For Those Complaining About Trying to Get In the Door:

I contacted a temp agency yesterday and was told the following:
"Well, most of what we deal with are call centers. But they really only want candidates with call center experience in the last 2-3 years. You might try our other office, which does only industrial work."

Having used some of their clients' services in the past, I can't imagine calling these people "qualified" or "experienced." While I can understand the difficulty of entering the IT field with pros who have been in since the beginning, more degreed applicants than you can shake a stick at, and ever-changing complex technologies, I just don't see it in call center work!

(Note: I was not seeking call center work. I am only posting this to show that it's not unreasonable for the IT field to want experience, especially if call centers are seeking experience.)

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Turgon

ubermich wrote: »

I contacted a temp agency yesterday and was told the following:
"Well, most of what we deal with are call centers. But they really only want candidates with call center experience in the last 2-3 years. You might try our other office, which does only industrial work."

Having used some of their clients' services in the past, I can't imagine calling these people "qualified" or "experienced." While I can understand the difficulty of entering the IT field with pros who have been in since the beginning, more degreed applicants than you can shake a stick at, and ever-changing complex technologies, I just don't see it in call center work!

(Note: I was not seeking call center work. I am only posting this to show that it's not unreasonable for the IT field to want experience, especially if call centers are seeking experience.)

Call centre type work is actually a massive employer in the UK. More and more jobs have that flavour, even ones that were once technical. Many graduates find work in low paid call centres where they time your toilet breaks.

ubermich

Turgon wrote: »

Call centre type work is actually a massive employer in the UK. More and more jobs have that flavour, even ones that were once technical. Many graduates find work in low paid call centres where they time your toilet breaks.

Yeah, that's what they were talking about. Not even technical call centers though. Anything from catalog sales to setting appointments for doctors' offices. They track every second of every day and every word is prompted. My wife used to work at one of these companies, and I've met some of the dunces that work there. It's completely absurd to me that they would be concerned about experience.

NetworkingStudent

ubermich wrote: »

Yeah, that's what they were talking about. Not even technical call centers though. Anything from catalog sales to setting appointments for doctors' offices. They track every second of every day and every word is prompted. My wife used to work at one of these companies, and I've met some of the dunces that work there. It's completely absurd to me that they would be concerned about experience.

You need to remember that there are thousands and thousands of experienced applicants out of work, so employers can afford to be picky. I have seen lots of entry level help desk temp/contract/contract to hire jobs that say …don’t even apply if you don’t have at least 6+ months -2 years of IT experience.
I’m not sure how you break into IT, but having certs and a college degree just isn’t enough anymore, there needs to be training and experience beyond college.
My personal opinion is that people need to go the route of Mr Slowhand ‘s roommate and seek out a mentor or some sort of IT training program that is more advanced than college. No I’m not saying new horizons, but a class or program that would teach you advance skills and programs.
.

After looking IT work for a little while I’m starting to see that college just barely skids along teaching the basic skills needed for an entry level IT job.
In college we never covered
Outlook intensively.. or at all.
Cisco routers
Exchange was hardly ever discussed..much less studied
Active Directory
A customer service class- which I think would be helpful for an IT job
This is all basically my opinion, but this seems like some of the skills employers are looking for an entry level help desk job.

Tackle

Experience and education is not always set in stone...at least around me. My job listed requirements as 1-2 years as well as a 4 year degree. I didn't have any business experience and only a 2 year degree. Depends how you present yourself in the interview.

Sounds like you're still not having any luck NetworkingStudent.

Are you willing to relocate? Or drive a distance? I've seen quite a few entry level jobs up here around St. Cloud the last couple months. If you are, let me know and I'll send you a few postings I've seen recently.

Timber Wolf

I also wouldn't take the minimum experience of 1 year or so to seriously. There are a lot of adds for entry jobs that now ask for a minimum of 1 year since employers can try in get more experienced individuals in this economy and they don't want there position to be labeled entry level. So i would go ahead and apply to jobs with this requirement.

the_Grinch

I can speak to this subject with a number of points that should be considered. I think one major point is the number of "colleges" that are basically just handing out degrees after the check clears. When I left my last company they had just hired a second person with a technical degree, but it was from a paper mill. They didn't care because they really didn't know and he took a pretty low salary to start. I received a lot of emails from former coworkers saying that he lack the skills that I had had. Now, if you looked at our resumes we were close in age, had the same experience, and both had a degree. He was by no means an unintelligent person, but lack the logical thinking that one would get from a well rounded college program.

Any belief that an undergraduate IT degree is suppose to teach you how to use specific technology is a myth. Any program worth it's salt would be giving you foundational knowledge in various technologies and then round you out with liberal arts based courses to teach you how to think. In my program we did get hands on courses with networking technology, servers, databases, and security related products. At the same time, most of the courses were in a series and in the first one you touched very little as it was meant only to give you a firm base in whatever technological concept you were working with. An example would be the database sequence of courses, the first one dealt solely in the theory of databases. The terms used, concepts to be considered, and designing databases prior to actually constructing them in whatever technology you were going to use (also deciding what technology should be used). After that course, then you could move into the Oracle course, MySQL, and whatever else they covered (I didn't have to take them and only took the foundational course before switching to security). It would be impossible for a program to stay completely up to date with the newest technologies, but the basics do not change. I never took a course in Outlook or in Exchange, but I can use and troubleshoot those technologies without issue due to my program being well rounded.

This is always the point where I argue that any IT program should have a large amount of liberal arts courses that need to be completed. I realize that most people hate having to take these courses, but I can tell you first hand that they do make the difference. You learn how to think logically, how to express your ideas verbally and in writing, how to back up the conclusions you have come to with data, and how to speak in front of a group. I know that for at least one job that I received an offer for I was not the most experienced candidate, but my ability to speak and articulate my meaning is what won them over. With a solid foundation, any technology can be learned, but if you cannot stand up and make a valid point based off of data along with research you'll have problems.

As far as experience goes, it is what it is. There is no substitution for experience because in a technical disaster that is what makes or breaks you. Companies are asking for experience because they can and that is generally much more reliable (and verifiable) then an education requirement. It's hard, but once you break through that first door it becomes a lot easier. It took me 8 months from graduation to find a job, but after that first job I have not had any issues getting interviews/offers. Show you have drive, ambition, and a strong foundation, the world will be at your finger tips!

MentholMoose

NetworkingStudent wrote: »

I'm not sure how you break into IT, but having certs and a college degree just isn't enough anymore, there needs to be training and experience beyond college.

While a student, get an internship. It used to be helpful and just "nice to have"... I did one in 2005 and after it ended I had a job within weeks, even before completing my degree. However, nowadays it's really mandatory to set yourself apart from other new college graduates and internships help accomplish that.

Besides doing internships, get experience by doing volunteer or part-time work. What helped me was an on-campus job in a computer lab. All of my coworkers at that computer lab who wanted IT jobs got them after graduating. This seems to be common... I used to work as a sysadmin at a college and many of the IT staff members there were previously student workers (in the systems/networking group, literally all of us had on-campus IT jobs while in college).