Job Seeking Advice

[Lucio]

Ok, so I'm not that happy in my current job. I need to find a new one but quite frankly, I'm not *quite* sure what to look for.

My current job is a bit of a mish-mash, it started as one thing (technical help and sales processing), and grew to include tinkering with the company website, doing the day to day system admin roles and spec'ing and managing the upgrade from FoxPro to MSSQL for our SOP system. All in all, I'm good with general computer issues and database work.

Trouble is, not many companies will advertise for a "general IT guy" position, most small offices either have dedicated external support, or someone already in place doing this kind of work. Database administrator roles will typically require more in-depth knowledge than I've got at the moment and front line support roles at the moment all seem to require "previous experience"


My real aim by making a move is to get a fresh start and have a good chance of building a career so that when the time comes for having children, I'll be able to support my family.


So, my question is, any advice on what areas I can look at? There must be roles out there I haven't considered or thought about? Any job agencies that people can recomend, I've tried one local one but they only put me towards jobs paying less than my current salary (£18K) and didn't have definate promotion openings.

[TheAnimus]

You willing too commute to london every day?

[Lucio]

You willing too commute to london every day?

If the pay covers (or comes close to covering) the extra cost, yes I am. Even if it does mean a 6am start each day to get on the train.

[TheAnimus]

drop me your CV a mate of mine is looking for someone to effectivly do helldesk type support but for developers on their MSSQL servers, pay will be about 27+

[tiggerai]

Hemel - London is very do-able... I believe it's under 25 mins if i recall. (and by recall, i mean opening one eye on the way through to make sure I'm still going in the right direction)
Making a city commute about an hour. (6am would be hella early from hemel for a 9am start - I'm now catching the 7.34 from Bletchley to get to st pauls and I'm another 20 mins up the line)

Sounds like your CV might need an overhaul too if the agencies are putting you forward for those kinda things. And deciding what you actually want to do will help too. I would say that you're looking for 2nd line support kinda work, maybe a Junior DB admin role.

Make sure you allow about £4k (after tax) for travel... so you'd be aiming for at least £23/24k in london (which should be easy)

I've got a few contacts here for london agencies that I can recommend, send me your CV and I'll pass it on for you, see what they come up with.

[IBM]

Blag it. Choose the job area you want to work in. Read a couple of books, then blag it. If you've got the smarts no-one will ever know, especially if you've got a basic grounding from previous experience. And then it's not even blaging, just exagerating

[Lucio]

Blag it. Choose the job area you want to work in. Read a couple of books, then blag it. If you've got the smarts no-one will ever know, especially if you've got a basic grounding from previous experience. And then it's not even blaging, just exagerating

I am inherantly honest unfortuantely, it's an extremely bad quality in a job seeker!

I'll brush up my CV tonight guys and e-mail it to you, I think if I bring my personal statement forward just underneath my current job description it will look more "IT" than if I leave it as it is.If tiggerai and theanimus could PM me your e-mail addresses, that'd be great

[wombar]

One thing I would say is: You're probably a lot better than you think you are so don't sell yourself short. Believe me, there are some absolute cretins out there in the workplace who claim to have all kinds of skills and when you call them on it, it turns out they "know of it" but don't know much about it.

I interviewed for a couple of web designers when I was at my old job and out of 40 people, only 2 people came close to fulfilling the requirements for the job. There were people with "Certified Internet Webmaster" qualifications which might as well have been printed off at home for the good they appeared to have done when it came to learning web design.

Seriously, be honest, but don't be too honest. Good people can learn on the job and if you can show that you are able to learn off your own back, lots of places won't really care about your experience. I'm potentially going to be looking for a couple of people to help out in a few months with my own business and I'll be relying on skills tests rather than paper qualifications.

Don't be too generic with your CV either, if need be have a couple of different revisions aimed at different IT roles. I had about 4 versions of my CV depending which role I wanted to aim at.

[Lucio]

This is true, for my generic CV (used for general office/IT roles), I normally emphasis my trouble solving skills. My current job involves a fair degree of this and it's often that I'm asked to help fix a machine I've never even seen!