[Sussex] An odd question....

[Jon Fautley]

>>I'm currently at Park College, Eastbourne doing AS levels, planning to
>> go
> onto
>>university, as this is the normal path to take to get a good career.
> However, I'm >hearing a lot of stories about graduates having serious
> problems finding work,
>>even after spending ~6 years of their life and thousands of pounds
>> getting
> a
>>degree.
>
> Well, in short.  What has changed in the last 20 years is that a degree
> nolonger guarantees you a good job - once upon a time having a degree
> was rare - this isn't true anymore.

Indeed. Of my circle of friends from school (there were 4 of us) - three
are at uni, of which one just dropped out.. and i'm working for Nik
Butler. A degree, imo, no longer has the 'wow' factor it used to.

> You may be reading about how hard it is for graduates to find jobs, but
> I have to say that people without degrees will be finding it even
> harder. We're now in an environment where call-centres expect there
> staff to be degree educated.

A degree seems to be 'the thing' to ask for at the moment... I don't have
a degree, and remember sitting down thinking exactly what adam was
thinking when I was his age.. job or no job?
I decided to go for a job because I didn't like the idea of spending 5
years learning stuff that has little to no relevance to the real world
(see Nik's comment about our local Degree-ified employee). Also, I have
money, which my uni friends don't :)

> As for your work experience.  Well, right now the IT jobs market is not
> in it's best ever state.  Your experience is, frankly, not going to
> impress anyone - until you've got 12 to 18 months working in a corporate
> IT environment most recruiters wouldn't even take the time to interview
> you.

This is true. But then, a Degree doesn't guarantee an interview anyway. My
last two jobs have been got through people 'knowing me', looking at my
experience, and thinking 'yeah, he looks like he knows what he's doing'.
Which is nice. Just try and get your name out there. Play an active role
in LUG's... attend computer fairs and just talk to the people there...
make yourself heard! lol

> What you need to decide is what you actually want to _do_ in IT.
>
> If you want to be a support/installation engineer then you can start
> applying for jobs now, start from the bottom, build up experience and
> build a career.  There are certainly several such people on the list,
> and I know Nik Butler, for instance, will talk very strongly in favour
> of getting out there and getting on with it.

Like me, for example :)

I'm out here, in the real world, earning a decent wage (considering my
age) while my friends are just hoping their student loan cheque will turn
up so they have more money for beer ;)

> This is because these jobs
> are strongly based around the practical skills of setting up hardware
> and learning to use/configure specific software packages. There is a lot
> of theory in there and learning it will make you a better engineer, but
> this can be done over time.

You cannot learn experience at uni, this has been pointed out. You also
can't learn customer services at university... and without decent customer
services skills, working on a helpdesk is really not what you want to
do....

> However, if you want to be a Analyst programmer, Systems Analyst,
> Technical Architect, etc, etc, you are going to have to learn a lot of
> stuff before you'll make the grade.  You don't have to go to University
> to do this, but frankly it is the best environment in which to do so and
> a degree _will_ help you get a job.  If you look at some of the better
> jobs in this market they _only_ recrute graduates with a 2:1 or above
> from a good university and 5 years plus commercial experience, that is
> the hard reality.

This is true. It does depend on what you want to do. If you want a
'managery' job then you need to impress the managers, if you want a
technical job, you need to impress the techies. Show me an IT tech that's
impressed by a degree ;)

I've noticed that all the people that chose work over uni are all shouting
for work, and all those that went to uni are shouting for uni.
Really, it's up to you... what do YOU want to do? Work or run up debt?

If you want to talk more about why I chose work vs. uni, feel free to
email me, or drop me a line and i'll give you my cellphone number.

Good luck,

Jon

-- 
* Jon Fautley *
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t: +44 (0) 1403 24 1337
e: jon at geekpeople.net
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