Start a New Career in IT - Average starting Salaries £26k - Don't Get Sucked In! By Paul Bawden

I have lived in Hull all of my life. I'm just coming up to my 31st birthday. I have over 15 years experience and am very much respected within the ITC industry, with more qualifications than you can shake a stick at.

So what do you think I earn in a week? £200 - £800 maybe? I am actually un-employed and I receive £56 a week. I am one of thousands of people of my generation, who were told by our wonderful careers service when we left school to go into computing. Apparently I would have an excellent salary and never be un-employed. What a load of absolute rubbish.

The worst thing is, the careers service are still telling young people this so they can go to a rip-off training provider, get exploited and then end up on the dole. Anyone lucky enough to be working in the industry, especially in this area of the country, really understands how fortunate they are. Most of these very professional people are only getting on average £12 to £14k. Let's face it though, if you listened to the training providers you are told that £26k will be just a starting wage!.

Fact: For every low paid ITC job advertised in Hull there are on average 200+ high quality applicants, and countless lower skilled applicants. There are people living in Hull with Masters Degrees in the subject who are un-employed with little or no prospects.

Recently I read an advert in the Hull Daily Mail for training in ICT. It spouted the same old chestnut of earn ££££'s in the computing industry. Shame on you, HDM, for allowing training organisations to deceive jobseekers, students and people who want to change their lives. They are simply preying on desperate people with promises of dream salaries. In reality they are just offering, in most cases, for the long term, a large debt

Don't misunderstand, a lot of people do end up with a starter job after these courses. But in most cases these jobs don't last and sooner or later you will end up un-employed with nothing to show for your years of training.

It's about time the government stepped in and investigated the over-training that is occurring within the ICT industry. A few years ago I contacted an organization and invited one of their reps down to my house to see if they were really as bad as they seemed. I ended up throwing him out!. He tried to sell me a qualification in a programming language that had not been used in over 10 years with the promise of a job that was simply a fantasy. He tried to get me to go into debt for a course that would be as much use to me as a chocolate fireguard. If I was not already an IT pro I may have been sucked in by this joker.

In my opinion if you don't live down south, ITC is simply not a career option. In fact it's a hindrance. I am now facing the prospect of throwing the last 15 years of my life in the bin and doing a complete re-train. Don't end up like me!

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