Not sure what to do

After getting my four certifications and improving my resume I'm starting to get a lot more contacts about IT jobs, the problem is that 90% of them are very short term contracts. Most are one to two week contracts for setting up PCs, the pay is good but I'm worried about a month down the line and work drying up again.

My retail job is also now being a hindrance. It was 25-30 hours a week with a very flexible schedule so I could do my IT work on the side. It's now become a straight 40 hours a week with no flexibility and highly variable so my outside life is getting hammered. I want to quit that but my IT work is not enough to cover what I make from it, the contract work would but there's no guarantee I will have that coming in steadily.

Thoughts? I don't want to take the step of going full time IT and in 2-3 months have to start looking for a retail job again.

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NetworkVeteran

hoktauri wrote: »

After getting my four certifications and improving my resume I'm starting to get a lot more contacts about IT jobs, the problem is that 90% of them are very short term contracts.

This is where the objective line of your resume can help. Many people put time-wasting filler that does the opposite of impressing such as, "Seeking a challenging role I can excel at.", hence the common recommendation to remove any objectives.

However, they can be effective filters if you actually have an objective in mind! E.g., "Seeking a full-time entry-level IT position. Will consider contracts 6+ months in length." A good objective garners more on-target e-mails and less e-mail filtering.

hoktauri

I hadn't thought of putting that in there, thanks. I still would like to know if 1-2 week contracts are fairly normal for desktop support, it sounded short but if you're only going in to help others set new things up I could understand it.

kurosaki00

My recommendation is to make your IT resume stronger.
Get A+, Net+, Sec+ or MS certs, depending on what you want to do.
And start looking, stay at your current job and look on the side for a new one
when you get an offer/sign with the new job leave that one.

If the problem is you have too much work to study or something like that...
well my friend, sometimes we have to sacrifice for a while to achieve what we want.
If you have gone to college you should know what is to sleep 5 hrs a day for 2-3 weeks on finals or something like that.

Gorby

I had to go through the same situation TC when I got my first IT job, I was offered ton's of short term PC migration jobs but I didn't want to be unemployed considering I had a child to take care of and rent. I was starting to hate retail so I studied 3 hours a night for the certifications just to get my net+ and sec+ and was offered a FT Help Desk position that payed about the same as than my retail management job but it got my foot in the door at least.

hoktauri

Getting more certs at the moment is not in the budget, when my local CC finishes their testing certification late summer and it's much cheaper it might be.

Nemowolf

for perspective. My company will bring someone in for a 3-6 month contract to test run anyone. we don't have the luxury of having basic work to do on our team so we have to go through a month or so of training for anyone to even start running on their own.

hoktauri

I wouldn't have any issue with a contract to hire position if it's stated at the beginning. I also got two more short term contract offers yesterday and a 1-2 month offer but the pay was horrible (under $10/hr), if I could just get it up to a 3 month offer closer to $15 I'd go ahead and jump on it.

I did put in my summary that I am looking for full time or long duration contracts, don't seem to stop people from offering 1 week ones. I also have people asking me if I am currently working which means they're not reading at all, I got two jobs and volunteer at the moment.

eansdad

I think that the 4x MTAs is actually hurting you for a full-time contract and/or FTE position. An A+ and Net+ would do a lot better.

I started out lucky after the Army getting a contract position at Compaq but when that went south after the merger with HP I bounced around from short term contract to contract for a few years. Again I was lucky enough not to be out for any more then a month or so at a time and unemployment kicked in after each contract so money wasn't that bad. Working short term contracts you'll learn a lot of different roles. I've been hired for large contracts as a deployment tech only to be moved to a leadership role doing desktop support for the deployment and mid management under the project manager to supervise the other deployment techs. So you never know where a simple short term position will lead. Doing short contracts will also get you familiar with different software for deployments like Ghost, Altiris and WDS and can get you unique experience troubleshooting the various configurations and applications. Not to mention the networking and contacts you can make while working on these contracts.

So I say go for the short contracts and work on A+ and Net+. You'll find yourself in a full-time position so enough.