I.T training centers have been emerging in volume figures for a couple of years. POssibly contributing to the downturn surge and stabilisation of the I.T employment market. But the question is, is it more lucrative to be an I.T recuitment agent, co-lordinator, trainer... or just simply be part of I.T global profession?

I believe it is better to be an IT professional. Reason why I say that is that you can be flexible,if you know your stuff,you can open a training school if you wish to, or if you indeed want to become a trainer, you can always do that. Besides it can be an extra source of income, I know two guys who are technical Architects and what they do on saturday is run their own training centres. In that way you could get more money if youwant to.

Not all these IT training centres offer good courses, some them just teach how to use basic MS applications like Word, Excel, Powerpoint etc. Which is not very usefulfor people who have degrees in ITwho are looking for specific areas to be trained on. Some of these training centres extort money from people by deceiving people, some are worth it, ie Microsoft certified training centres. But the money they charge is just too much.

Depending on what you want, I 'd rather be an IT profession than a recruiter, not saying that the latter is bad, but that is my choice.

I hate seeing ads for IT training centers that promise that "you will be guaranteed a job" after completing your training. Most people jumping into the IT arena from other areas don't realize that IT jobs are not just sitting around unfilled. Just because you took a 3, 6, or 12 month training course doesn't mean that you will be hired the day after graduation. There are thousands upon thousands of IT professionals that are already looking for work, and most of them already have degrees, training, and relevant experience. With all of the outsourcing that is going on, people with jobs are now becoming part of the pool of potential employees that you will have to compete with. This is the "dark" side of the IT arena that most non-IT people aren't told about until after they have paid thousands of dollars for training.

got to agree with dexxtreme

Those IT training companies exist to con those that don't know about the IT profession out of their money.

Typical advert, want to earn £18K - £40K a year, join computeach bighairlol

The reallity,

"Want us to con you out of your time and money and at the end of it, possibly get a job in a call centre earning £6 per hour, join Computeach".

Go to college, go to University, buy yourself some books and read them and get yourself a few accreditations.

@Lion

Which books?

Go to the computer section in a good book store. Hundreds of books. Dozens of subsections of the computer field.

Where to start?

umbrarchist

umbrarchist wrote:
Where to start, this can be hard because it wasn't till i was in the door and working in IT for a few years that I decided which route i wanted to go down.

And with IT, employers tend to want someone who is multi-skilled while at the same time have a specialist subject if that makes sense.

You have to decide whether you want to go down the

1) Networking road (CISCO etc...) or
2) Programming C or C++ (development programming)
3) Database programming

or maybe

5) Operating system Installation/Administration
However with that have something else, like learn SQL programming or become aquainted with some Database like Oracle, Informix, Ingres something like that.

Don't be afraid to go out and buy a book or two, invest in yourself, because truth is, if you don't invest in yourself why do you expect others to ?.

And oh yes, Windows point and click are for kids, if you go down the operating system route, yes get to grips with Windows but pick up something like Linux also. Try to familiarise yourself with the commandline syntax of these operating systems and not just point and click all the time. Thats all I can think of for now, maybe others can add some input.

Computeach, we should have a blacknetteach lol

Lion wrote:
This is an important point. Right now there are 3 major factions to the computing camp, Windows, UNIX, Apple. As far as starting an IT career goes, Apple is only a small subset of the pie, so you will usually have to choose between Windows and UNIX. You can learn both, but it is *very* difficult to seriously excel in both. Usually someone will be much more stronger in one than the other. This is because there are two completely different ideologies in regards to every aspect of the OS.

Windows Admins:
Point and click interface
Little typing required
Graphical interface is used for accessing all admin tools
Nearly all software is pre-compiled
Less scripting is needed for most day to day tasks
Lower flexibility in what can be automated

UNIX admins:
Heavy (almost exclusive) typing
Little pointing and clicking
Command line is used for accessing all admin tools
Text-based configuration files
Most programs have to be compiled from source code
Write perl/shell scripts to do any and everything
Everything is very flexible

Here is the critical issue, though:

Windows -- Fairly shallow learning curve - The interface is very similar to what most people use on their personal computers. Just about anyone can be a Windows admin with a little work. MCSE's are almost a dime a dozen (at least in the USA they are). You often have to spend big bucks on the advanced MS certifications to increase your potential salary.

UNIX -- Very steep learning curve - Most people have never had to type out a 50 character command line that redirects the output from 6 different commands into one final result. Most people find the challenge of becoming a UNIX admin utterly frightening. It is hard to become a good UNIX admin, but once you have made it to a certain level, you will substantially increase your potential salary.

Of course, I'm looking at all of this from the viewpoint of a UNIX admin. If there are any Windows admins out there I would love your input about the whole MS vs. UNIX war.

Dont fall for the scam. There was a time during y2k that you could go to a training center and come out and get a job.. But these days.. naaa .. If you want to be a player in the IT field you need one of two things...

1. EXPERIENCE with any programming language for 3 to 5 years

2. A college degree and the willingness to intern



Anything else.. is a waist of time.

Whats hot in IT in the U.S.

1. Anything object oriented (Java, .Net)

2. Linux

3. Anything DBA (Oracle, DB2)

4. okay .. almost forgot XML

Myself... I'm a developer but I work with other companies proprietary scripting languages. If you are highly skilled with years of experience .. there is usually no problem getting a gig but it's very competitive these days.

Good luck