Difficult to find work in London?

[TheAngryDog]

I live and work in London doing Deskside IT support. This is mainly fixing desktop issues, with a little bit of Exchange and AD thrown in.

I have no qualifications of the MS kind as my roles have never called for it, and I've not had the experience to back them up.

How hard am I going to find it to get another job in London that isnt a junior role?

[CharlieCrocodile]

Quite hard, there's a lot of competition right now. My advice would be to stick where you are and gain more experience.

[TheAngryDog]

CharlieCrocodile said:

Quite hard, there's a lot of competition right now. My advice would be to stick where you are and gain more experience.

Easier said than done, but noted. I work in a horrendous environment

[Bullett]

The grass is always greener?

Get some qualifications to support what you are doing. You have work and you are gaining experience, that gives you the opportunity to apply for stuff without pressure to get the job. Do some interviews, find out where you are lacking and fill in those gaps.

[CharlieCrocodile]

Have you thought about doing the self study MS courses? Also, build your own home lab with Hyper-V, trial version of server software are available from MS, this will give you food for thought!

[944fan]

TheAngryDog said:

How hard am I going to find it to get another job in London that isnt a junior role?

Unless you are a complete tool you shouldn't find it hard. There are lots of IT people in the market, but few decent ones.

As has been suggested, self study for the MS exams. They wont get you a job but they will help you from being paper sifted. Get some proper advice on your CV.

Get friendly with some recruiters. They might get 50 applications for one role in their inbox, how are they going to remember you? I find you need to give them something - not a box of chocolates. If you are not a hiring manager that can hard, but do you have friends / colleagues who work in IT? Recommend them to recruiters if they are looking. You will get paid for that but it also gives you a way in to talk the agents. You can then mention that you are also looking.

[Craig f]

Similar role to the OP, and I've been looking in London for the past 9 Months.

Finally got a contract role closer to where I live.

Citrix and Blackberry services seem to be a 'must have' in most of the roles I've seen advertised.
Good Luck

[TheAngryDog]

Thanks for all of your replies.

Just to add to this, I am coming up to the age of 33 as well.

For 10 and a half years I supported a database written in SuperBase, so pretty much most of my IT career has been on that.

I expect that even with certs I will find it hard. I have just ordered a home mini server so that I can set up a home lab, hopefully have a few VM's running on it. But then I am unsure what do learn. I have access to online "CBT Nuggets" video's, but I doubt that these are going to be everything I will need. I do not know much about networking either. I was considering;

A+
Network+
CCENT
Windows 2k12
I cant do VMWare as you HAVE to do the course, and thats alot of money that I do not have.
Hyper V doesnt seem to be as prevalent as VMWare, but I wait to be corrected on that one.

One of the issues that I have, is that I think I am paid "OK" considering my experience / lack of certs. I am on £31k a year, so does this sound right?

I have no particular issue with the company I work for, quite the opposite actually, but it is very unlikely I will ever be anything more than I am because of where I am based, and where their main customers are based (I work for an Irish company).

Thanks alot guys.

[Art0ir]

Hyper V is the future IMO. Each release gets better and better and they have the advantage of well established relationships medium to large organisations. It's also bundled free with a lot of their enterprise software.

VMWare's market share is falling, while HyperV's is rising in the same amount.

[Bullett]

Wouldn't some form of dba role leverage existing skills?

[TheAngryDog]

Art0ir said:

Hyper V is the future IMO. Each release gets better and better and they have the advantage of well established relationships medium to large organisations. It's also bundled free with a lot of their enterprise software.

VMWare's market share is falling, while HyperV's is rising in the same amount.

Hmmm, I was told that HyperV was no where near as good as VMWare.... Interesting.

Bullett said:

Wouldn't some form of dba role leverage existing skills?

I know nothing of SQL, and SuperBase is 16bit and doesnt work on any 64bit environments.

[Bullett]

It's a relational database though? some principles must apply and it would be easier saying 10 years db experience even if it's not all in SQL or Oracle.

[Art0ir]

TheAngryDog said:

Art0ir said:

Hyper V is the future IMO. Each release gets better and better and they have the advantage of well established relationships medium to large organisations. It's also bundled free with a lot of their enterprise software.

VMWare's market share is falling, while HyperV's is rising in the same amount.

Hmmm, I was told that HyperV was no where near as good as VMWare.... Interesting.

It's not, but it's getting there.

But most importantly (or not, depending on your view), it's free to most large clients and comes from a household name. And that's all the CFO will hear when presented with the options.

[TheAngryDog]

Art0ir said:

TheAngryDog said:

Art0ir said:

Hyper V is the future IMO. Each release gets better and better and they have the advantage of well established relationships medium to large organisations. It's also bundled free with a lot of their enterprise software.

VMWare's market share is falling, while HyperV's is rising in the same amount.

Hmmm, I was told that HyperV was no where near as good as VMWare.... Interesting.

It's not, but it's getting there.

But most importantly (or not, depending on your view), it's free to most large clients and comes from a household name. And that's all the CFO will hear when presented with the options.

Good point well presented. Wont most companies still be running on VMWare?

Bullett said:

It's a relational database though? some principles must apply and it would be easier saying 10 years db experience even if it's not all in SQL or Oracle.

None of it is in Oracle or SQL haha.

I get your point though. Not sure DBA is for me... Would need to find out more about the role in general really.

[Art0ir]

TheAngryDog said:

Wont most companies still be running on VMWare?

For now. They lost 8% of the market share to HyperV between 09 and 13 (64->56 VM, 20->28 HV) and most of that was after 3.0 was released.

We're still running VMWare and probably will do so for a few years, but I can see us moving to Hyper V after that time if MS continues to catch up like it has.

[TheAngryDog]

Art0ir said:

TheAngryDog said:

Wont most companies still be running on VMWare?

For now. They lost 8% of the market share to HyperV between 09 and 13 (64->56 VM, 20->28 HV) and most of that was after 3.0 was released.

We're still running VMWare and probably will do so for a few years, but I can see us moving to Hyper V after that time if MS continues to catch up like it has.

One of my last roles involved VMWare, nothing ran on HyperV. Perhaps HyperV may be the way to go, as companies may be looking to move, and someone with knowledge of it could be quite handy for the migration...

[Goaty Bill]

TheAngryDog said:

Bullett said:

It's a relational database though? some principles must apply and it would be easier saying 10 years db experience even if it's not all in SQL or Oracle.

None of it is in Oracle or SQL haha.

I get your point though. Not sure DBA is for me... Would need to find out more about the role in general really.

I just googled SuperBase and read the wiki
A pretty limited view upon which to base an opinion, but I think the OP is 100% correct based upon considerable experience of the Oracle RDBMS and applications development in the environment.
They are very, very different beasts from the look of it.

[TheAngryDog]

Goaty Bill said:

TheAngryDog said:

Bullett said:

It's a relational database though? some principles must apply and it would be easier saying 10 years db experience even if it's not all in SQL or Oracle.

None of it is in Oracle or SQL haha.

I get your point though. Not sure DBA is for me... Would need to find out more about the role in general really.

I just googled SuperBase and read the wiki
A pretty limited view upon which to base an opinion, but I think the OP is 100% correct based upon considerable experience of the Oracle RDBMS and applications development in the environment.
They are very, very different beasts from the look of it.

I've never seen Oracle. I have used SQL but never wrote my own scripts etc, was all given to me to use. If I could have my time again, I'd do my certs.

I could go do a junior starter role, but I couldnt afford the hit I'd take to my salary.

[Goaty Bill]

TheAngryDog said:

I've never seen Oracle. I have used SQL but never wrote my own scripts etc, was all given to me to use. If I could have my time again, I'd do my certs.

I could go do a junior starter role, but I couldnt afford the hit I'd take to my salary.

I have to say that these days, a 'mature' person beginning as an Oracle developer / DBA or support role could find it quite difficult.
This is principally owing to competition from Indian based consultancies for the more junior roles and the trend to outsourcing a lot of support roles. Though the amount of work has grown, the number of people available has grown disproportionately.

I hate to discourage anyone from becoming an Oracle professional. I have found it extremely challenging and rewarding over the years and still look forward to every day.
Probably, and this is just my opinion, the easiest way to get into this now is by joining a company that uses Oracle, either for custom applications or E-Business Suite, and learn on the job as part of a wider support role.

[TheAngryDog]

ah, my comment was more general in a server side role, something like that.