career advice for totally lost man?

toasterman

mum2one wrote: »

Im pretty sure that connexions would be able to advice on job structure, or they will point you in he right direction.
<snip> I guess you need a big piece of paper, with pros and cons re IT.
The bloke who does the work on my computers he charges £30 an hr, but he has said b4 it took time to get established.
I dont know whether ur qualifications you have you could maybe squeeze into anither career, this outside activity seems to be very important to you, is their skills from that you could add to ur CV or even look at that as an option.

Connexions (I've worked for in the past) are only funded to help people 13-19. I'm looking at more information from Learndirect and other such organisations at the moment.
I took a look in the Yellow Pages recently and tried to find a unique selling point for selling IT. There isn't really any I can find, and there are hundreds of other companies from one-man bands to big corporates with half page adverts already doing it. The page of pros and cons for IT is still to be done.
My outside activity is very important to me, but there is no paid work in it at the moment. I'd rather not be too specific on that. I guess my IT skills transfer to that activity well, but there's not much that comes back the other way.

toasterman

Conor wrote: »

So in fact what you are is probably someone who has built computers at home and fixed families and friends and thought that meant you had real skills that you could use in employment. Once you got a job, you then found out that you knew very little at all, especially on servers and specialist server stuff such as Exchange, AD etc, tried to blag it and got found out. Sound familiar? It's a common thing in IT.

Much as I dread your posts sometimes Conor, I have to admire that you don't muck about and give what you really think.
You're about half right.
Built computers, fixed families and friends' computers, went to college and studied them, got a job on a 1st line IT helpdesk in a call centre, then resigned after about 15 months (above average in a call centre).
Temped for a bit, then I got a job as an IT engineer where I learnt how to make changes to Exchange, Backup Exec, how to administer Active Directory, and other industry stuff that I openly admitted I'd never seen before.

A few years of that and I left because I was offered substantially more money to work in-house for someone, but while I got on great with staff in general, I didn't get along with a couple of directors, and the rest of the IT department who were based at another site.
From there back to being a travelling IT engineer for 2.5 years at a different consultancy, before I accepted resignation over a sea of complaints regarding my ability, general demeanour, tiredness, and upsetting a teenager for saying something that she laughed at, then later (after she'd smiled, waved me goodbye and I'd left) decided she found so offensive that she put in a formal complaint.

Generally I've not gone on so well with management throughout my career so far, except for about 6 months where I had a manager (who is now a good friend) who seemed much fairer and easier to work with - which was part of the reason I was considering working for myself. It seems unlikely I'll upset management if I'm self employed.

Conor wrote: »

The problem is that you, as most of us do when we get older, have lost the skills to learn as we did when we were at school and now you're panicking which doesn't really help matters. You're not alone with this - most of us are the same.

That is good to know. Some days I feel quite optimistic I can learn things, and others I just dread anything different to the previous day.

Conor wrote: »

OK. So you liked the IT support on the whole? Are you good at doing "home computing" type IT support as opposed to business type stuff? What about setting up a little business offering support to local people in your area? If you've been fixing computers for family and friends, you can tell them you're wanting to do this and that if they know anyone who wants a computer looking at to mention your name. It's how I started out. You find that if you do a good job for a reasonable price, word of mouth is a powerful advertising tool. You have to be careful with pricing though. I basically had a set price for each type of job. Sometimes I'd lose out when a job turned into a nightmare but it was those types of jobs that got me a good reputation in the area because sometimes I'd end up at a job that should of been a 15 minute one with the minimum 1hr callout charge and end up being there 2 hrs trying to sort out a problem which ended up being more involved but I'd only bill them the hour. Also if I'd had a quick job, I'd do soemthing like show them how to do basic housekeeping using free software to give them a feeling that the £20 I'd charged them to take 5 minutes banging in a network card wasn't that bad.

That's certainly some good advice, and I'm considering it (while also continuing to apply for any jobs I feel I can do that pay a reasonable amount (I do still have some standards)), but I am slightly disturbed by quite how many people in the Yellow Pages offer it already though. Per hour, or per service, there's specialists in every area and larger companies offering the blanket "we'll take a look at anything" approach.
I did my first proper home-user job for somebody I didn't know last week (via friend of friend) and that seemed to go alright. I had a very satisfied feeling as I left that I'd made them happier and the money was all coming straight to me.

toasterman

SunnySusie wrote: »

MS qualifications arent as well recognised as some might think. 10yrs in IT with MS products and i dont have any! I have been involved in recruitment for my teams in a couple of places now and we give little weight to that kind of thing.

That said, keeping up to date is important. I manage it just because I love IT and im always reading magazines, blogs, news, tinkering at home etc so it just comes naturally.

How about working at a school? The IT guys at my partner's place are (with respect) not the highest skilled guys (else they'd be working in the private sector). Yet they seem to do some interesting things from building new machines to maintaining the network.

Other things to try in your spare time or looking for work could be affiliate marketing or blogging.

Best of luck! PM me if you want to know more and let us all know how you do !

Thanks Susie. I have known people with MS qualifications before but unless they're kept up to date, I don't see what the big deal is.
While some days I hate computers and curse the day I ever started used one for something more than running your everyday applications, I'm still very interested in technology and I love cleverly designed electronics. I regularly seem to end up debating new mobile phones or mp3 players with other such geeky friends. I draw the line at Linux though, which always just frustrates me.

I've applied for a couple of jobs at schools/colleges and not got on well, but I had thought the same as you suggested. I applied for one where I had everything on the 'required' list and 90% of the 'desirable' list as well, and didn't even get an interview. I'll keep on trying though.

bambam69

I'm really sorry but we're sitting here intrigued by what your 'social activity' is?
Please tell us, we won't judge! Maybe we'll join up to, it sounds great!

Regardless of this, I'm in a similar situation jobwise and know how frustrating it is not having any clear direction, but keep your chin up and follow what you really wanna do as you only get one go at life so you may as well be as happy as you can be.

Good luck!

PS is it historical recreations?

toasterman

bambam69 wrote: »

I'm really sorry but we're sitting here intrigued by what your 'social activity' is?
Please tell us, we won't judge! Maybe we'll join up to, it sounds great!

Regardless of this, I'm in a similar situation jobwise and know how frustrating it is not having any clear direction, but keep your chin up and follow what you really wanna do as you only get one go at life so you may as well be as happy as you can be.

Good luck!

PS is it historical recreations?

Firstly good luck to you with your career/soul searching.
I did this this morning, which might be of interest to you:
http://careersadvice.direct.gov.uk/helpwithyourcareer/skills/
You say whether you agree or disagree with statements and it suggests possible jobs.
Ironically, based on my answers, it suggests I might consider working in IT. It also suggests admin, management and planning, financial services, or marketing/selling/advertising.
I think it's way off the mark with sales, but I can see where it's coming from with the rest.

Who is 'we'? 'us'? How many of you are sitting there intrigued?
Lol it's not historical recreations.
I'll put you out of your misery. I do local community radio. Production, presenting, doing the technical aspects of other people's shows.
It doesn't in any way help my fear of public speaking or confidence - because radio is just me sat in a room with a couple of other people. You've no idea if there's 2 people listening or 20 people listening (and I might be being optimistic with the latter figure).

It's all unpaid voluntary work (in fact you have to pay for station membership) but there's something about it that excites me. I'm a totally different person, in a darkened room behind a microphone, with lots of switches and buttons to press. It's one of the few occasions where I really think I get on great working in a group (co-presenters, writers), and creating musical audio and occasional mini dramas is great fun. It also lets me excercise my writing ability.

Sadly community radio licences mostly aren't full time (a couple of months per year tops usually, but there are now some full-time ones - that I'm in the process of trying to get into) and have very few members of paid staff. Show changes and licence restrictions is why it moves around and takes up more of my time at different points of the year.
Because it's voluntary and in some cases, a registered charity, are other reasons why I'm unwilling to stand them up - it would be completely dropping them in it if I were to phone with an hour's notice that I couldn't do a show.


P.S. The 'top interests' job groups that the careers site suggested I might enjoy from my answers were:
Publishing and journalism
Performing arts, broadcast and media
and
Arts, crafts and design.

Again it's way out with the last - I can't draw to save my life, but very close with the others.

jumpycheese1

I have used careers advice and all they tell me is go to uni! Yeah right! I already got a degree and I cannot afford to be jobless or have a part time job for 3 years. Plus, the motivation for studying has gone out of the window. I have been at school/college/uni for 17 years and have left the world of education over 5 years ago!