[Gllug] Graduates paying for IT training before employment

[Richard Cohen]

On Sun, 24 Aug 2003, Alasdair G Kergon wrote:

> [Forwarded protecting anonymity]
>
> Has anyone come across this sort of thing before?

This sounds a little familiar...

See http://old.lwn.net/2001/0315/commerce.php3 and follow links for the
story of Linuxgruven - and google for other stories about them...

This may not be the same thing - but it sounds somewhat similar.

> Alasdair

Cheers
Richard

> ----- Forwarded message -----
>
> Subject: Urgent: Need advice on an unusual job offer.
>
> X graduated from uni and has been looking for work. Recently he went to
> an interview at a company called ICS.
>
> http://www.icslondon.com/
>
> They put out a request for IT consultants (some of whom might be
> trainees) who were graduates. Now, considering that X has just got
> out of Uni with a degree in sport science, he's not exactly
> able to hit the ground running. What the company have basically said to
> him is that they'll put him on some of of their training courses (***at
> his own expense***) and then once he's done those and passed the exam,
> then they'll offer him a job at roughly 24k. I'm not sure what all the
> courses he's doing are, but I know that it adds up to about 3 months of
> academic training and a 3 months placement. As far as the academic
> courses go, I don't know what all of them are, but I do know that they
> include these two:
>
> http://www.icslondon.com/training/mcse.asp
> http://www.icslondon.com/training/mcsd.asp
>
> The issue:
>
> As you may notice, as far as money goes, we're not exactly talking
> about peanuts here, and basically our concerns are that if you're
> going to take someone on as an employee, it's a bit fishy to require
> themselves to be trained at their own expense, don't you think? My
> position is that the courses may well be useful and will result in X
> being well qualified in the field, but it's a lotta dosh to fork
> out, and basically, given the amount you're paying for training, and
> then the amount that they pay you as salary, you probably won't do much
> better than breakeven after the first year, and that's negating the fact
> that one is not taking one's entire salary just to pay off the training
> costs.
>
> What ICS have said to X is that they will train him for 6 months (so
> there may be more courses in addition to the ones I mentioned, and a 3
> month placement is included in this period) and then guarantee him a job
> afterwards at 24K.
>
> We now see that the training is OK but expensive.  However, I am trying
> to get a feel for how unusual it is for a company to ask for someone to
> pay for their training up front and then employ them afterwards,
> provided they have succeeded in the training.
>
> I am wondering whether this is a sign of the times.  Now that there are
> no jobs for life and there is no such thing as job security, only skills
> security do IT sector companies do much less training themselves for
> their employees/ potential employees?  We have to remember that it was
> not a graduate training scheme ad which he replied to - the job merely
> said they were looking for IT consultants, including some trainees, who
> needed to be graduates.
>
>
>

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