Thread: Job Seeking

So I needed to close up shop on my home business.
Did computer support and repair for 12 years from home. Made good money for the first 8 years but the last 4 have sucked.
So I took a job with a local school district. Pay is horrible.

If anyone knows of a company in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area hiring experienced computer support people (25+ years fixing and building computers) please let me know where to send a resume.

I have been using Monster.com for the most part, but you never know when a TPGer will have the inside track on a good position.

Thanks in advance.

Universities have pretty huge IT departments and some great jobs for those types of roles. State benefits too.

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Originally Posted by Rumble

So I needed to close up shop on my home business.
Did computer support and repair for 12 years from home. Made good money for the first 8 years but the last 4 have sucked.
So I took a job with a local school district. Pay is horrible.

If anyone knows of a company in the Dallas/Ft. Worth area hiring experienced computer support people (25+ years fixing and building computers) please let me know where to send a resume.

I have been using Monster.com for the most part, but you never know when a TPGer will have the inside track on a good position.

Thanks in advance.

If you're hesitant on closing your home business, a good aspect to IT home business is providing local business with backup and retention support.
I have a friend whom, like you, had a slow run the last few years. He picked up some agreements with local firms in the area for backups and disaster recovery.

IT departments often like certifications. What certs do you have? Can you do IT work outside of desktop support? (servers, directory services, networking, etc) Can you get a security clearance and pass a drug test? These sorts of things will determine if you can expect to be hired and what kind of money you can expect. I made the career change from PC repair to IT in 2006 and I will tell you it definitely pays better.

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Certs, Certs, Certs. You are much more likely to get a decent paying jobs with certs...with that much time in the industry picking up a cert or two shouldn't be too much trouble.

A+ and HP System repair, dell laptop repair and hp printer repair certs. The hp ones are pretty old but they don't actually expire.

Not sure what others certs I would even want to tackle

As it stands this job I took with the school district sucks balls. I really hope to find something better quickly. Low pay and a long ass commute don't mix.

Originally Posted by Rumble

A+ and HP System repair, dell laptop repair and hp printer repair certs. The hp ones are pretty old but they don't actually expire.

Not sure what others certs I would even want to tackle

The good ones are usually the best known ones. MCSE, CCNA, VCP, CISSP, CEH, and others. CompTIA certs are a good starting point but won't turn any heads. Don't rely on Monster either. Be proactive and go to big companies websites and most will have recruiting links. More money can be made if you are willing to relocate too. If you want to try government work, hit up usajobs.gov.

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Most shops today combine their desktop and server support groups so priority is given to those with demonstrated experience in both areas. People with dell certs or A+ are dime a dozen now and end up working the geek squad at BestBuy at best.

For example, my university looks for (entry level) a minimum of a associates degree in an IT related field and 2 years direct help desk experience that includes active directory, group policy, hardware and a bonus given to anyone with scripting or programming experience. They will let you sub 3 years experience for each year of education if you meet the others (so 8 years without a degree but you will score on the matrix lower than someone with a degree). The university doesn't count any certs, none....most schools will require experience or eduction from their own offerings. It doesn't make any sense for a 4 year university to hire someone without a degree and only certifications when they are in the sole business of granting 4 year degrees.

The days of dedicated shops that do only PC repair are dying left and right as hardware has gotten cheaper and cheaper the cost to repair a 4 year old tower is no longer worth while. Why pay a shop 600 bucks to replace dead hardware and reload your OS when you can buy a new tower for that? I do PC consulting on the side and most of the calls I get for a home PC repair start off with "how much did you pay for your PC and how old is it?" If they answer less than 1200 on the cost or more than 2 years on the age I pretty much know they are going to balk when I give them a quote on the repair. I charge less and geek squads hourly but people are very price sensitive...you tell them it will cost $150 bucks to clean a virus off a $600 tower they bought on black Friday event and they say no thanks. The big demands on my time are now project planning for large IT moves....I get jobs orchestrating company moves for example. They want to move from their own location to their new and they need the infrastructure, hardware upgraded and configured and service established at their new location and have as little downtime as possible. I go in and give them 3 quotes based on their risk tolerance and down town tolerance. I start off with the most expensive which is duplication of services and hardware at the new location before taking the old location down. The has the least risk and least downtime but the highest price tag. The last quote is a straight up move of their current environment (desktops, servers, network printing, switches etc) to their new location. This has the highest risk and highest downtime but lowest price tag. Of course the second quote is a middle ground where either the infrastructure is duplicated but not the hardware or the location is migrated in overlapping parts.

That is a long ass way of saying that you need to branch out a bit and if you want to do certs MCSE, CCNA, etc show that you have skills and if combined with something like Project Management cert (I did itil v3 which is PM for IT service organizations) shows that you can not only do the hardware side of things but that you have the skills to single handily oversee the entire project.

We just hired an entry level technician last week and we had 60 resumes and 4 people chosen for interviews. The minimums are listed above, we ended up with 4 that had more than 10 years and an associates fighting for an entry level job just to get their foot in the door.

I can tell you from interview experience that those with certs and no degree interview on average, much worse than those with a degree and no certs.

A lot of these technical schools around my area do not teach the students proper business communication, if at all, and it shows when I have to interview them.

Certs are good and all, but I'd rather see someone with a good foundation. In addition, most IT pros know about sites like testking and pass4sure, so we are hesitant on hiring people with just certs.