Reply to: How to move from A level in to an IT career....

[northernladuk]

Great advice from everyone. More info, he just didn't fancy the degree route. He is a bit of a shy lad so think this will hurt him every time he gets asked 'Why didn't you try Uni'. He has a couple of A levels so can do it and is re-considering it but drop in wage would be difficult. He is has a job at a hotel/gym setup doing various stuff but hates it.

I think the best thing I can do with him looking at the advice is definitely the degree. Look around there is close to F All you can do without one now. The other option that is a strong possibility is apprenticeships. It does seem the bit IT guys still do them so there is a chance he could get on one of these though not sure what they would say to 20 year old's on them but lets see.

Certainly a shame to see the route that I suspect many of us took to get in to our illustrious careers has now collapsed. Looks like you get a degree or take Dim P's advice. Sad state of affairs but anyway.

Many thanks all.

[northernladuk]

What's he working as at the moment? Is he on minimum wage?

I didn't do the university route, quit school at 15 and got job at local PC repair place...then blagged a web development job...bounced around web jobs for a while until I was earning a fairly decent wage.

Personally I'm glad I didn't go to uni, I would have been 21 with a degree and possibly getting 25-30k? but with 20k uni debts... instead I was earning 35 and had plenty of years experience, which often beats the graduate degree IMHO.

OR convince your client to pay you 150per day to have a junior doing grunt work for them, you can skill him up a little. You don't pay National Insurance on your first employee now do you! ;-) kerrr-ching!

Yeah but how long ago was this?

[Mehmeh]

What's he working as at the moment? Is he on minimum wage?

I didn't do the university route, quit school at 15 and got job at local PC repair place...then blagged a web development job...bounced around web jobs for a while until I was earning a fairly decent wage.

Personally I'm glad I didn't go to uni, I would have been 21 with a degree and possibly getting 25-30k? but with 20k uni debts... instead I was earning 35 and had plenty of years experience, which often beats the graduate degree IMHO.

OR convince your client to pay you 150per day to have a junior doing grunt work for them, you can skill him up a little. You don't pay National Insurance on your first employee now do you! ;-) kerrr-ching!

[Dryden]

The middle ground.

In my last role I was still recruiting junior SD Analysts out of school / college on fixed term 12 month contracts, where all of them went on to permanent roles having proven their mettle. So these jobs are out there, but as the thread says in the smaller organisations up to 1000 seats.

However, thought this might help. A friend of mine started the course last year once her daughter went to school, looking to get into IT somewhere. A HND which will give enough skills for an medium level analyst / BA / Dev or a gateway to Degree or further study.

Higher Education Courses

This one is at Guildford, but would imagine any HE Colleges would have similar?

[DimPrawn]

I'd be talking him into learning a proper trade like bricklaying, joinery, heating engineer/plumber.

IT has no future in the UK whatsoever.

Bob proof, and most of these types I know are far wealthier than 90% of IT contractors once you setup and run your own business using cheap Poles to do the work, but charging granny their life savings for each job.

[tranceporter]

I honestly don't understand why you lot think that it is so difficult to get a job. Just get some certifications under the belt (MCAD, or Cisco as someone else said), and put the MS Cert logo on the CV, add some colour and throw it across every job board on the internet in UK. I am pretty sure someone will be looking for grad-to-junior level developers/QA etc. Personally, I wouldn't even mind working for a bob company for 6 months to 1 year. After all, it is all about getting experience under the belt, and at that juncture, I would not care about how much money I am making. Case in point, I did not have good grades in engg, and hence failed to make any of the campus interviews. My first job paid peanuts, and in 4 months I was onto a second job that paid 6 times more (which shows how low I was paid in the first job). What he needs to decide first, is what field he wants to work in. Developer? QA? Agile/Scrum Master? Something else?

[Alias]

I have heard of a few managed to hit the bottom rung by applying to Non-Profit Charities or Local Government institutions on spec approach...

A few locals over this way have done it, not exciting work by any means (and sometimes low/unpaid for a 3 month internship) but all good experience wise and gets a name on the CV...

Good luck to him...

[TheFaQQer]

Maybe look into the Certified Ethical Hacker qualification? He can always spin that as knowing about hacking, but not bothering with university because he was a hacker....

[Jaws]

Years ago, I got into IT via some part time work for a local web company, then after my A Levels struggled to get an IT job so took an "NVQ" apprenticeship. The NVQ was a bit of a joke really, considering my work was web development (ASP/VB/SQL Server) and the NVQ was about how to write documents in Word or Excel. It was completely rubbish pay for about a year, experience gained and then onto a job paying a suitable wage (much more suitable than the 8k/year the co I was at offered!). That was during the dot com boom however so it may be a bit more difficult now. There could be opportunities at start ups - if you read hacker news it seems like they are screaming out for developers.

University might be a better choice though if the right course is chosen. I dont view a good degree in Computer Science to be a waste of time at all.

[Dominic Connor]

I'm a bit of a hate figure

Is he in London, or nearish ?
If you, me and him fancy a beer I'm quite happy to share my odd combination of techie/it journo/headhunter ideas with him.

The first thing that comes to mind is Cisco certification, some colleges of FE offer it as an option and as I understand it combined with a HNC/HND..
I have to say with a heavy heart that doodab is right, firms are pretty anal about degrees these days, don't tell me you don't think that is good or right, I do this crap for a living, I tell it like it is.

Strictly speaking if he attains self taught excellence in C++ or GPU/CUDA there exist jobs for non-grads, but that's actually harder than a degree.

I'm going to make some huge assumptions in my advice here, since I have no data.

My guess is that he hated school, not helped by how tulipe the A level is and someone needs to poke him with a sharp stick with "university is different" written on it. Note different != better, but that is a different problem.

I guess his A level grades aren't stellar as a result.

My call is thus to go and do CompSci at a decent 2nd tier place like Royal Holloway, has a good male to female ration and if he weasels on to the security / infosec modules they are injecting into the undergrad course he will have some marketable skills.

He may have to do some retakes, but the way the system works is that the last grade you get counts, not the average of your retries.

[northernladuk]

They do, and you'll come out of it with a wad of qualifications under your belt as well, you also end up with SC as a minimum, probably DV and CLAS to boot and a decent crypto backgound as well.

There is a reason there are so many ex-forces types in security related roles that need clearance.

You're also likely to end up some where hot and dusty, being shot at. But, if you can build and operate a secure radio / wired net with a satellite backhaul to the UK under those conditions, and you can stick the military lifestyle, you can probably do it pretty much anywhere.

It's a good idea but the fact he is 20 with only A levels but a couple of hundred hours on Call Of Duty makes me think this isn't going to happen.

[DaveB]

Join the army?

Might be an "easy" way in - branches like the Signals must need technical people.

They do, and you'll come out of it with a wad of qualifications under your belt as well, you also end up with SC as a minimum, probably DV and CLAS to boot and a decent crypto backgound as well.

There is a reason there are so many ex-forces types in security related roles that need clearance.

You're also likely to end up some where hot and dusty, being shot at. But, if you can build and operate a secure radio / wired net with a satellite backhaul to the UK under those conditions, and you can stick the military lifestyle, you can probably do it pretty much anywhere.

[TheFaQQer]

Join the army?

Might be an "easy" way in - branches like the Signals must need technical people.

[northernladuk]

I must admit I am not sure why he never went the degree route tbh. I will have to find out but he is 20 now so I am guessing he didn't like that idea and might be a bit late if he has gotten used to some income from fill in jobs so was hoping a non degree option was available. I can see why everyone is going to need a degree just to get on the job ladder soon.

[Scruff]

IBM have an apprenticeship scheme. I had a young 17 year old apprentice work with me there, until I left end December 2012. He spent 2 years there and has gained invaluable experience and now realised that in order to further his career, he needs to pursue a Degree. He turned out to be a brilliant learner and went from knowing next-to-zip, to working as a respected Backline techie (with a particularly good MS Clustering / SQL log-shipping / failover expertise).

The application process was quite involved and when he was finally offered the apprenticeship, it meant that as a 17 year old, he had to move down from Scotland to Hampshire and start within 2 weeks of the offer being made, which was at a specific location.

Is it a good idea? This all depends on the actual team that they work for, whether or not the Manager that they work for is only using the Apprenticeship scheme to tick the box and the attitude of the Apprentice (it pays dreadfully and if the Appy hears what his colleagues are earning, it can hack them off...).

I would suggest that an A level in IT doesn't give you much knowledge when there are umpteen Graduates out there looking for jobs, unless you have someone who is in the business who knows the kid personally and is prepared to give them a break.