Yip. Agreed. I have a current CCNA sitting around here somewhere collecting dust. Current job is looking after some specialised systems that I have an ancient certificate in and old experience with. Funny how it works out.
So.. as the OP can see you can go the linux/windows/unix route or get involved in something specialist. Since your coming into the game med-late career, with some $$ saved I hope and some part time profession to fall back on, then I suggest specialising. All us IT Pro's know that most specialists cannot string a sentence together about computing most of the time but they sure know how to bill by the hour. So pick a hot new application or service and become a 'specialist'. That way you do not have to show years of past experience, industry certificates etc because, basically, the technology is so hot and new that no one has such.
TIP: IT can be extremely boring at times, so if you get into the creative side of IT which is learning about Flash, Photoshop , then in the long run it can be quite entertaining and satisfying too
I've got 15 years of Solaris, loads of AIX (with LPARs and HACMP) and LDAP/IDM all at enterprise level and I'm getting nowhere in my Swiss job hunt! Two nibbles in last two months that all and they've gone quiet! I know they were for UBS who have kicked out Sun I beleive and are building an in-house team. You know, the outsource/insource cycle....
Beginning to think there's something subliminarly nasty in my CV that is something rude in Swiss German.....
Might redo my CV in the Swiss style and in German......
IT Companies who have a gold partner status or the like with the big vendors will tend to hire people who have the certifications so they can get and maintain that status (by saying that they have x amount of vendor certified engineers on their books). A friend of mine got the sack from one company who then got in a huff when he told them that they could not use his Microsoft or Cisco certs anymore to obtain a prefered partner status.
Retraining as an adult means you're becoming a "Quereinsteiger" in IT. Since the 90s Switzerland has a formalised 4-year-apprenticeship for IT folks. Applicants can choose between 3 fields, application development, system technology and support. These ex-Apprentices soak up most of the IT jobs nowadays. The playing field for Quereinsteiger and other amateurs has become very small. A typical career starts with an IT apprenticeship and/or a Matura and later specialising in a particular field. For advanced jobs German, French and English are a must.
i have never used sharepoint but still feel i hate it. i had it on cd and wondered what it was. a quick look around on the website still left me baffled. the site was just full of crap (leveraging you wotsits type corporate speak). still have no idea what it does, but i guess MS don't know either cos they failed to come up with any compelling reason for using after several pages on their website.
if i had to guess, it would be something like a webserver+frontpage+cms+sql server rolled into an package with an 'idiot proof UI' thrown on top.
Hi, how do you mean that most IT jobs are soaked up by people that have done this course ? Do you mean entry positions ? I am slightly confused because I always thought getting started with a book was a very good way to get going in IT, its how I started, and as a profession where being hands on counts more than educational qualifications in general I dont see why this course would be the only way in.
Of course I dont know about Swiss IT education so it could be very much different to the UK.