Thats not news, thats just people wasting good money on pointless surveys!

I'm doing a sandwich degree because its the best way to get experience, even though I already have tech support experience, VBA experience, hardware experience and the experience from my course. Currently I'm doing PHP/MySQL/CSS/HTML (never touched them before my placement) which will look good if I goto an employer and say "This shows how quickly I can pick up knowledge".

The course itself has a 20 week project in the final year, rights are owned by the University I believe but we can still use that in our portfolio, the same goes with the animation degrees.

Survey is pretty much stating the obvious.

Originally Posted by DougEdey
The course itself has a 20 week project in the final year, rights are owned by the University I believe but we can still use that in our portfolio, the same goes with the animation degrees.

Doing the literature review for mine now, fun fun. Not sure what its like at your uni, but if you come up with an idea you want to sell, with mine they usually let you do it, but will probably take a small cut.

It's the old catch 22, you can't have the job unless you have the experience, and you can't gain the experience unless you have the job.

I saw this first hand when my dad relocated and looked for a new job. Computer support tech, hes middle aged with an associates degree and 5 years of work experience. he doesnt look that good on paper, but the experience really helped. good to see more companies being told this, and applicants.

Hardly any jobs like this in Bath, so i have my IT qualification and lots of home experience, but right now im looking up for a cleaning job, lol.

Kye.

bah, turning a hobby into a job either gets you a job you love or a hobby you hate.

On topic though - I know several people outside of IT that have Never had a resume but I've also seen more than one great person (tons of experience and great references) not even get an interview because the selection people couldn't get past the fact that his resume didn't meet the format they liked.

I could have told you this


I left college in september and ive desperatly been looking for a job but every where wants experiance and most dont care about quilfactions.

I personally have found that not having a degree has put a bit of a ceiling on my IT career. I've got to the point where I'm senior support for a smallish company, but all the jobs that would take me up a notch in salary all expect graduates. Still, it's not all bad - I'm doing a BSc Math through the OU and paid for through my training budget :)

Experience is crucial in the IT sector, but I wouldn't dissuade those thinking of doing a degree first. Ten years down the line, chances are that you'll have a better job than if you hadn't studied.

The other issue of course is that so few people are prepared to start at the bottom. Claiming you can't get an IT job because there's nothing out there is surprising given I know of many companies which would happily pay 9-11k for a toner changer/box shifter/cabler type. There's plenty of those jobs because no-one wants to do it!

The problem is that just because they know how to fix a PC people expect to come into the role doing desktop support instead of starting at the bottom and working up. I'm not going to hire someone with no experience to support 120 PC's but I'll happily hire them to run round the office doing the jobs anyone with half a brain can do and let them prove themselves.

That's always how experience based careers work, you take the worst, lowest paid job you can in the industry and advance.

No IT qualifications or experience (appart from self taught stuff over the years) but still managed to get my job as an I.T technician ;)

It was just a bit of luck really... my employer was in need of somone asap and my mum put in a good word as she worked there, got an interview then started next day (all on my own for first month looking after 4 servers and about 200+ work stations ). I worked on a trial basis for a few months and then was offered the job, even after they had done tons of interviews for the position.

I've been there almost 2 years now :)

Sux being 1st line but for 16k and knowing i oculd stay for a year then go to london and be getting 25k+ as junior 2nd line..........

Yeah, qualifications only get you noticed in the resume stack, but not much more. Ive known people every certification imaginable, and had no idea what they were doing.

It is always what you can do, not what papers saying what you theoretically can in this industry.

of course there is always that old adage "it is not what you know, but who you know" having a former aid to US President Regan on my resume as a reference definitely didnt hurt me in my job search a little over a year ago

My degree has helped me quite nicely. I think the problem is people expect to get a job for just doing the thing. Do the degree, do relevant work during the summers and you can't lose.

I was always taught that a degree is just a piece of paper on the wall that says, "I can be taught and learn to play the game" Experience is always a priority for hiring someone, rather than a 'raw recruit'.

"work experience or taking a voluntary position with a charity, small company or even just writing proof-of-concept and open source websites and programmes."

does modding count as 'experience'? :p

What I took from the survey results is HR people saying "we want people who can provide tech support to the morons who work here". They want someone who can solve the problem and not beat the poor, stupid fool who caused it, rather than someone who can design a new system from the ground up.

In a way it seems quite worrying. People go to University/College and spend thousands of dollars and then can't get a job because someone that didn't spend those thousands of dollars for the job? I mean, it's good that it can work like that, but it's also bad.

I'm sorry, but it's got to be said...

That crab is just SO CUTE!

And no, you can't really compare a college educated person with an experienced professional. In some areas, the experienced guy has an edge. In others, the college guy has an edge. Different opportunities are available to each. You can't learn brain surgery by experience, and likewise you can't learn how to deal with people from a textbook.

As good as experience is, I'd imagine it'll be pretty tough for a 16yo coming straight out of school to get straight into an IT job.

The market is so saturated at the moment the same company that would happily pay 11k for a general dogsbody will probably be able to find a desperate graduate willing to do the same work. Now who are you going to hire? The 16yo with a few GCSEs and very little real life experience, or a [well] educated graduate with 6years+ more life experience.

Also, graduates are able to secure higher paid jobs. Get an IT job in IB and you're laughing - base pay £35k + 5k sign on bonus + 10kish end of year bonus. £50k isn't bad for the first year of work if you ask me...

Sure you may get lucky if you have no A-level/degree, but I really think the odds of securing a job are much higher with them!

The report is spot on and, although obvious, is hopefully something that HR departments will read and take on board.
Ultimately whilst the IT guy might really want someone with tonnes of experience, the woman (or man:p) in HR could be throwing away all CVs that don't say "2:1 in Computing" or higher.

I left my IT course at Manchester, because I felt it was a waste of my time and my money. I don't want to program, I can't program, so there was no point in TRYING to program - I went to Uni to get a good degree, and would not have done had I continued.

Next February (loan permitting) I'm taking a 7 week course in Coventry that's designed to give me most if not all the basics I need to understand and DO a job and get into IT.
I have skills that could easily be used by employers, but I have nothing to say that I CAN do these things, other than my own word, and that's not worth much to anyone in terms of getting a job.

I've been working at a fairly unrelated job for the last 22 months (hey, it's money) but I now understand a lot more about how a business works as a whole (I work in the purchasing department) and that can only help. It's all very well being a whizz at System X, but if you don't understand how and why implementing System Y over System X can help Bill in accounts save the company 100 thousand per year and streamline production on the shop floor then you're going to be of no use.

Your always better to have a dgree then go into it with out one but the survery just reflects the fact that most qualifications dont mean anything. Time and again we have had people at work with a list of MS and Cisco qualifications/certifications as long as your arm but as soon as you put them infront of some hardware and ask them to do anything they turn into gibbering wrecks.

You will learn more in 6 months actually doing an IT job then you will during your entire degree.

Experience does count for a hell of a lot. I'm self taught, went to a temping agency, and simply through my interest in computers I landed a job as an IT Helpdesk assistant (some admin lot of 1st line), and now I've got a job as the 1st line support for 100 user business!

I'll aggree that experience does count and that's why I'm currently on my placement year as an IT assistant to the IT manager. It's well worth getting the experience as I've learnt a hell of a lot, but also passed on some of my skills.

If you're on a degree and have the option for a placement year, take it and you won't regret it!

This what everyone seems to be saying and is why im going for a vocational course at college rather then an A-Level.. if you have the products to show people, that YOU have made, and isn't just the same qualification as everyone else has.. then of course you will stand out

Experience wins everytime, for anyone doing high educational (college or A-Level) and has a half or full day a week free of lessons then badger local businesses for work experience, they get free labor and you gain real life work place skills that look good on a CV and can be demostrated in interviews.

The big problem for IT is off shoring where they have all the qualifications under the sun but zero experience when it comes to skills for the job, it seems that HR in this area believe qualifications are more important when recruiting people from abroad :(

I got my first job testing RMA'd monitors for a computer manufacturer, and at the time I started I didn't even know how to type win to start up Windows (hehe. that'll confuse the youngsters who don't even remember the days when MS-DOS was used for things other than flashing BIOSes). Within weeks I'd erased the files in the root of C:\ and had to figure out how to do a reinstall. A few months later, I got my Novell CNA qualification, never having seen a server (purely head knowledge from reading study guides). Still, that got me my job as first line tech support for the same computer manufacturer, and apart from one or two MCP exams I did back in the NT4 days, remains my only paper qualification. I'm now the entire IT department for a media company of 50 staff, and I get to buy robotic tape libraries, and fibre channel SAN hardware (although to be honest, most of my day is spent playing Starcraft or browsing Ebay - the benefits of having my own office).

Was there a point to all that... um, probably not. But there were 12 people in the IT department when I started, and some were downsized, and others left and weren't replaced, but I made myself somewhat indispensable. How? By being the only one who took an interest in the boring shiznit... like the telephone system, and backups. So, yeah; make yourself indispensable, and then you too can come in at 10:30 and play games all day, and get paid for it.

Where I work, you have to have a college degree in order to be considered for the job. I work for a government contractor, and our contract is written in a very specific way. A certain amount of our contract fee is set aside into a pool. Twice per year, our contract is graded, and for every point above 90% our company is awarded a set amount of the pool.

Here's the kicker. It doesn't really matter what you studied in college. As long as the company can say, "we have X number of degreed employees," we will get that much more recognition.

I've always seen a college degree as evidence that you are able to learn information and apply that information to situational problems. The company that hires you will teach you how to perform the actual job.

-monkey

I always thought this was kind of obvious really. I saw it in action at a recent assessment centre where the only technical part was assessing my current skills, why? Because they said they wanted to know what training I needed when I joined, the rest of the assessment centre was about group/planning/time/decision skills.

Thats why i'm doing an Industrial Placement year though, to get some damn good experience to go out with after I graduate - and the investment banking industry where I'm going to be looks like a great place to do IT.