Hello, long time lurker here,
I wish to leave my job in education to find something more challenging in the private sector. However after applying to about 15 jobs (2nd/3rd line support, sysadmin, IT engineer, that sort of thing - all through recruiters) and not hearing anything back, I was wondering if any of you had advice on how to get my foot in the door.
I'm a senior IT technician at a large secondary school, where I've worked for three years since graduating with a computer science degree. I have a CCNA but no MS qualifications (just started the ball rolling on those). I'm currently in Leeds but am looking for work in London as I'd like to move down there.
I consider myself to be very knowledgeable in all aspects of Windows networking, and have a genuine passion for the field. I'm especially interested in the SBC, virtualisation and mobile spaces. However I'm concerned that the fact I work in school is preventing recruiters from putting me forward. Is working in a school still considered 'tin-pot' compared with private sector IT? I hope I'm wrong.
I'd like to land a job in the banking/finance/massive conglomerate sector, but I realise that may be a little ambitious as they all seem to require experience, so any company with a larger-scale IT setup would do me. I'd love some datacenter experience.
I've read that quite a few of you have successfully moved away from education, so I'd like to ask: where do you work now? How did you get into it?
Thanks for your time