IT jobs in Newcastle

i expected more coming from you.......

course not! have to start somewhere at the end of the day.

waiting to hear about an interview i had the other day. it's just a slow process...and im on the bones of my arse.

So much for the major IT skills shortage

Course theres a skill shortage. There are hundreds, if not thousands of IT projects unable to get off the ground because there arent the specialists to do them.

I've had calls from 3 companies in the last week about IT positions in London and i aint even got a degree yet.

there is plenty of opportunities for programmers

not that many other opportunities around here imo

Aye it's frustrating, especially when I know I can do the job.

Theres one firm I could go to...but I see them as a long term employer and I wan't to go travelling next year, so didn't want to go there and the leave after 9 months or whatever

The biggest goon on my course got a job at EDS like, slighty put me off

gona join the back of the dole queue tomorrow

I know EDS are cunts, I worked with them on many projects over 9 years & knew some of there personnel. But they paid the coin at the time.

Anyway social housing is where it is at

Agree with people on the EDS thing. Last place I worked was full of numpty cast-off's from EDS. Can't be a very good employer to work for as we ended up with about 3 people from contracts they had all over the north-east and they really were thick as fuck.

As someone else said though it's the whole experience vs. qualifications. Can't get a job without the experience and can't get the experience without a job.

If I was being brutally honest I dont think qualifications mean that much these days for I.T. personnel though. The whole MCSE used to be like a golden ticket to a job but so many people can get them these days by boot-camping in 8 weeks or more so there's little or no point unless you can back it up with experience. I remember a school techie who had got his pension from the forces putting himself through the full MCSE track and hadn't been inside the case of a pc.

I've worked for three employers since I was 18, two councils and now moved into private sector away from all the red-tape political bullshit... I've studied and gained MCSE, Citrix CCA, VMWare VCP and a few other qualifications over the years but don't have a degree - it's not something I regret one bit either - I left school at 16 and went straight to college and qualified with an HND in IT.
Obviously it's different for each person but I started at 18/19 on about 13k and today earn over 33k age 27 so it's all about experience in my book. I started as a desktop technician years back and it really is the best way to get a grounding in the support arena unless you're after some sort of networking / project management / business analysis related career.

If you're just recently qualified then I would say go ahead and sign up with a few agencies - there really is some decent contracts out threre if you're willing to argue with the agencies for salary without being too unreasonable. In the meantime send off your CV's to as many employers as possible, don't wait for the jobs to be advertised - the old school methods work.

I've been lucky to be on several interview panels over the years too and it's mad the way job interviews work these days too anyway... it's all about points scoring and matching words from the adverts against words that you include in your CV or application forms so just pay that little bit more attention to the adverts before you put pen to paper.

I'm off to Australia in a few years to find an I.T job - crying out for people with skills over there

Some good comments there mate cheers.

Went for an interview today at SiTel for a BT Broadband Technical Support Advisor. Before I went I wast thinking that it would be gash...but doesn't sound too bad.

I'm still waiting to hear about another job which i'd rather take, but might just take the BT one otherwise. Anybody worked at SiTel? It's not got any sales related stuff.

Even so..both jobs are just over 14k...i'd hoped to be getting 18! The guy was sound today mind...wasn't one of these "my job is the most important in the world" managers, and wasn't under the illusion that it was going to be a career job..but he said that it could be good experience!

I've got 2 years so far. So another year of bollocks pay before I can realistically expect to make any decent money. The annoying thing is that some of the jobs i'm not getting interviews for, I KNOW I can do

The bloke today said I was overqualified! That may be but in the eyes of other employers...not experienced enough to go straight into second line...which is bollocks but its life!

I know mate it's a real twat - you can be really overqualified with all the qual's under the sun but if you don't have any experience it's really up to the manager out there who is willing to give you a chance... we had a lass on the helpdesk at my last place who was happy to sit there answering phones all day on 12k. She also had an MCSE and CCNA but again was thick as fuck and all the knowledge was from books... She applied for about 5 networking jobs in the 6 years I was there and never got shortlisted for any of them... I kept saying she would have to spend some time doing time as a desktop support tech before anyone would take her applications or qualifications seriously. It seems to be that way in quite a lot of places but agencies are quite willing to take the risk with new up and coming people.
Try someone like actu8 and ask to speak to a guy called Nick Varley, they're based down on the quayside I think somewhere and not a bad little agency at all.... hope you find something in the field you're after matey

cheers! i'll look into that

Basically all the jobs ive been applying for that ive actually heard anything about have been first line support...so seems i'm going to have to just grin and bear it and keep looking.

It's actually a step backwards from my placement year....from being trusted in looking after 30PCs, 2 Servers and a rack of network gear...to barely getting the opportunity to tell someone where the start menu is

oh its funny you mention Australia...i want to go next year and get part time jobs in IT (if i can) to keep me going!

It gets like that sometimes mate - my last job at the council was a senior server support officer which looking after 300+ servers, managing and supporting all the different arenas like active directory, exchange, vmware, citrix, disaster recovery, backup, restore, you name it we did it - that still didn't stop silly little problems with users pc's being passed to what was 3rd line support... it may just be that you grin and bear desktop support for a year then get your break midway as you apply for other jobs all over the place. happy hunting mate

google the australia forms that you need to meet so many points... i think it's something like 120 points to gain automatic entry without arsing about with interviews and stuff... they're easy enough to find online versions on the web

Yeah I can't see it being a particularly good place to work from a long term perspective...but like you 6 months is the sort of time I was thinking about anyway. If it's THAT bad I would just keep looking for jobs....but still holding out on my other application!

Do you know if they were on the tech support desk? or was it sales? there's lots of companies inside Sitel. I'm prepared for frustration....I had it on my placement year...such things as not knowing what the desktop is, opening Word to access my documents folder and wondering why they only see word documents, and even the old "my pc is broken" when in actual fact, it's turned off.

My boyfriend started off in IT with no qualifications at all, started at EDS doing call centre stuff then went to TSG doing field work. Got a couple of years experience doing that sort of stuff. HE said it was canny shit but it gave him the experience he needed. He's now got a job at NUFC doing all the IT stuff there and was responsible for all of the new smart card system and putting that in and all the stuff Sam is putting in. He got that job through an agency so i wouldn't say they were that bad.