UK IT Training... friend or fraud?

[0iD]

Got an email from a friend today.

I went for my interview for web design today, it sounds great, but its gonna cost me 2550 to do the course and 90 for each exam, there is a job guarenteed at the end of it and if you don't get a job they pay your tuition fees back to you

you can take 12 weeks or 18 months to do the course

minimum start pay is 20.000+ earnings in the south east are 43,000 pa and earnings in london/city are 52.800 +pa

She asked me if it was worth doing. Not knowing the company I put it to you, my learned techie brethren. UK IT Trainig....friend or fraudsers?

[Moby-Dick]

I'm not convinced - without any experiance I'd not take someone on still wet from a boot camp.

Exactly what qualification are they offering ?

[0iD]

http://www.ukittraining.com/advert.htm
CIW Microsoft Certified System Administrator

[0iD]

I'm generally of the opinion that if it seems too good to be true it probably is. I dont want her losing her hard earned on a folly as she's low paid enough as it is as a carer.

[Moby-Dick]

Honest opionion ?

bunch of pony - I'm sure they'll have some form of get out clause to avoid paying you 20k. Dont forget she would be PAYING to work for 3 months minimum during which I'm sure she'll probably be making the firm money ?

have done some hunting......

http://www.certforums.co.uk/forums/a...hp?t-3494.html
http://www.certforums.com/forums/thread5126.html

seems it most certainly IS a fraud

[0iD]

Chris, you are (and i've said it before) The Man!

[Moby-Dick]

no probs - I dont like to see people ripped off

[0iD]

lol, do we have a challenger to Rave's 'Peoples Champion' crown...

[Kaine (AoD)]

no probs - I dont like to see people ripped off

good work man

[amjedm]

lol, do we have a challenger to Rave's 'Peoples Champion' crown...

We do - I think he's a top man.

[Rave]

Well I would have said the same .

Not because I'm the people's champion, but because I briefly looked into switching careers into IT and concluded that there were too many qualified people going for too few jobs. Also, and this is where I may be proved wrong, AFAIK the MCSA is a bog standard qualification which you can study at home for a few hundred quid?

Edit: also, I get at least one leaflet a week (often several) through my letterbox inviting me to fulfil my dreams by spending two grand on a home learning course that will enhance my career prospects immeasureably. I never ever trust people who advertise by direct mailing, targetted or otherwise. If there really was such a shortage of skilled IT personnel why haven't the job centre offered to send me on a course to get me off the dole? I even said when I first signed on that I was interested in IT and nada, nowt, not a peep.

Edit 2: final evidence to support my case. The only time I ever see these adverts on telly ("tired of working hard to earn a crappy wage? Take our IT training course and soon you can be an IT millionaire working one day a week from your yacht in the Med!") is in the daytime, in amongst the adverts for 30% interest secured loans and Cillit Bang. QED.

[toolsong]

Well I would have said the same .

Not because I'm the people's champion, but because I briefly looked into switching careers into IT and concluded that there were too many qualified people going for too few jobs. Also, and this is where I may be proved wrong, AFAIK the MCSA is a bog standard qualification which you can study at home for a few hundred quid?

I've worked with an alarming number of degree qualified people in IT who demonstrated in the workplace they did not grasp fundamental concepts. More so in Australia than England, and particularly pre Y2K.

Some of the best programmers I've worked with had pure maths degrees. Their code is well structured and naturally fault tolerant.

Interviews that I've thought were well executed did not overly focus on specific IT stuff but tested your analytical, problem solving and lateral thinking skills.

So yes Rave, training is only part of the puzzle...I have no formal quals and luckily for me that doesn't matter in this industry. I'm also well aware of how that works against 'us'.

OiD, those earnings you posted for London are not anywhere near what I've seen in the last 12 months for a noob in a permanent role.

One recruitment consultant I've been speaking to recently had over 100 applications for a web testing role in London advertised on JobServe and didn't feel comfortable forwarding a single CV to his client.

[Moby-Dick]

MCSA is a bog standard qualification which you can study at home for a few hundred quid?

Assuming you get all your course material for free. Each exam is £88 and there are 4 of them for MSCA it took me a while to get mine but it I didn't work very hard for it

Interviews that I've thought were well executed did not overly focus on specific IT stuff but tested your analytical, problem solving and lateral thinking skills.

nail , head , hit

anyone can learn the techie stuff from a book , its having the correct aptitude for troubleshooting that I always used to look for. ( and would like to think I exhibit )

[GDVS]

Each exam is £88

+VAT, don't forget the VAT. Also worth noting is that most (all?) of the official MS exam study books have a 15% off an exam voucher in the back of them, with Amazon selling them for £25-30 and the voucher being worth almost exactly £15 that works out to £10-15 for what are actually damn good books.

[Moby-Dick]

Exam fees shoudl not be vattable - I only pay £88 from prometric ( I have a feeling VUE charge the VAt , which is odd ) and I'm not going through some mystical scheme, just booking on their website with my cc.

[badass]

Exam fees shoudl not be vattable - I only pay £88 from prometric ( I have a feeling VUE charge the VAt , which is odd ) and I'm not going through some mystical scheme, just booking on their website with my cc.

Thats a bugger. I've been paying about £106 inc VAT for mine