IT Career, whats your take??

[jinglingxl]

I was recently talking with New Horizons, an established computer training center, to enroll in a bootcamp certification program. Basically a its a 1yr long program to get you certified in A+, Network+, MCSA, CCNA, Security, and MCSE. Along the training, after you finish your CCNA, and MCSA in 4 months and they will place you in a real company for a contract job in the IT field for 1 month paid. If the company satisified with your work after 1 month, then you have a chance of getting hired for full time job.
After MCSA, you will continue to study for MCSE, and 3 security certificate courses for 8 months. All Test, books, lab, included.

It will cost about $11,000 which can be taken out from a loan with 1yr deferrment (dont have to pay after 1yr). Considering their large contacts, and the opportunity to be placed for a job, is this worth it?? Anyone had similar experiences with training like this? Anyone had experiences with New Horizon? I'm very into Network adiministration type of work, and feeling that I might need these trainings to land myself a job. Would this be a sound investment?

(btw, just graduated college with a business degree, didnt find a job yet..it has been hard)

 

[her209]

I just recently took a class with them. They are okay.

 

[spidey07]

Unfortunately the IT industry has been hardest hit by the economy. We still believe it will come around though.

If it helps I know many very qualified folks with 10 years experience that cannot find a job.

 

[Tallgeese]

IT is VERY tight right now, even for folks with oodles of experience.
New Horizons may teach you a few things, and you may get certified, but most employers look for experience over certifications.

 

[MaTTCNA]

I'd go for it. I didn't take any classes at New Horizons, but it's where I took and passed my CNA exam.

 

[HappyPuppy]

Save your money. You can learn all that stuff on your own. Also, I would never believe any trade school's promise of "finding me a job."

One other thing, the IT industry is swamped with out of work peeps with years of experience right now.

 

[conjur]

I've jumped ship after 15 years of IT work (development, networking, etc.) and now start car sales full-time tomorrow

This will definitely be an experience!

 

[dirtboy]

If you have to defer the the loan for a year, make sure you'll have a job to pay it back with. I don't know how well the IT industry is going to recover, but I doubt things will be too much different a year from now than they are today.

 

[CrazyDe1]

There's lots of entry level jobs that you can find from college career services things....
As for jobs for people with experience...they're harder to come by...

 

[Descartes]

$11,000???? That's insane.

IT has, and continues to be, good to me; however, I haven't seen any "new blood" in some time. If I were starting from scratch, I would still do it, but that's because I enjoy what I do (developer).

I personally would not go for the MCSE as the whole "get an MCSE and instantly earn 50k/yr" phase is long over.

 

[Descartes]

Originally posted by: CrazyDe1
There's lots of entry level jobs that you can find from college career services things....
As for jobs for people with experience...they're harder to come by...

I see just the opposite. New comp sci grads are working at McDonald's, while those with experience continue to do well.

 

[dakata24]

i went thru a $7000 program at heald..

now having said that.. save your money.. i would invest in some new machines for a test lab and buy some books / CBT (CBT Nuggets comes highly regarded in the msg boards at cramsession.com).. not sure about other CBTs like SmartCertify Direct, Keystone, Learnkey.. NetG CBT's were a snore..

good luck.

 

[Geekbabe]

Originally posted by: Descartes
$11,000???? That's insane.

IT has, and continues to be, good to me; however, I haven't seen any "new blood" in some time. If I were starting from scratch, I would still do it, but that's because I enjoy what I do (developer).

I personally would not go for the MCSE as the whole "get an MCSE and instantly earn 50k/yr" phase is long over.

that 11k also includes CCNA and as the entire thing is a year in length it's not one of those get your MCSE in 2 weeks paper tiger cert mills. I do believe I've heard good things about this school,if they have a rep of turning out skilled people they might very well be able to place their students. I know the market is tight but MCSE/CCNA is still a nice combo,and a lot of people don't do as well in a home lab,self-study environment.

 

[jinglingxl]

Originally posted by: Descartes

Originally posted by: CrazyDe1
There's lots of entry level jobs that you can find from college career services things....
As for jobs for people with experience...they're harder to come by...

I see just the opposite. New comp sci grads are working at McDonald's, while those with experience continue to do well.

I see the same too, one of my friend graduated with CS top of the class last May, still no job now..cuz lack of experience.
But New Horizon will get me in a job with a major company after completing MCSA and CCNA for 1 month test drive. That might open the door for an entry level job i think. What you guys take on this?

 

[dakata24]

is the contract job guarenteed?

 

[jinglingxl]

Originally posted by: dakata24
is the contract job guarenteed?

It is guarenteed if you pass your MCSA(include A+, Network+), CCNA, and Security cert. Its a one month job for the company to test drive you.

 

[LeeTJ]

Be careful at New Horizons. I did sales for them for about 1.5 years. they don't do a good job of job placement.

They don't do a good job of support after you finish their program.

also there are corporate stores and franchises. avoid the franchises because many of them are not stable economically.

If your going to invest that kind of time and money, i'd recommend a community college or Devry Over New Horizons.

the way i see new horizons, they are really for IT professionals that already have jobs and just want Certs. or companies that want to get their IT people certified.

 

[CrazyDe1]

Originally posted by: jinglingxl

Originally posted by: Descartes

Originally posted by: CrazyDe1
There's lots of entry level jobs that you can find from college career services things....
As for jobs for people with experience...they're harder to come by...

I see just the opposite. New comp sci grads are working at McDonald's, while those with experience continue to do well.

I see the same too, one of my friend graduated with CS top of the class last May, still no job now..cuz lack of experience.
But New Horizon will get me in a job with a major company after completing MCSA and CCNA for 1 month test drive. That might open the door for an entry level job i think. What you guys take on this?

Defense contractors are hiring. I get job announcements in my email almost daily from professors. I guess the reason why I might think this is I'm ECE which means I can go into hardware/firmware design or software development. There's also lots of customer applications jobs out there right now...but those are only available for people with hardware experience or EE degrees. If I do a quick search on our career services website, there at least 15 jobs I could potentially get, 6 or 7 of which are in software. I don't know of jobs for just certifications though. If you know C/C++ and can write flight software or drivers pretty well there's tons of entry level jobs to be had..

 

[fluxquantum]

yeah, it sounds like the IT market kind of sucks at the moment.

 

[Hamburgerpimp]

Sales. Everyone loves someone that can make the company money.

 

[UltraQuiet]

I have taken about a dozen courses from New Horizon here in Memphis and I thought they did pretty well.

As far as whether or not it is worth it to get all those certs, I think it is. Yes companies will still want experience and they are able to demand it in a tight job market but those certs may set you apart. They may be the thing that gets you looked at before someone else. Kind of like a degree being the minimum req. for some jobs. Get yourself an interview then sell yourself.

This depressed job market is a great time for anyone between jobs or entering the job market to continue their education. Why don't you go and get your masters?

 

[StageLeft]

I know nothing about this place but I've gone through a sort of "IT bootcamp" program. I finished up in 2000 with some friends. I'm lucky enough to be working at the moment.

What you need to do - NEED TO DO - is find out from them REAL NUMBERS on the percentage of their grads that MAINTAIN employment after the program. I don't think I need to tell you how hard it is to get a job in IT right now. There are people with years of experience who can't get a job. Thousands of them. You need to find out if that one month is a $7/hour and then the host company tells you to frig off and does that in 9/10 cases.

A friend of mine with a degree went to a similar school and graduated in July of 01. He's still working at futureshop (canadian version of bestbuy). That's a scare story, but you have to realize that most people coming out of schools like this are having very poor luck these days finding work. I'd have to say the chance is high that the $11k will be down the drain. You'll have wasted a year and be in debt.

It's possible you'll do better than that, but make sure you don't go into this without numbers from the school. And make sure the numbers are current. Not "Three years ago", but NOW, like within the last 6-12 months, because that's what counts.

I don't know what CrazeDe is doing at the moment but several of us in this thread, such as myself, tallgeese, descartes, conjur, etc. have been in IT in recent times and we're all saying the same thing - jobs are hard to get if you have experience. Personally I know there is no way in hell my company would ever hire a new grad for consulting. Why do they need to when any job posting will result in 100 resumes from people with years of experience? I'm surprised that schools like this still exist. The last few years have been murder to iti.com (the place I went through), because gone are the times that you can just bring somebody off the street, throw them through some courses, and expect them to do well.

Certs are good - that's true - but only to supplement experience. I don't think many people these days are getting jobs with nothing but certs. Not unless they have some serious connections.

 

[jinglingxl]

Originally posted by: Skoorb
I know nothing about this place but I've gone through a sort of "IT bootcamp" program. I finished up in 2000 with some friends. I'm lucky enough to be working at the moment.

What you need to do - NEED TO DO - is find out from them REAL NUMBERS on the percentage of their grads that MAINTAIN employment after the program. I don't think I need to tell you how hard it is to get a job in IT right now. There are people with years of experience who can't get a job. Thousands of them. You need to find out if that one month is a $7/hour and then the host company tells you to frig off and does that in 9/10 cases.

A friend of mine with a degree went to a similar school and graduated in July of 01. He's still working at futureshop (canadian version of bestbuy). That's a scare story, but you have to realize that most people coming out of schools like this are having very poor luck these days finding work. I'd have to say the chance is high that the $11k will be down the drain. You'll have wasted a year and be in debt.

It's possible you'll do better than that, but make sure you don't go into this without numbers from the school. And make sure the numbers are current. Not "Three years ago", but NOW, like within the last 6-12 months, because that's what counts.

the one month job is paid $12-$22/hr . and I did ask them what % of trained student mantain the job, and the counselor told me about 75%. As far as the program goes, this bootcamp program started about 1 and half year ago.

 

[StageLeft]

the one month job is paid $12-$22/hr . and I did ask them what % of trained student mantain the job, and the counselor told me about 75%. As far as the program goes, this bootcamp program started abot 1 and half year ago

I'd ask some other people about those numbers as well - maybe even call some companies that people get placed with.

If you have a 75% chance of employment with a good company that's a very good number. Just make sure they're valid now! I think iti.com still spouts of high placement rates of years ago, when in reality they can't even place many grads at all these days.

I hate being negative, which I always am in these threads it seems, but I've gone through half a year myself of unemployment in IT willing to work for pennies and I've heard of too many friends who have had some really "bad luck". Three years ago IT was so sweet. Now it's not for the weak of heart, or those who like to know they still will have a job month to month.

On the plus those in this thread who've gone through new horizons seem to speak well of it, but I wonder are they working now...?

 

[mrCide]

Here, I'll give you first hand experience since i was in the same predicament.

Spoke to the guy at new horizons, promised this promised that, 2 year program, any classes all tests whatever whatever, $10,000. After A+ you'll be able to find an entry level job and get some experience while you finish the rest.

Here's how it really went, after taking all the classes in a row week after week, with only one or 2 smart trainers, one of them being friendly (of maybe 5 or 6), one (A+) who i corrected several times and was a jackass, and a monotone CCNA/cisco loser.

I got my A+, took the MCSE classes.. stopped paying attention half way because they were just reading out of the book and writing crap on the board, was nice to have the labs there but certainly not worth the money, i ended up reading the books, studying and doing trasncenders then braindumps to pass/finish up my mcse/mcdba. picked up a+ and network+ aswell. Well, after i finished (and my sales guy left without even telling me, at one point they ran out of vouchers for tests due to '911 and funding' and took about 2 months to finally get me some more vouchers, had to threaten with a lawyer.

After 1.5 years i finished (i had 2) and i was going to do ccna but got lazy and needed money/a job, i called them and she told me to send in my resume and she'd help, i didn't hear ANYTHING from them, not any followup either. they just want your money. I did it anyway because i wanted an alternative to college.

over the course of the 2 years i paid it off right at the end because of contracts and i finally landed a job. how? well after about 5 months of looking online/papers i finally received 2 responses in the same week, one from TAG (THe Answer Group) who will hire anyone, and one from my GF's boss, who offered me a full time job at 14/h at a really nice place. I'm "IT Manager" there and I take care of most network/computer issues except great plains/dynamics and i usually call up the guy when i need some help and/or we're doing something major so he can either watch what i do or help me. (he was their previous consultant and they wanted to save money by hiring me)..

anyhow, during those 5 months, not one of the major chains would hire me like best buy or compusa, compusa said i didnt have enough certifications and wouldnt even hire me for the guy who handles repairs in the front (not the actual tech guys).. and wrote me down for CASHIER, and they never even called back, best buy called back for cashier only aswell. i was sending my resume out all the time (fort lauderdale, FL) and never received a response, even applying to stupid office jobs/data entry for 7 or 8/h.

so thats my story, the IT market is crap, the economy sucks, and finding a job is hard, i got lucky. even took TAG 2 months just to call me back and they usually hire anyone right away. and new horizons is a bad idea IMO cause it's a waste of money ,better to buy books yourself and do it, you'll save about $8000. or more

my 2c, good luck with whatever you choose

edit; forgot, TAG is an entry level (level 1) technical support company that works you slave hours (10 to 10 3 days then 10-2)