My general advice is differentiate. There are thousands of people out there with Microsoft/ Cisco / Oracle DBA etc. certs so getting one is only going to be the first step on your journey. Many people will have experience as well as the certs so I would think this is going to be a pretty long slog for you. So you need to find some way to get ahead of the rest of the hiring pool. Normally I would suggest something with a skills deficit and high desirability like learning SAP but I don't think this will into data security.
Monquixote made 2 really valuable points which I think are definitely worth considering. The first is that the industry is moving into commercial off the shelf product. There are already a number of these for penetration testing like AppScan so one posisble route would be to learn as much as you can about these packages, how to use them, how to configure them and so on. I'm not sure there is enough depth there for anyone to be offering a cert in them yet but having a good working knowledge is going to be useful when you get to interviews.
The second point is that cloud is hot right now, getting into cloud could be your foot in the door since the industry is still working out how policy and security is going to work on cloud installations. The Amazon EC2 cloud is worth looking at but I would also consider Red Hat's Open Shift platform since Red Hat has an established enterprise customer base it could be a better long term bet than Amazon.
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I have had consultations with a couple of companies that do that type of we-train-then-pimp-you-out stuff... an IT one which cost £4000+ waaaaaaay back when... and a plumbing one which was £3000.Originally Posted by WYNIR0
They are generally cheaper than doing courses for individual certificates, but not not by an awful lot.
As for the industry being a meet grinder...
There's two things I'm good at computers and jewellery... one is an overly competitive industry with more applicants than positions... the other is jewellery... which is the same, but with the potential to cost £30,000 of set up costs on top of being overly competitive...
仁慈的上帝，请带我走我将关闭自己的耳朵，我的心，我将一块石头
Well, I wish you the best of luck Miranda. If this was 12 months ago I'd have asked my employers if they could give you some intern work, but since we have been taken over it's not a likely option. Plus I wouldn't wish our services director on my worst enemy.
I assumed you would have done. I still think it's the most likely route for you to get a foot in the door. You seem smart and driven and most people working in IT are fucking useless so I'm sure once you can get someone to give you a chance I'm sure you will thrive.
It's not my intention to be down on qualifications. I work in the open source world where people don't care so much about that kind of thing. As I mentioned others know more about working in the Enterprise IT world.
What I would say is of the three best developers I work with two of them have degrees, but not in comp sci and the other doesn't have a degree at all. So it's not a 100% prerequisite.
One week I sent out 50-60 applications, cover letters and CVs, most were entry level IT jobs, and nothing... and that's with a CV that was re-written by IT friend that has done recruitment
仁慈的上帝，请带我走我将关闭自己的耳朵，我的心，我将一块石头
May I ask Myranda if you have a degree in any subject?
I've met PhD Chemists. PhD Botanists, Degree qualified Analytical Chemists, Degree qualified Physicists, Degree qualified Mathematicians etc who have been excellent software designers ... as well as people with Computer Science degrees (like me) who do well at software engineering.
Software engineering isn't IT, but with the right thinking you can turn your hand to it. True, you need a start, but a 3rd level education in anything would seem to be an entry point. What you need is a logical and tidy mind.
Wishing you the best of luck in changing your life ...
He who laughs last ... is still using a slow modem
Trust me on this one.
There is more emphasis on cyber security, but the majority of the tools people use are pretty automated.
Here is an example I recently encountered: A bit of server code I wrote stopped working. When I looked into it a firewall had decided the bit of code which had been running for years was some kind of IIS exploit (it was running on an Apache server so no points there) and blocked all traffic to it. When I asked the IT people what the patching strategy was and what testing they were doing they said that the firewall called home once a day and downloaded security patches. There were no options to review which patches it applied or when. The only option was to receive updates or not. This isn't consumer kit it's the kind of product a lot of small to medium businesses use.
I think IT is having the middle squeezed out of it at the moment. Corporate IT is becoming about two things: Managing an efficient helpdesk with the minimum of people which is really about process optimisation and making people redundant and buying and refreshing kit which as IT moves more towards minimally configurable appliances is more about purchasing.
This is why I would consider the testing angle as I think the development sector is much healthier than the IT support end of things which is in a slow decline.
*sighs*
No.
I had to drop out of college twice (two different colleges... money problems plagued my parents probably more than they do me now)... back when A-levels were two year courses which weren't modular on the exam boards used by those colleges, so two years of doing well at college and came out with absolutely nothing... no A-Levels means no access to degree without significant experience - so I could get onto a Jewellery and Silversmithing Degree at the London Metropolitan (have checked)... but jewellery is a harder industry to get into, and degrees are worth less than the experience I already have in jewellery...
Although, if I did a degree in Jewellery I'd have enoguh UCAS points to get onto a computer sciences degree... but I couldn't afford it as I'd have spent my student loans on getting a degree I'd not use...
Oh what fun life can be when your parents spending priorities put shiney stereo well above paying for your childs train fares to college...
仁慈的上帝，请带我走我将关闭自己的耳朵，我的心，我将一块石头
I hope I don't come across as doubting your commitment, or suggesting the obvious. I know from previous threads that you are a grafter.
I have a great admiration for anyone working to improve their lot in life (philr being an example) and I wish you strength in what must feel like beating your head against a brick wall.
Reading this makes me realise how lucky I must be. As for Myranda.... apply to your local NHS Primary Care Trust's IT dept. Having worked with several of their er.. 'technical' people, if you can smash a grapefruit into a keyboard whilst shouting "mnung, mnung, kerfrrruuuunnngg SPODGE !", you're in. If you can do it whilst simultaneously wasting thousands of pounds of public money, you can skip the tech jobs and go straight for management.
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