Advice on getting into IT after redundincy

cybershot_2

Hi i have just been made redundent after 11 years of working on a factory,

the careers office now entitles me to £2500 for new training on anything i want.

want somthing totaly diff from factory work as want to use this to better myself at last

So any advice would be grate????


thought of sparky/plumber ect but ver hard to get into.

Now thought of IT as always been interested in pc's and apparently good money in it just dont know what IT to go for as so many about. so any ideas would be grate.
just dont know where to start.

also is CAD any good way to go about it?

Savvy_Sue

IT is also hard to get into, and not always the goldmine people think it will be, especially for a new starter. There's the eternal problem: can't get a job without experience, can't get experience without a job.

Sorry I don't know what the demand for Autocad is like these days, it may be higher than in other areas.

Sorry to be discouraging. It is good to think about what you'd really like to do so I hope you can find something fulfilling!

DjSatansfury

lol "very hard to get into"

So is IT. Its difficult enough for people with decent IT quals to find work these days. Dont listen to what the media tells you, its a load of !!!!!!!!.

Kintoo

I work in IT as a devoloper I basically had to work my way up to get this role, I took a job in my current company as a helpdesk advisor the pay was terrible (about £220 per week) this was 8 years ago.

I have put myself though training and in my monthly reviews as part of my development plan I had a chance to move to an application support team and slowly worked my way up to where I am now.

Start of small, get your foot in the door of a company and who knows where you can get to.

magyar

I've just got out of IT! Mainly because I felt I was getting nowhere very fast. The bottom levels of IT are, to be frank, pretty boring.

Totally agree that training/qualifications are almost meaningless (with the exception of specific skills like Java/C++ etc). In IT it's 100% experience that counts; especially if you're contracting. They want people who hit the ground running.

Skills like CAD are very marketable if you have the engineering background to go with it, which it sounds like you might have.

If you are a practical person, then I'd consider looking into joining a company as desktop support, maybe try companies like Lynx, who provide "on call" service engineers.

magyar

Meant to add - best of luck by the way!

peter999

magyar wrote:

I've just got out of IT! Mainly because I felt I was getting nowhere very fast.

What job were you doing in IT ??
What have you gone into ??
.

magyar

I was "assistant manager" (i.e. there was me, and the manager!) in a small company (~100 people). Loved it at first - I really did do a bit of everything from desktop support to writing small applications and generally 'being the IT bod'.

Then the company got bought out by a larger one who had a similarly large IT department and my last job was to integrate our systems into theirs (i.e. put myself out of a job!). They offered me a job in the larger IT department but I didn't think I'd fit - I was a jack of all trades and you need to be a specialist in that situation.

They alternatively offered redundancy but in the end another job cropped up working on financial deals/analysis, which I took (and enjoy).

Not wishing to hijack the thread, but I can add the message that you really can change career - sometimes because you want to, sometimes because you have to - and that unless you're very specialised, most jobs just require common sense, hard work and a bit of application.

cybershot_2

AHH and i always thought IT was a good career to get into now im confussed

magyar

Don't get me (us?) wrong. You can make a good career in IT and it's fair to say that people will always need computers. But it's not a "goldmine" - you need to think carefully about what you want to do, where you're going to get your skills and so on.

Talk to someone in the industry or careers centre about the different types of IT specialist there are. Generally these divide into application development (i.e. writing programs) and 'hardware' support. The second can include desktop support (i.e. fixing computers/hardward and managing software installations etc.) or network management and various other things.

cheghead

In a similar situation. Just made redundant and don't really know what to do next. All I can say is where I live any job is pretty dificult to get (so it seems at the moment). I think sometimes it is better to try and build on what you already know.

I'm starting with getting ECDL. If you don't already have it, might be a good start as this can be done on-line in a fairly short time and will give you an idea what this mysterious thing called IT is all about?