**Q about Exchange 2003/2007 experience **

[Fjorko]

Hi all

I have a question/proposition, and maybe I'll be lucky enough that someone here knows a friend that knows a friend that can help me out.

I have been working for a company and left them about a month ago. Went abroad to see if I can find something else, but it didn't work out as expected. Now I'm back in the UK, and I'm thinking of maybe contracting at least for the time being.

The problem I have is that @ my previous company, I didn't get to work with Exchange ( I was the Windows sysadmin ) - they used Unix sendmail. I know lots companies advertising for windows Engineers, Sysadmins etc or even Exchange Admins, but I have not got the relevant skills to get into any of them ( unless I lie which I'm not prepared to do ). I am now getting my hands dirty with exchange in my own Vmware lab just to get to know the product. I will however need corporate experience as you well know.

Now for my question/proposition :

I am willing to help out on exchange rollouts/builds etc over weekends/evenings just to get the experience, and I'm willing to do this free of charge in turn for the experience. I have 12 years of IT experience - so I know my stuff, just not the case with exchange, but i'm a fast learner !

Does anyone know of companies in and around the Bristol area ( I'll think about any ones further afield - just don't want to go TOO far - London for example ) that will be willing for me to come and help out - even if it is just observing or helping here or there on their exchange migration/rollout/implementation etc etc....

I thought I'd throw the question out there to see if this is possible. If there are any legal reasons I cannot do this sort of thing from an employers POV I'll understand.

Thanks in advance

[Lucio]

Generally speaking most companys wouldn't trust an outsider with sysadmin level access that's needed to configure and debug an Exchange server

I know I certainly wouldn't want someone playing around with it! For all I know you could hide a nice little spam trojan relay there or try and steal company secrets from the e-mail system. At the bare minimum any right thinking company would inists you sign a legal agreement before they even considered this and you could end up blocking yourself from other jobs because of a non-competition clause...

[this_is_gav]

Perhaps offer yourself to a largish school. They're usually not too fussy on privacy (other than identities in the admin departments), and they're normally quite ready to accept a hand, especially if it's such an experienced one for free. IT techs in schools are generally extremely busy, so if you find the right one I'm sure they'll snap your hand right off. I know I would.

I said largish school as most (at least up here, where we have small schools) rely on the county council to provide a central hub for email, so most don't have their own servers... and I wouldn't want to be working directly for our council.

[Fjorko]

I can understand why a company would not trust me, but i am an honest person and would never try to compromise their systems....

But fair play...