HELP! Desperate and Frustrated (long post)

[ratewhore]

I can't help but pick up on 11 years support experience. Got to say, after 11 years you should really be specialising or moving into management or something beyond an MCSE level engineer role.

What about advertising yourself as a local IT support company? Get out there and mailshot all your local businesses, you will have skills and experience they need...

[Mordac]

nah Mordy I just did a search for her on google

Milan.

Hoping for a piccy were you? You old perve.

[n5gooner]

nredwood - I've seen your CV, ther is too much detail and at nearly 5 pages (I think) you need to cut it down to 2 pages. Cut the detail, be a bit more direct. what area are you looking to work in ?

[datestamp]

I would say "What skills do you have to sell. How far will you have to travel to sell them. Go sell them."

It is great to keep all your skills upto date, and go and do things that you find interesting. Unfortunately, contracting can sometimes be about flogging your skills to boring and stupid client sites. Don't think permie. Think "sell-sell-sell".

I thought the NHS was crying out for recently experienced staff for heaps of projects.

If you can balance all aspects, then great. If not, the priority is to get out there and sell yourself. It is your skill, personality, ability to dodge bullets, ability to fight off vampires and your business knowledge they are looking for. Not your aspirations. I hope that you can find something suitable, that pays the bills and doesn't cause too much pain, very soon. Good luck.

[cojak]

Forget the "only woman in a male IT environment" - take them at the knees when they start sprouting that cr@p.

[thunderlizard]

Blimey, never seen so much helpful advice from people on here. I'd agree with most of it.

Don't be shy, get loads of people to criticise your CV and try and make it better. Now that you've got a specific idea of what kind of job you want, rewrite each previous job description on the CV with that in mind. Even if 80% of each job was irrelevant to what you want now, concentrate on the 20% that's relevant.

If MCSE (which I haven't got) is anything like MCSD (which I have), then there's little to be gained from studying it in a working environment. Better to make use of your spare time to thug through the books and practice papers so that you're ready to do the exams as soon as you can afford. Even better, take one exam ASAP and put "MCP (working towards MCSE)" on the CV. If I were hiring I'd look on that as more or less a tick in the MCSE box.

In your position I'd probably tolerate maybe £13-15/hr if it got me the job. It's still an above average wage, and you can always whack it up on first renewal

My answer to CV gaps was "If I'd wanted to work 12 months a year I wouldn't have gone contracting". In an interview situation, it's your cue to talk about all the interesting and constructive things you're doing while not locked up 9-5.

One of my early contracts I got by seeing a card in the jobcentre wanting a few skilled clerical staff. I figured that if they had that requirement, their IT was probably a bit scrappy so I went in and offered to sort it out.

Don't know what you've got against PM work though. Whenever I've done it, it's been a right giggle.

Best of British,
tl

[Joe Black]

nredwood - I've seen your CV

I think I'd agree with most of the comments. Only thing I would also suggest is loosing the white-space and...ehmm...consider whether you really want MS Office to be listed as your first skill...