Originally posted by: Storm
Originally posted by: Muck
There are jobs out there. But they aren't just handing them out. And many of them don't pay jack. Just because you can't find a job doesn't mean you aren't looking. Many times those jobs are a step down.
Its most definitely an employers market so they can get the best people at a lower rate.
The IT market will always be a market. What we're getting rid of now are the joe plumbers and painters who thought it'd be a simple job to get their cert, and make that magical 50K a year.
The job market sucks for me right now, but if I was in school now, I'd do the same thing. Yah, jobs are hard to find, but hopefully this drastic downturn will help to get rid of a lot of the incompetents that were just coding ASP pages because they could, or Jacky Brown, former CPA, now network admin type of people.
FWIW, unless you have experience, the certs don't mean jack. THere was a programming position in the town where I got my first job, and they were looking for people w/ 2 yrs experience to work for $35k max, which is a good 10% LESS then I made fresh out of school. My senior internship was @ $15/hr.
The market for IT will always be there, but like I've recently learned, if you tie yourself to common skills, and easy to find skills, you're easy to replace and easy to overlook. The key is to find something that's NOT ubiquotous, and combine that with the more common skill sets. For crying out loud, I wish I knew COBOL, I've seen 4 or 5 COBOL port positions in the past 3 months.
But anyway. A cert won't hurt you, just don't expect it to be your strongest ally through the front door.
BTW...I'm not saying that unemployed, or struggling people are idiots. I'm one of them. I'm saying when the market stabilizes, and is back in normal mode.....I believe a lot of the idiots will be gone, and the tech employment market overall skill level will be much higher.