Got a call back on Friday from two of the dozens of places I’ve been submitting resumes to that brought both hope and disappointment. Well at first both provided a bit of hope until I sat down and actually looked into one of the two calls.
The first was from a company that had been advertising on the job boards that they’d provide you with a month of intense training to become a LAN/WAN engineer and then would place you in a one year paid internship earning between $36,000 and $90,000 where you’d continue to receive instruction remotely all with no upfront costs to you. You pay them back with a percentage of your income for the first 15 months or so after being hired. Sounds too good to be true? It pretty much is. Digging a little further into the web for info on the company brought me across more than one message forum thread full of complaints about the company and its practices. Eventually I found my way to the California Better Business Bureau, as that’s the state the company operates out of, and learned that they have an F rating and are probably not even legal because they’re not complying with California’s registration laws for vocational educational programs. I grew suspicious because the email reply I’d gotten back insisted I needed to look over the documentation and decide if I was going to apply by 6PM this evening, about 24 hours to think it over. That seemed odd and piqued my curiosity which is always a bad thing to do with me. Needless to say this was the disappointment.
The other company that called was an automotive supplier looking for an IT technician that wanted to speak with me about my resume. I missed the call, though, so I phoned back when I could and left a message saying I’d give them a ring first thing Monday morning. So not much to go on yet, but the simple fact that I actually got a call from them is reason to give me some hope.
Beyond that I’ve been busy reading The “God” Part of the Brain that I was asked to review for SEB by the publishers not too long ago. It’s been a very easy read so far and I’m already half-way through the book in only a couple of days time, which is impressive as I don’t tend to devote huge chunks of time to reading books. If you include the Addendum, Endnotes, Bibliography, and Index it comes out to around 273 pages. I’ll have a full review of the book once I’m finished, but I’m enjoying it immensely so far.
That’s what I’ve been up to the last couple of days. Oh, that and trying to get my second WoW character to 70 before my game card runs out on the 22nd. Haven’t seen anything in the news recently that I felt I had to write something about so I’ve been a little quiet, but I’ll try to get something more up soon.
Posted on 03/18/2007 at 03:53 PM 
Les,
The situation in the UK is similar to that in the U.S. - many of the purely technical jobs in development and support have gone to India, China, etc. The I.T. jobs that seem to be safe are those that ‘touch the customer’ i.e. Business Analyst, System Analyst, Project Management, etc. In fact, now that firms are outsourcing, there is an even greater need for analysts and PMs.
Have you ever thought about retraining in these areas? You seem like an eloquent chap with a proven record of thinking logically and communicating clearly. You could be ideal for these roles. I’m making the transition from developer to systems analyst and it is not too difficult.
Just offering this idea to be helpful. Do you think there is any mileage in this?
All the best,
Tom