Time to start contracting?

[kempc23]

Thanks everyone for your helpful advice. I now have a plan of action.

Im going to stay in my job until January at least. I will hopefully get promoted. That way if contracting doesnt work out, when I look for permie roles, I would go for Manager grade roles rather than senior consultant.

Having spoken to my old boss, who has been contracting for four years, he thinks I do have enough experience already. But he agreed with my point 1 above. However he said if I could get another SAP implementation under my belt, that would be great.

He also suggested that I get SAP certified. This would allow me to build on my current knowledge, and help me to get through a technical interview. So over the next 6 months, I will get certified and work as hard as I can to build up my functional knowledge.

Can anyone suggest a good place to do a course to get certified? SAPs own course is insanely priced (£10k+). There are plenty of training providers on the internet that offer 8 days of courses plus all the materials etc for around £1k. Much more like it! I might even be able to get this through work.

[NotAllThere]

Be careful with some of the courses - not all are legitimate. If you go with SAP, you can cheaper courses in Singapore, South Africa etc. even with flights and accomodation included. There are third parties who are legitimate of course - plenty of them in India. If any of them promise a job at the end - avoid. They're almost certainly lying. You might try searching (or asking) in the Certification forum on sdn.sap.com

Certification itself isn't really worth much, though the training is definitely useful. I've been working in SAP for 14 years, and I'm still not certified in anything - it hasn't caused me any problems so far... though it might wrt to setting up a business as a SAP technology partner.

I'm intrigued though, I thought most consultancies got their consultants certified as a matter of course. How come your current employer doesn't?

[kempc23]

We used to certify all of our consultants, but we dont any more. Im not sure why.

Agree with what you say about the paper certificate, it is the training I want really, to build on what I already know is SAP FICO. I also have access to a sandbox environment so can do work in my own time.

All of the companies I have been looking at are UK based, and they all look legitimate to me, but its difficult to tell I guess!

Thanks for the tip on the SDN forum.

[TheFaQQer]

I'm intrigued though, I thought most consultancies got their consultants certified as a matter of course. How come your current employer doesn't?

Depends on the consultancy. Oracle Consulting doesn't, because they rely on the fact that if you work for Oracle, you don't need to be certified.

Me: Can I do an OCP certification?
Manager: No. You work for Oracle. The only benefit of a certification is if you were thinking of leaving and wanted something formal on your CV.
Me:

[d000hg]

Make it a condition you want to get SAP accredited when your promotion comes up.