regardless of the position you are applying for, if you can't hold a conversation and speak at least somewhat elegantly you are going to lose out quite often to the guy who is probably not as qualified as you, but seems like he would be a better team member and better to have around.
Good developers will get hired in any economy. In order, the things people will take away from a college resume (other than an opinion on your ability to structure information): 1. Experience. Usually in the form of internships and/or research, good quality experience that results in a recommendation is the best proof that you can get things done. 2. Grades. I don't know why people are saying grades don't matter. I have a limited amount of time to interview and I'll take a 3.8 over a 3.3 over an unlisted GPA any day of the week. 3. School. It's unfortunate that the high school performance and financial resources that make a difference in school choice end up affecting the first couple years of your career. The fact remains that some schools produce a higher signal to noise ratio. Your goal early in your career should not be money. It should be getting the best experience possible. If you're unable to find a job in your chosen field then look for jobs where your daily tasks will be as relevant as possible. Then go home and work on things in your spare time that you can brag about. The suggestions of open source projects were spot on. An open source project can serve multiple purposes. You'll gain experience, make contacts, and show that you're passionate about your field. A personal project that produces something you can demo can also be a good option.
I thought that was the million trained monkeys with typewriters that we'd always heard about, and they were finally getting some results.
The cost of that cleanup, of course, will be borne by taxpayers, not industry.
I you find yourself waiting for a job offer after grad., volunteering to do tech work for a non-profit will help you build the resume and develop skills.
Just be careful not to select anything too politically or socially controversial, or strongly affiliated with a religious group.
Maintaining websites and donor databases for your local no kill animal shelter may be a good idea.
Doing the same for the local chapter of the National Marlon Brando Look-alikes Association might be a bad idea.
putting the 'B' in LGBTQ+
Well that was weird.
s/monkey/troll/g
Care about electronic freedom? Consider donating to the EFF!
... you'll be arrested. I'll be looking for a job as a penetration tester
Look at what is the most popular technologies out now, what was popular five years ago, and what looks like it will be popular five years from now. Get experience in the technologies that are in your fields of interest and either were popular before and now, or are gaining popularity now and look to be in it for the long hall.
The one thing you don't want is to get your experience on tech that is on it's way out the door. You will end up playing catch up for the rest of your career
There is no "-1 offended" or "-1 you don't agree with me" mod options for a reason.
What's the effect of the end of American Economic Hegemony on the IT industry?
Roughly a year ago I was hiring as quickly as possible, and so were most of the people I knew. Software devs, Ops, PMs, technical writers, IA's, front-end guys, the whole gamut. Sure, I focused on the top end in terms of experience, but it's not a rigid requirement, and I like bright kids out of school (or even still in school). I was one once, and I did pretty well by the people who hired me, way back when.
I can tell you I'm not hiring today. That's just an anecdote. More interesting is this discussion, which seems to be (if you believe everyone) chocked full of other managers. None of them have asked for the kid's contact info. No one on Slashdot wants him. That's a lot more than an anecdote.
Of course you should keep busy in the meantime with unpaid work. That's widely given but good advice.
Not sure how long this will last for. For the record, I'm one of those who's not sure we should even expect a "recovery" at all in our lifetime, at least in the sense to which Americans have become accustomed in the past.
Tired of Political Trolls? Opt Out!
And the trouble is, if there's the slightest non conforming aspect of someone's work history, they're marked for life. And yet, American business wants folks who "think outside the box". No they don't. Because folks who really do are rejected out of hand because "they're irresponsible" or some other asinine label.
I'd like to point out "behavioral interviewing" and "personality tests" in this category too.
There are federal laws banning the use of polygraphs in interviews, but this type of thing is VERY similar.
I'm a pessimist and an introvert. This does NOT interfere with my ability to put on a professional face and be friendly to clients, but it does cause a great deal of stress when a potential job is at stake. Further, being a pessimist, while many people frown on it, has many positive qualities in a work environment, such as a propensity to properly assess and prepare for likely hurdles on a project.
This doesn't matter though, as the slightest sign of discomfort is construed as some kind of black mark.
The academic equivalent would be someone being passed up who knows their stuff but doesn't test well, while an incompetent who's good at telling people what they want to hear gets top marks.
What really irks me though is when people give you tests or as questions on internal company policy. These are things you should be told in your training or in your interview by the HR staff; you should not be chucked out of the hire process because you are being forced to guess and you guessed wrong.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
You never know what you will get when you get married. You can cry that you got stuck with a bad wife, or a bad job, and focus on changing the wife/job, or you can make the best of the situation. Two different strategies.
My trip through undergrad was very rocky. I had family and medical issues which stretched out my time there and ended up with nearly 100k in student debts and a transcript which is all over the place.
How am I supposed to go back to school when loan companies are scaling back and even harvard law students are having trouble obtaining loans?
I mean, consolidation loans are completely cut off for the private loans I already have, and it's questionable whether taking on yet more debt is worth the risk.
I'm quite interested in your answers on this.
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
Well, if I was allowed to reveal my identity here on Slashdot, I have a few private things to tell you about OUR new openings. If you have anyway we can do that, while protecting my identity, I'm all ears.
Perhaps you make yourself a temp hotmail and post it here. But then, how would I know it's you.
My group had open positions for three years solid. We were hiring as many good people as we could find. That stopped suddenly last November. Now we won't even replace people we lose.
I certainly hope this is temporary because obviously we still have the workload that had us expanding as fast as we could.
The cake is a pie
Show that you can word with others
Why would collaborating in Microsoft Word look better than collaborating in OOo Writer or MediaWiki or the like?
My CS degree is pretty much the hardest, most useless work 'job-wise' that I ever did.
In 1995, before I got out, it was the middle of the dot com boom and new grads were earning 60k their in first year out.
The crash came just as I graduated (the hail storm came and the grapes were defenseless, etc, etc) then the outsourcing began and so on. (weep, moan, blubber, etc.)
Now it's worse than ever (see whining above); If I can, I'm going to retool to be a physics teacher in an underprivileged school for the next three years.
You're young and smart. Things will get better. You'll probably do fine.
Good Luck,
Uncle Xylene
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How will Obama's plans to invest in the internet infrastructure come into play over the next couple of years should it happen? Will it help to create jobs at all? I certainly hope so because I'm graduating in a year or two and having an IT job would be nice.
As one of the primary technical interviewers at my company, we've never been interested in grades. Rather, we're more interested in someone that can jump in and be productive quickly.
"Keeping busy is a major sign of maturity and helps the hirer decide whether or not you have a positive attitude."
It's not merely a sign of maturity, but it's a major sign of maturity. What are the other major and minor signs of maturity?
What exactly is a positive attitude? What is it's relationship to the major and minor signs of maturity and how does it relate to the bottom line of a company? Why does the hirer need help in deciding if the candidate has it?
where are you working and who is interviewing you? (this is not a troll, i'm looking for internships or entry level)
VLC FOR MAC IS DYING! IF YOU DEVELOP, PLEASE SAVE IT!!
I definitely hear that a lot from interviewers, but have also heard that a strong interest in advanced classes combined with something above a 3.0 helps a good deal
I don't suppose it has ever occurred to you that not everybody is in *your* situation? Maybe you should try reading the news? Massive layoffs announced constantly, new records of unemployment set every month. Major business failures all over the place. Record foreclosures, and so on and so on.
This might be hard for you to understand, but if *you* are employed, that does mean the entire world is employed. If you are getting interviews, it does not mean that everybody in the world is getting interviews. Understand? Probably not.
Your unverifiable, arrogant, bragging, does not change the current economic situation. And the current economic situation is easily verifiable.
BTW: I am gainfully employed myself. But I am not so stupid, uniformed, and arrogant, as to assume that because *I* am employed, then everything must be just dandy for everybody else.
It's not just you, look at the job ads. Education is nice to have, as an extra; but experience is a must.
In this economy, if you don't already have experience, you are not likely to get it.
For me, when I graduated college two and a half years ago, I went into the job market with not experience, but with code samples. If you're starting out at entry-level and wanna have a damn good chance of getting the job, you gotta have an app of some sorts that you can demonstrate to potential employers so they get a better idea of your programming style and whether you were able to apply the concepts that you learned to that said app.
The way I managed to get my code samples was through my Senior Project, in which I wrote two J2ME demo games for two different handsets (both MIDP1 and 2). One month after graduation, I interviewed for a mobile game developer and had my samples on hand to give to the employer. As a result, I was hired by them shortly thereafter and managed to hold on to that job up until early last year when I was let go. Even after that, I still had connections to the mobile industry and I was taken care of with more work up until last summer, but at least I came away with experience and contacts, something valuable in this economy. Without those code samples, God knows where I could of ended up, probably doing code for some dodgy come and go Hedge Fund, but the fact remains the same: just like artists have samples of their work, so should software engineers. said app.
Also, OP should broaden his search and not just focus on IT given the state of this dismal economy. In other words, build up your digital portfolio to showcase to employers when interviewing for whatever entry-level software engineer position matches your skills. The important thing right now is to get your foot on the door and pop your cherry with some professional experience. Best of luck to you in this fierce job market.
GM? That means you were the game master for your student group's favorite RPG, right? Slick move putting that on the resume. Everyone will think you meant "general manager" or something like that.
I use irony whenever I can, but my shirts are still wrinkled...
An interviewer has a pretty simple need: find somebody who can do the job. So focus on understanding the needs of your interviewer.
Other posts have commented on internships, that's a very good idea because it gives you an understanding (aka "experience") of what the interviewer's world is like. "Everybody" runs servers under their bed, far better to volunteer somewhere it matters
Go to your local elementary school district and volunteer. Don't be put off if the first guy you talk to blows you off, come back a week later and let him/her know that you are serious. And don't forget to go to all the schools in your area.
To say "I have a Linux box3n und3r my b3d!" just seems lame, even if doing so does improve your skillz as an admin. But to say "I consolidated user data management for 1,200 students at 3 schools for North County School District" is something that should make your interviewer pay close attention and will not only give you real-world experience, it will also give you something altruistic that feels real good to do, and it will give you rewards that you won't expect.
I did something similar - I was at a parent-teacher day at the local school with my wife and kids, you know, where teachers meet the parents over cookies and fruit punch, while the kids (being bored) gravitate to the new, l337 computer lab and/or the playground outside to play. My son (of course) went to the former, and promptly mis-typed the URL for the online games site he was trying to access, and managed to wind up in a porn popup storm.
So the computer lab supervisor proceeds to yell at my son, who turns purple since he just made an honest mistake, and I (in turn) yell at the supervisor. As a result, I tracked down some porn blocking software based on Squid, and donated my time, turned one of the school's EOL'd desktop computers into a porn-blocking proxy server. The school administrators loved the solution, which solved a real problem for them at effectively zero cost, I have a(nother) glowing reference, and an eternity of good will from the schooling community at large, (even a mention in the monthly school paper!) at a cost of a few hours of my time and a few MB of RPM downloads tweaking some config files in pico.
That was all years ago. Some years later, I was in a sales meeting, and the client's administrator at the meeting mentioned a staff member who was caught surfing for porn after hours at the office by a member of the opposite sex, and the inevitable sexual harassment law suit. One of those situations the lawyers circle like sharks smelling blood because there was big, big, money on the line.
Without thinking, I blurted out the EXACT SAME solution that I'd slapped together for that K-12 school some years before, and they bought without hesitation when I said I could have it done that same day. I SSH'd into my home network, downloaded the config files, and bought a P4 "server" (AKA cheap-ass desktop computer) at the local Office Depot for $400. I started at about 11:00, and was done about 3:30. They were ecstatic!
My experience volunteering for the local school eventually earned me thousands of dollars, when you include initial contract and annual support contract that continues to this day. Oh, and oodles more goodwill for instantly and permanently ending a nasty legal problem for my company's client.
=D
I have no problem with your religion until you decide it's reason to deprive others of the truth.
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It's difficult for me to take most anything I'm reading here seriously. Much of the 'wisdom' being doled out here is age-old and stale ("Experience matters more than grades," "It's not what you know; it's who you know.")
Honestly, in every job I've held, and in every IT project I've been exposed to, the work has been handled with woeful incompetency. Why? Because they've always hired the wrong people for the job (sometimes including me).
People that hire, which evidently includes most every "employer" posting to this story, rarely have any idea what it is they're truly searching for. Whether it's accountants trying to hire programmers, upjumped programmers hiring to fill out the IT crew, or someone in IT being promoted to manager, it invariably ends up the same way -- they all reduce potential employees to their resumes, and that is a grievous mistake.
What a good employer will do is interview as many candidates as he can, have a list of pointed questions with definite right and wrong answers that he prepared ahead of time, and have some sort of scenario set up that will allow the interviewee to demonstrate their capabilities first-hand.
So, here's a little tip for anyone that may be doing some hiring in the near future: You don't know dick about a person by skimming a piece of paper. You don't know the true depth of their experience; you aren't aware of their social skills; you can't glean their intellect or potential; you won't know if they're loyal, dedicated, hard-working, punctual, or reliable. I don't care how many internships, cum laudes, hobbies, or previous jobs it says they've held: You. Don't. Know. Shit. The sooner you realize that, the better off you'll be. And the only way you will ever even remotely begin to understand what someone is about is to have them exhibit exactly what they're capable of in an environment that is comfortable for them, therefore being conducive to their highest quality output.
Think that's unrealistic? Well, you're right, but how realistic is it to shrink a person down to a tree shaving? The bottom line is that IT work is generally fucked from the getgo when the wrong people are doing the hiring (which is practically always). And just because I'm such an adorable hypocrite, I'll go ahead and make the assumption that any of these "employers" here who are doling out cookie-cutter advice are the wrong people to be hiring in any situation.
I prefer to think of myself as an optimistic pessimist. I see failure modes in systems and procedures. Part of my present role is to document and train in possible solutions.
With that being said, one problem I've faced in the past was never being seen as taking problems seriously. $WIDGET is down, everyone else is shouting, don't you appreciate the problem. Gee, I understand the problem, wrote the chapter on how to resolve it, and can give you a planning estimate (which is always longer than my internal estimate). I'm not freaking out because I don't feel the need to put on a show.
Oh by the way, when $SYSTEM was planned out, the stakeholders decided redundancy was too expensive. Would you like to review that decision? Learning to say that politely is still something that I have to approach carefully.
Start off working with a Helpdesk. If you know your stuff, you'll climb quick and easy.
Perhaps they are referring to the recession that has butt raped my kids college savings plans, my 401K, as well as my investments.
I am however, still working. One bright spot in all of this.
I am very small, utmostly microscopic.
My take is that good IT people with experience will not suffer any fallout from this professionally. Unless their companies are hit hard and go down. .com bust.
If you remember that this downturn was, in minds of a lot of people, due to LACK of information. And IT people are the ones that can deliver the information and add value to that information. We will see NO impact on IT profession a a whole. Sure, young, graduates with no experience will find it hard, but it's always hard for them, ever since
for a person to work while they were in school.
Bar need (I come from a country where University education is almost free) if you are a student your work should be to study. Anything else is an unwanted distraction.
Once you have graduated you will have plenty of time to start from the bottom, but you will have learned all the tools that you need to have a successful career.
Plenty of friends that thought were advancing their prospects by doing menial IT work eventually could not complete their education (work trumps school work any time). They remained in low level positions while people that obtained good degree grades went to obtain good jobs with better prospects.
This is not a universal rule of course, but it stands to reason to think a good education is not worth having.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
That is the beauty of computing, you can build expertise from the comfort of your bedroom.
I had interviewed people with verifiable industry experience that were no better than chaps that learned their stuff in their free time in an old computer at home.
Clearly there are fields and topics you can learn only working in a big company (clustering, high availability, SAN storage, etc) but for many positions tinkering at home may give you enough knowledge to put confidently the foot in a door that otherwise would have not open to you.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
I have lots of experience with blue chip companies, I have taken a brake since being made redundant some months ago.
I get calls and emails every other day with possible offers of employment. I know they are for real because companies' names are named, salaries and benefits mentioned, agencies in fishing expeditions for CVs would not provide this information.
Friends and colleagues with similar expertise found jobs when they were ready to go back to work without much problem ( a bit more problem than before, the market is clearly less favourable, but for experienced IT people it seems to be holding OK).
In the other hand relatively new people (and here I have to remark I am talking from the point of view of somebody in the UK) are really struggling. They have to deal not only with all the pool of old timers out there that have more expertise and a longer track record, but also with the guys in locations like India, Mexico and Singapore, people over there are very well educated (I am Mexican, my education has never let me down) and willing to work for far less (and no, they are not in sweatshops necessarily, in Mexico employees are heavily protected against redundancies, so in theory that should make them more expensive, but the discrepancy in life expenses makes them very competitive, I know of 2 big companies here in the UK that have relocated part of their operations to Mexico).
So if you are at the top of your field you should be OK, if you are trying to gain a new position you will need to be very shrewd in order to attain it now.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
Having read many of the posts here, and being a manager at a fair-sized company who does a lot of hiring, I thought I'd go ahead and comment.
First, sorry to do this, but your degree means nothing to me. Fifteen years ago, I cared about it. But like most managers, I learned a long time ago, that colleges don't impart practical knowledge to graduates any more, and I need boots on the ground, not heads in the clouds. Recent college grads want to start at the top, want more money than they are worth, and often have attitudes that annoy me.
I'm not looking for a person that will require 6-12 months to get up to speed (at minimum), and provides me with no assurance they will ever be an asset to my teams. I'm sure as hell not going to pay you more than entry level - because you are an entry level guy.
I do hire for entry level positions though. And sometimes I'll take a chance on you if:
1. You want it. If I get the sense that you think you are too good for the job, I'll pass you by for the person that will be grateful to have it. I need people that are clueful, and in the career business for the long haul. I'm not going to hire you if I get the sense you'll jump ship at the first opportunity. I started life as a PC tech. Pay your dues.
2. You're presentable. It makes me look bad, to have folks working for me that look like college dorm rats. Wear a suit to interviews.
3. You're bright. You'll be interviewed and tested with real world problems. It's pretty easy to spot the clueless, somewhat harder to tell the difference between "sort of knows it" and "owns it". 85% of the people who apply for an IT job have no idea how to do it, in my experience. This is less important in an entry level job - you know you're getting a beginner. But in a skilled position, it's fundamental.
4. You're not a pain. I need people that can get along well with their co-workers. If I have to waste time arbitrating disputes involving you, settling the ruffled feathers of another department head, or explaining your performance/appearance/goofy solution to a problem, you will be impacting my productivity.
Lastly, I saw several replies referring to long periods of unemployment after school, while you looked for work. I'll say, that this would attract my attention. But I'd consider why. If you're some clueless kid mooching off your parents because you can't find a job that's good enough for you, then I don't want you.
I see quite a few posters here that seem to think the Internet bubble is still inflating. Nobody is hiring kids anymore and making them executives. The last entry level networking job I posted received 75 applicants. Probably half of those had college degrees. The person I hired had no degree, and had started her career as a paralegal in a big law firm. They moved her into IT because she could get it done, and because she liked it. Aptitude is where you find it.
Here in the UK we have the most photographers per capita in the EU, the fastest growing profession is hair dressing.
Honestly, youngsters have no time or inclination for topic that require a background on hard science or technology, they prefer to go for softer topics.
Don't get me wrong, it is not easy to be a good photographer, but it is easier to be a run of the mill one when compared to be a run of the mill SysAdmin, programmer or DBA.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
You might want to look at working for the US Federal Government, or a Government Contractor. There is a need there for both Network Admins and Security Professionals.
I will not give you a team leadership, senior developer or similar position out of school, it is that simple.
You have to earn your stripes now, you may have to earn them in many places, but aiming high when you don't have the skill to even get there is foolish.
Ask any mountain climber for a useful analogy.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
even the worst statistics claim that unemployment in rich countries is around 10%
That means most people have a job and will do so in the foreseeable future.
Unless our governments commit a monumental clusterfuck (not entirely improbable I know, but one live in hope) this should be the situation for a couple of years.
Other countries (Germany) have gone through all that and people was not starving on the streets.
IANAL but write like a drunk one.
At least once. I figure it's only once since it's probably copy and pasted around a bit.
Most IT employers want to minimize risk. Just because you say your good at something (even will good grades) do not mean anything. Certifications will help you get your foot in the door as those certifications will help the company win contracts. But with out experience it is just your word. Case in point we had hired a guy that was very impressive on papers... high 90's in university and had many of the certifications the client wanted in the contract. It took him nearly a week to do his first requests; a simple repeatable report query. It was written nice except it was all hard coded.... IE SELECT 'JOHN DOE' as name, 2731.23 as value from DUAL. He had no concept of actually using a real database! At the client and co-workers request he was let go the next week. Proof that education is only one part of it. I found out after University that every company wanted real world experience. I did do a 6 month full time work term but so did everyone else in the class. When everyone comes out equal you have to do that something extra special to get recognized - something to stand out form that pile of resume's that are on the HRs desk. This is even more important if you do not have any connection to the hiring company (IE your dad is the CEO). To make me stand out I made sure I knew where I ultimately want to be in my career and what steps I thought industry wanted me to take to achieve it. Then armed with this small educated guess I started a small business. Largely doing very small IT related projects for the Profs I knew. I did respond to some RFP and did win a handful of small contracts. I teamed up with a friend who wanted to sell hardware and together we built a few specialized systems to some university research teams. It was not a hell of a lot of money. We both work more that the typical 40 hours a week. We spent nearly 40 hours a week looking for work and about 8-16 hours actually doing that work. We did get pretty good at finding work and where able to farm out some of that work to other students we graduated with that had the required skills that we did not. We found it very time consuming just to find the work. Something that the IT programs never taught us anything about. We where not marketing or sales people by nature so it was challenging. We started this company so we could both get experience the industry wanted. We figured at worst case we would starve and at best case we might create a very successful IT company. After about 18 months of barely getting by we seems to reach that critical point of experience. We never stopped looking for work and after 18 months my partner found a full time job and so did I shortly after. Some 10 years later we are both happy with our choices. When we get together we often talk about starting up a new business with all the 'experiences' we have gathered over the years. I impress my friends with the marketing and sales skills I realized I desperately needed. We both know what work is required and we both think we need a bit more experience and the right sales person to add to our team before we venture out in the world again. So with that I can say spend the next 6 months looking HARD for work. Even if you have to virtually donate your time. And while looking for work 40 hours a week try looking at picking up extra work for people you know and/or respond to some RFP (Requests for Proposals). Who knows you maybe able to start the next Google company?
When economies are in a recession, IT is the most efficient means of doing business. It takes the least amount of money to create the greatest amount of wealth. It may initially take a hit, like everything else- but it will not be trimmed down. If a company trims down IT, it means they are no longer a company. They are in a death spiral. See AOL for an example of this.
As far as you getting out of college with no experience. I'll tell you what use your college degree has in IT. That little check mark at the bottom of the page asking where you went to school. That's the one. And only low level virgin jobs ask for that. If you have 15 years of experience, nobody gives a flying crap if you went to college. And they ask for your CV, which is not the fill in the blanks kind of resume.
At the place where I work, we cannot hire people like you. Our systems are too important to the planet. But, have hope. The FBI/CIA has just opened up 3000 jobs, and they may have an entry level opening. I know they like to have people with college degrees there, and little else. So I would honestly give that a shot at this time. You will have to move to find a job. Just make that a given for the next 10 years. You will be moving.
I wish you the best of luck. Please don't think a degree means anything. It has no bearing on anyone I have ever hired for the last 10 years. It's just a road block if you don't have it AND have no experience.
It appears to me that the finance/trading industry is still going fairly strong, i.e. still has a lot of job opportunities. I'm not actively looking for a job, but I have my resume out there, as well as a LinkedIn page (I figure it's always good to at least be "passively" looking for a better opportunity). I receive emails from recruiters/head hunters about once a week on average. Most of the opportunities are basically doing exactly what I'm doing now: connectivity/infrastructure development for a trading company.
Granted, the topic starter was asking about system administrator-type jobs, but presumably, the companies that need developers probably also need good admins.
Now, bad news. At least with my employer, we are basically only looking for people with previous experience. "Training" is not in our vocabulary. Effectively, we are only willing to consider people who can come in and start delivering excellent work with a minimum of support and direction.
My previous job was at a huge corporation, where they hired more on personality "type" and believed training would solve any knowledge or skill deficiencies.
Obviously, the ideal employee has experience that is a perfect match with job requirements and has the right personality. But realistically, these people are incredibly hard to find. And how long is a firm willing to wait to find these magical people?
So my question is: do companies still offer training programs? I've seen this attitude here on Slashdot that it's lazy to expect training from an employer, that one should be willing to put in the extra effort to come up to speed on whatever knowledge or skill the job demands on one's own time.
And another, related question is: even if companies aren't taking the time to explicitly train new hires, are they at least allowing time to "grow" and/or mentor employees? Looking only at the firm where I now work, I'm afraid that answer is a hard "no". That not only do you need exceptional experience to even get in the door, but once in, you're almost entirely on your own: someone will tell you what needs to be done and expect you to get it done.
I don't like the "sink or swim" mentality; frankly, it's kind of scary. But I think that huge training programs and hand-holding are probably low on the value scale. For me, there's a happy medium: I'm willing to put in extra hours to learn the technology and develop the skills I need, if the employer is willing to spend some time coaching me in the nature of the business, helping me learn the whys behind the things they do, the business models, the firm's culture and values, etc. I think that's a fair trade. But my experience at my current firm, and based at least on what I've heard of similar companies, they don't even take the time to properly introduce the company, i.e. the go by the "trial by fire" method of employee indoctrination. Is this unique to the trading industry, or is this just the way it is now?
Move to India!
Having just been through the process of screening applicants for interview, I have to say yes, the formatting and 'polish' of a CV is not so important. However, the actual structure of the document is. I don't want to have to sift through multiple pages of degree exam results (yes, I really had to in some cases) just to find out what an applicant can do. A list of the candidate's areas of expertise is the most important information I'm looking for, followed by details of experience to back it up; education comes a distant third at best.
If I'm forced to wade through reams of uninteresting academic minutiae before first, that's a negative mark against the applicant straight off.
As far as typos etc. go, I'm willing to overlook a few, but a CV/resumé is one's first opportunity to sell oneself to an employer, and a lack of attention to detail there can be a bad sign.
For the *first* job you'll get out of school, grades *do* matter a lot. For the *first* job you get while *in* school (internships etc) grades do matter too.
But also, the impression you make on your fellow students and teachers matter a lot (many times you get jobs from them), and a good way to make a good impression is to be a good student.
Of course, get an internship, volunteer, or get a crappy computing job (Geeksquad type, hell desk etc), so you can hit the ground running for your first real job.
For sure experience is a big deal. I graduated back in August with a bachelors in CIS (focused on Java/OOP/Web Development), BUT didn't get back to the states until November and didn't start looking for a job until mid Nov. I just started at a company last week. The company i started with wasn't the only company I was speaking with either. The need is out there for entry level people, but for sure through my job search I found alot more jobs looking for 1-3 years xp than 0 yrs. As people stated before an intern ship would most likley do you wonders. I personally wasn't in the position to take one. And yeah no one ever asked me my grades at all, they asked technical questions in the interview though so if you say you did something in school make sure you can answer any questions in regards to it.
Ok Here is the scoop Big Companies want degrees / fresh grads so they can mold them. If you have a degree and little experience, you can be bossed around, serve overtime, and get owned because you simply don't know any better rookie. (you did it for 4+ years and paid for it) Your just happy to be in big boy world now. Plus everyone else has a degree so you can sit around and chat about the college days and be in "the club". A degree says (to me anyway) that you can put up with studying, tests, homework. It says that you can go along with "the program". Big companies like that because that's what they do with their employees, they enact them into "the program". You are a number, employee B0953430 in the alpha quadrant. Now report to your manager! Smaller Companies do not really give a flying crud muffin about a degree. They are trying to grow and they need someone who knows what the hell they are doing. You know who knows what they hell they are doing? People who have done it before, and that comes with experience. They know how to handle the boat because they have driven it before. They understand relationships, work environments, office politics, tools, and client relationships. Plus they don't act and sound like a rookie which makes clients/managers feel uncomfortable. Advice to you: Graduate and get an entry level job, this is the start of your career. The piece of paper is nice to have in your pocket! Good luck. People hire people they like. Learn to sell yourself. Say to them, I am smart, energetic, and ready to be here for the team. Also, dress nicely.
Depending on the city, it can vary. But I live in NYC and I graduated last may (2008). I took a 1 month vacation in Jamaica (june), then came back at the end of june. I started Job hunting in july and got a job after 3 weeks of hunting. Again, it depends on your are, but big cities normally hire alot faster and at a higher rate than smaller cities. Get some kind of experience, if it is even an A+ certification (take the course), it will help immensely when you start your real world search. Common Mistakes - Most people focus on school so much without taking the time to talk to others in the field or ask for advice on how they will be a good candidate for work before they finish school. As for me, I fixed computers for local people while I went to school, so it was kind of my side gig, I got alot of hands on experience while I make good cash to be independent of my parents. It also gives you the freedom of working when you feel like it. When you get out there, look up the rate of pay in the city you are applying, and always ask for 5k-10k higher so they give you the normal rate and not low ball you. Lastly, BE ON TIME, ALL THE TIME! no matter what you are doing, work related, be punctual and attentive. If you do not take the initiative, more than likely, you wont get the attention and experience you need to move forward. Good luck and see yourself already there, dont think about getting there, and see how far you ascend. I'm on my 2nd job now, as a jr. systems admin, and I'm doing great!
IMHO, you'll have plenty of work. As more companies move from meat meetings to virtual meetings driven by the costs of airfare, hotels, etc or other factors (And as mobile technology grows) they'll need a protected channel for their communications. Intranets will play a bigger role too. So you'll do fine. A tester position maybe a bit quite specific but you'll do fine in security.
it's going to be *very* hard. I was just out of work, sorry, "between positions" for three and a half months, and some of the ads I saw were labelled "entry level"... and proceeded to ask for at least a year's experience in this, that, and the other.
Best of luck.
mark
Come the Revolution, we won't waste ammunition: we'll lead HR into the parking lot, toss asphalt on them, and pave them into the roadway.
Another well working job search tactic is "Informational Interview". It requires to network with anybody under the Sun and find people that are employed for a few years in your chosen area. Preferably they have advanced their career from contributor to team lead or manager or further.
Call them and ask them if they could spare 20 Min for an Informational Interview. Ask questions about their career, what, where they studied, how they got/started at their first job, how they advanced, what they see important in their field, what trends they see. Very important, never ever ask for a job outright (you are informing yourself about the field and not interviewing). Also do not forget to ask for more referrals (names) for informational interviews. Follow up with a hand written thank you note.
First it teaches you valuable skills (a plane communicating, networking, hard work, ...) and insight and gets you talking to people you might not have met otherwise (may be someone you want to ask later te become a mentor). Second more often than not someone ponders the idea of you working for them.
Busy helping non technical users of OpenOffice.org - http://plan-b-for-openoffice.org/
I know a lot are talking about internships and that sounds great but at some point you need to make some cash. What a lot of people are missing here is that there are expectations from family, friends, etc., to go out and get a job after graduation.
Since large companies only believe in experience and what's on a resume, head to a small company, preferably a startup. You'll get a ton more experience and more importantly it will be respected experience. Live very cheaply, even if they are paying you well - have a couple roommates and don't have more stuff than you can fit in the back of your car. Buy nothing you can't pay cash for, credit only for emergencies. If it fails - oh well, just move to the next opportunity. If it succeeds go buy yourself a Lexus.
I started this way out of necessity (not foresight, just stuck in a location where there were no big companies). The 6 years I spent at the startup were infinitely better than starting a career at AT&T Wireless (one of my offers) being a junior programmer with zero input. From day one at a startup there's interesting things to do and you're usually the one taking the lead and doing them. A lot of times you give input that's *gasp* listened to. And there's a lot of new technologies that you get to play with and sometimes free time to try weird things.
"Is life so dear, or peace so sweet, as to be purchased at the price of chains and slavery?" - Patrick Henry
How Will Recent Financial Downturns Affect IT Jobs? Here is a better question: Where are the actual intellectuals? Grades were never important!
Not before school, not during, and certainly not after. Do you even realize what grades are?
Grades are merely a representation, used in determining the effectiveness of the learning ability of a pupil contrast to THAT teaching method, and THAT individual discipline. They were not designed to gauge anything else (and thats a rather specific metric).
LEARNING-- ah, the true mystery of education (evidently).
Did you learn the things you were graded on? -That-, IS the kind of thing that might get you a job.
Resume filters withstanding, experience only gets you in the door. KNOWING what you're talking about on the other hand, is the one thing that will legitimately keep you on that side of it.
I suspect this recession will probably make it a bit harder for IT folks to find jobs. My take on this? I graduated during the Dot-Com Bust in 2000 in a place that barely has IT jobs. Years later I finally have a good head IT job of a small company. My advice? Don't ever stop learning your trade in IT. IT is something that always changes and as soon as you stop, you get old. Polish your social skills even if it means working in basic Tech Support. I know some of you hate people but guess what, computers are there for people and not an end to itself. Personally, I think a lot of people believe that they'll be rich in IT. Hardly. IT can be difficult, frustrating and complicated but in the end I think you need to ask yourself, is it something you like doing? If not leave the trade. No money in the world is worth killing yourself over it. Myself, I'd still be in IT even if it didn't pay much or wasn't shiny. For me it's just life and probably why I eventually after years worked myself into something nice. =)
Working in school was critical for me not for experience (I worked at 7-11) but for the structure it brought the extremely unstructured college lifestyle.
Because I had limited hours (most eaten up by work or school) I had to actively schedule my studies and homework to make sure they got done in the limited time I had.
The one semester I didn't work my grades were awful. Part of the problem was that I procrastinated my way into Ds. "I have 100s of hours of free time, why squander these with studying?" Quickly turned into "oh shit, I only have 8 hours to study for this test!".
You better watch out, there may be dogs about . .
Stop thinking about jobs and start considering becoming an entrepreneur with your own business (and in the field of IT, particularly in software, there is really little or no need for startup capital). It is generally much better to create your own success rather than wait for someone else to feed you. You might be afraid of the risk, but with the lay-offs now the risk of being an employee is about the same as the risk of being an entrepreneur, plus you must know that life belongs to those who know how to take risks.