Depends on the company you're trying to get into. I don't have any Certs,
and no big-brand-name college. Starting out was harder as I watched others
get more money and have to jump through less hoops for raises because they
had some extra bulletpoints on their resumes, but I love what I do and
eventually I moved up from having "clean the bathroom" in my job description
to a couple of Senior VP and CTO positions under my belt. At a certain
level your education stops being important, and you are known for what you
have done.
Startingn out accept that in any industry the bigger the company and the
more people are trying to get in, the less likely the company will have the
time to check out the applicant's real talents closely. It's just the way
things are that it's easier to pigeonhole resumes using a checklist when you
have a lot of applicant to pick from.
In some companies for non-IT positions the pigeonholing is done by "Harvard"
is better than "Bellevue Community College" and BCC is better than
self-taught even if the Harvard grad ust barely got through, the BCC grad
did it with straight B's and the self taught person has more passion and did
the effort to become very good at the craft at the expense of having any
life ;-).
It's just the way things go when companies get big, and it's why big
companies are usually a lot less nimble than small companies that have to
hire for passion because they can't afford to pay what the big-ticket
companies can.
As Nick said, the best way in is to accept very low pay ... just like any
other industry, you have to pay your dues. If you stick it out, it gives
you great stories to bore interns with later
. I'd add to that that as
time goes on you don't stick with the same company you started with, that
leads to "Intern Syndrome" where you can be overlooked for promotions not
because you can't do other jobs but because all of the people will always
see you as "The Intern" even after years on the job. (Plus, you usually get
more money form a different company than what you ge in a yearly cost of
living raise). If you really liked your first company, leave them and go
back when some of the faces have changed, at that time you'll have two
advantages: 1) You know most of the systems so require less training 2)they
had to hire you away from another company so they won't think twice about
making a higher offer.
After 20+ years in business worldwide and several years of experience in
tech centers (Boston, White Plains, Rochester, SF and now Seattle's east
side) I've come to believe that that smaller companies are more fun, the
trade-off of the money is that they let you work on lots of different things
because they don't have the money for 20 people to every feature. You get a
lot of experience - - and if you work hard then you might be bought by
Microsoft so it can be a back-door past the big-company HR practices and
let you sit around as a middle manager on their dime for a while, if that's
what you're really after
All the best
Robert Smith
Kirkland, WA
www.smithvoice.com