Next Contract Career move

[hobnob]

I agree with what other people are saying about going perm. At my last two contracts, I've seen people who started out on the service desk and then moved into other teams (e.g. server support). However, this will work better at a larger company (e.g. an MSP) where they actually have separate teams, rather than a smaller company where they have 2-3 IT staff who do a bit of everything.

Back in the early day I did do an MCP in Windows XP which was very hard but I did enjoy it. Just when it came to doing the Windows Server MCP I looked at the thousands of pages of brain dumps and gave up.

Just to be clear, when people talk about "brain dumps", that usually means "a website with copies of the exam questions", i.e. they're cheating. So, I advise you to avoid them.

If you want to try Microsoft certification again, their Fundamentals exams (e.g. MS-900 for Microsoft 365 and AZ-900 for Azure) are pretty straightforward. The training material is all free of charge on the Microsoft website, and the exams cost £69 which is pretty cheap. If you do a (free) virtual training day for Azure Fundamentals, you can get a voucher to do the exam free of charge too.

Building on that, do you have a custom domain for your limited company? If you get one and link it to an Exchange Online account, that's a way to get more experience with configuration, and it will only cost you £3.80/month for a single mailbox.

[northernladuk]

I agree in some perm roles you can work your way up but in my experience in particular large Corporate US companies where the IT access is strictly controlled it is getting increasingly harder too.

Oddly i started off in a large Corporate US company and as long as showed the willing I could go where I wanted. They seemed a lot more invested in their staff and skills, particulary if they were an IT outsourcing company. You gaining skills means they can bill you out for more. Win win. This was a good number of years ago though.

In my last perm role I started off enthusiastic and I was given an opportunity to learn SalesForce. However found it impossible to manage the day to day running of the helpdesk with consistant interruptions as well as do the SalesForce side. Eventually they took that away from me without even a word. (don't want to make excuses but my dyslexia didn't help as the interruptions make it hard to concentrate).

No chance of learning Salesforce in your own time? IMO 'Learning Salesforce' isn't a skill. It's knowledge of a product. What you do with that knowledge is key. You should be looking at what you want to do and learning that skill, like PM, BA, SDM. You can do any of these regardless of the product.

I'm not sugarcoating it but it could take you years, particularly if you want to get to a level you can contract again. You need to get on a career path, not a job change.

Often with perm roles the longer you have been their the move work responsibilities they add to your job role. My manager in my last role turned out to be a narcissist and used to say how great he was and "you won't believe how much money I am on". So was a little be draining.

But yes overall you are right I can't be paid for skills you don't have. I did work for a little IT Consultancy before joining my last perm role. I should have stayed! lesson to be learned!

So what you need to do is forget the job you are doing. It's now irrelvant. You have those skills. You now need to avoid the Peter Prinicple which says that people in a hierarchy tend to rise to their "level of incompetence": employees are promoted based on their success in previous jobs until they reach a level at which they are no longer competent, as skills in one job do not necessarily translate to another.

So you are a desktop bod looking to move in to a role you can't do. You need to get the job spec of the role you want to move in to and start learning the competancies around that job. Somehow start trying to do the position you want to move on. It may need a whole new set of competancies so you need to start learning those in the role you are in so you are already competant (to a degree) at the next role making the transition easier. First and foremost is knowing where you want to go. If you know that you know what you need to learn.

Just working hard at the role you are in will get you no where. You need to be ready for the next role, even if you are crap at the one you do. Most of what you learnt in your old job won't mean much when you move. Things might have changed but the big America co's did used to invest in their staff and allowed upward mobility more than some others but there must be plenty of other companies that also do that.

Maybe try a Public Sector employer as well. They are all about moving people about, giving opportunity and the welfare of their staff etc. If your dyslexia is a problem it's a lot less likely to be an issue in a PS role as well as they spend a lot more time on equality and fairness than private do. There are good and bad PS employers of course but the two PS gigs I've had seemed very good places to learn in.