How Do I Break Into IT? How Do I find an IT Job?

NetworkingStudent

I have an A.S.S degree in IT and I have my A+, Net, and Sec+ certifications; however, I’m still having a hard time finding an IT job. My situation is different, because I work full time and I’m scared to take a contracting job. There are a few jobs I could have taken that were 3 months long, or 6 months and the contract would be over. This might be something I might have to do in the future.
Here are things I’m having trouble with..

2011 I got a lot of interviews at 30 or more companies, including the phone interviews, but no offers. Why am I not getting any interviews in 2012? My resume is solid, and so is my cover letter, I’m not sure what’s happening.

Questions:

Does graduation date play a role in finding an entry level IT job? I graduated in Dec 2010 with an A.A.S in IT.

Do I have to take a contract or contract hire job to break into IT? Currently, I work full time in printing, so I’m scared of these types of unsteady jobs.

If I take a contract job, and get let go and can’t make a student loan payment, what happens to my student loans, do they go into default? Can you get unemployment?

How do you stayed motivated in your job search? It feels like now every time I send an application that it sucks the life out of me. I’m just not sure what to do.

I’m just not sure how/when I will be able to get an IT job, but I’m going to keep learning( and studying for certs) and keep applying. I hope something turns up eventually.

Anyone have any advice?

techdudehere

You can defer your student loans while you are between jobs. It just suspends payments for a time. Companies are reluctant to hire someone without experience. Since you've committed a good deal of time to education in this field, I would recommend you hang onto your current job until you find at least a 3 month project or find a consultant you can work for. That will get you started. There are the jobs for vendors installing hardware replacements, too. I cannot imagine those jobs are worth working, but it's something you could try to get some resume padding. If nothing else surfaces, I would get a list of every non-profit in the area. Call them up, offer to help them with their technology needs in your spare time while hanging onto the steady paycheck. Find ways they can get discounted software and other ways to save them money and they will love you and before long you will have some rock solid references. Practice with the same equipment your target audience likely uses. For example if targeting small businesses and they use Sonicwall firewalls and Windows servers, then pick up a used Sonicwall and download a trial copy of a windows server. Register a domain name and setup the same stuff they would use. If you are looking at a medium sized company, you might brush up on virtualization, networking, and DFS. These are just examples, but what I am trying to say is know the stuff they care about for whatever niche you'd like to break into. Be able to answer questions. Take good care of people, be willing to take the initiative to make things happen, and in the end opportunities will open up. IT is not a field where you can wait for opportunity to come to you, guys who do that will spend years in low paying help desk roles.

ptilsen

The experience from a short-term contract would be worth the risk, IMO. I got my first full-time gig partially off of my short-term contract experiences.

Have you posted your resume or sample cover letters on TE for berating? Have you done a sample interview with any to get feedback? To be honest, at thirty interviews and no offers I'm inclined to think something is wrong with your interview skills. That, or you're getting interviews for jobs for which your are not qualified.

In my experience, and according to the few statistics I've seen, there is no real shortage of IT jobs here. I can tell you I found work fairly quickly in late 2008 and 2009 after leaving my helpdesk job for some short-term contracts. The economy is MUCH better now, especially in MN and IT, than it was then.

There are a lot of enormous companies in MN with large IT departments. Target, Best Buy, Cargill, Thomson Reuters, Wells Fargo, US Bank, United Health Group, Lifetouch, Deluxe Corporation, General Mills, etc. There is no shortage of small, medium, and large business either, and more managed services providers than I can keep track of. If you have your ducks in a row as far as the resume and interviewing skills go, it's just a matter of using the proper search engines properly (Indeed, Monster, Dice, CareerBuilder, Star Tribune, Craigslist - though Indeed does an amazing job of aggregating the results).