What is the longest you have been unemployed?

Yeah the charity work is a good idea, Garyi I don't put leaflets in cars I deliver leaflets to houses, it helps my parents out a big deal as well, every £10 I can earn from that my dad can make £50 so its way of paying rent.

Ihatkins - I have been applying for web development work at any grade and nothing despite experience. Its sods law that I can get this kind of job when I wasn't looking (like last year) but when I am looking I can't get anything.

 

I work for smallish software company and we usually take on a couple of new graduates each summer. Last year and the year before there was a shortage of applicants and we only managed to find one suitable person each year. This year loads applied and we have taken on three so maybe you just picked a bad year to graduate!

 

3 years in the early 90's.
never been out of work since and dont intend to be.

AT, get off your ass, stop moaning and get a bloody job, even if it aint your ideal job.

 

Don't say that Oh well they will be a shortage of new graduates in 2009 becuase of the top up fees thing but I don't tend to unemployed for that long

I found to other jobs I am going to apply for tomorrow but after thats its tried up. Hopefully people new graduates might leave so it should pick up again before next summer.

Penance - If you were unemployed for 3 years then I don't think you have the right to tell somebody to go and get any job do you?

 

AT why do you have to get a job in programming? the fact that you have a degree means you are not an idiot, go to a few agencies see what they offer you.

 

Yes At I do, i am talking from the view of someone who has experienced long term unemployment. The side effects are not nice.
Dont hang around, dont turn down jobs because the are not ideal, get a job, any job and then move on.
Dont put yourself thru long term unemployment.

 

I take it that you have a degree in computer science or similar. Have you only been applying for jobs in web design? Every man and his dog thinks they can do web design since there are so many packages that make it fairly easy to get going (although I must admit I have never tried it).

Have you tried applying for jobs in database work? I have always found no problem in getting jobs in this field and have never been unemployed in 20 years (which is probably more down to luck than judgement)

 

i was"unemployed" off and on for nearly 4 years,but due to the quirkiness of the dhss rules i wasnt able to claim any benifts,but they would pay my NI contributions when i was between contracts.

 

Never been unemployed yet

 

I don't claim to be a web designer, yes I can use Photoshop but I am no marketing expert (although I have a good idea) and I am not a graphics designer. I like to call myself a web developer i.e the backend of websites as well as accessability (which comes under design but they are ways of coding sites to another persons design is much more usable).

Web Development is my expertise area, so its highly unlikely I will find a job in anothe area. I might revelop my personal site becuase its ancient now (2003) and its full of tables and crap so I could do with a new site (I have only shown employers my good sites btw).

Flash is a good example, I think Flash is a great product and has a lot of good uses on the web, but Flash is not for making websites with, its for making animations which are delivered by the web. For this reason I can't use flash that well, I can make some basic animations but I am no where near professional quality at.

There dosn't seem to be that many programming jobs out there, there is lots in Java but my Java knowledge is not great, I can use it but again I am not at professional standards.

PHP and .NET however I am good at. I am going to ask the job centre if there is anything they can suggest which might boost my interview skills. I think this is my problem, I think my CV is quite strong I always sense the interviews fall apart when it comes to asking the personal questions.

If I graduated ten years ago I bet I could have walked into a job a lot easier, but there is so much more computing related graduates out there now. There market is satuated.

I suppose on the postive side they are not worse people applying for the same jobs

 

AT - the point of a CS degree is NOT about "I know .NET and PHP, but I don't know Java".

Programming languages are a tool. What you SHOULD have learned is things like how to structure a program (regardless of language), how to define it and prove its operation (formal methods) and good practice (appropriate commenting, etc). You should be able to pick up a new language and apply it without much difficulty at all with the underlying knowledge. The actual syntax and words used are largely an irrelevance.

10 years ago php and .net didn't exist. Who's to say they will in 10 years from now? Programming languages develop, grow, evolve, mature, decline and die out. Who uses Cobol, Fortran or Ada now? C is in decline too. But these languages have spawned currently used languages (C lead to C++, C# and Verilog. Ada lead to VHDL).

Any employer taking you on as a new graduate will expect you to learn. They aren't going to expect you to be the world's greatest programmer from day 1 (or if they are, they're employing in the wrong sector of the market). They will make allowances for you to take time to get up to speed on whatever tools you're using.

 

AT

I suggest you investigate IT 4 Communities if you're considering charity work.

The basic concept is that people with some IT related skills and time to spare link up with charities who register various projects they want worked on.

The scheme also has the added credibility of being backed by the British Computer Society and Computer Weekly amongst others, which could help to impress potential employers.

http://www.it4communities.org.uk/

 

39 years old (40 in Feb eek ! ), started my first job at 16 which was a place on a YTS 'Craft course' at a local technical college for which i got paid £25 per week. I've never been unemployed since.
Mind you in saying that, after reading several stories in the newspapers recently about bone idle scumbags, with millions of kids, usually in two councl houses that have been knocked into one, i wonder why i bother.

There was an article in the Scottish Daily Express the other day about such a couple. Neither had ever worked, the guy even said that the government give benefits to bogus assylum seekers so why shouldn't they give them to him. The paper even arranged with a local employment agency to offer them both work , but they where better off on the social so turned them down. By the time all of their benefits had been totted up they got something like £30K+ per year, which isn't bad considering they'd never put anything in....

Just remebered, the wifey said something like :
" Myf ella has tried a few jobs, but after a few days he gets all paranoid, thinking that his workmates are talking about him behind his back and so ends up battering somebody and getting sacked".
Is this what i pay so much Income Tax and National insurance for... In some ways i'd rather the money go to bogus asylum seekers, i reckon they appreciate it more...

 

Yep for my final year project I had to teach myself .NET, becuase we would have lost lots of marks if we used PHP or ASP becuase we had been formaly taught them. However many jobs don't want to train you up and want you to know the language before you start.

dohraeme - Thanks for that link, that is really useful I think I do really need to some of that charity stuff, I need somthing to stand out.

Doing charity work dosn't affect the dole does it becuase I need to claim iit for a few weeks to ensure I don't go into my overdraft.

 

in my expeience AT yuo have to train yourself, check out if your local college has any evening classes in Java or something, this is what I had to do I did a City & Guilds in VB (not that I've ever used it) but I know it got me further through the interview processes.

Porblem with web design / developing though its now every man and his dog and do this, and companies are now shipping this work out to countries where they pay about 2p a day (how this is legal I really don't know, rubbing basturds) so you need to specialise in a certain topic area.

Sid, ya this makes me sick, perfectly able people just slob around at home and claim dole cos its pays more to produce bratts than it does to get a job, not that the bratt will contribute to anything, probably just copy their parrants.

It really does upset me, I mean these people obvioulsy have no consideration to anyone but themselves, they're leachers and something should be done to stop this, but no one will because, it'll be in breach of human rights of some crap like that.

I've siad it before and I'll say it again, I could sit at home and claim disability and all those benifits, I don't, I couldn't live with myself to do that, its not right, I can work, so I do work, WE ARE TOO BLOODY SOFT.

 

Yep I like to think my accessability knowledge is specialist but more and more people are learning this, still one of the sites I worked on for blind people won an award so that must help.

The charity thing will probably round my CV off nicely I think though. I do know Java but I don't know it that well, its not really the area I am best at.

Another long term alternative I am considering is a masters which offers work placements, that might help but I am hoping to find somthing before then.

 

There are quite a few companies offering "accessability" testing etc, our manager gets approached by one at least once a week, thankfully we do this in house. But that's good you've got some pratical expeience with this, yes this will help a lot.

Ya this reminds me, I had to laugh at this, we went on a training course to learn to use the new "forms" package they want to use on our website, within 10 minutes I ask the question, "so what happens if the client does't have java script enabled in their browser" (for those who doen't know visually impaired people with speech screen readers have to turn this off because the readers can't understand javascript, and crash), so we turned the javascript off and their forms broke, so that's not AA complient then! so we'll not be using that product then, shame they've already shelled out the money for it, bunch of idiots!

When I said specialist I was talking maybe more like software or standardards, find out what the larger companies are using for content management software and see if you can gain some expeience with it, with things like the government gateway on its way soon, it'll be good to get your XML skills up to scratch (something I should really do) and I feel this will be the basis of future developments.

 

Yep I should buy a book on it, my XML skills are rather basic, I can do XML coding but most my the stuff I have done with SOAP web services has been done in Visual Studio.NET which does the XML automaticaly so need to really learn how to this by hand.

There was a good book I saw on PHP and web services I should buy it really as that should explain a lot about hand coding XML and developing the schemas.

For my final year project I used a lot of JavaScript on the back end but I made sure the entire front end was done clientside so all the client got was pure HTML.

 

at,
you seem to be specializing when you don;t really know what skills are required by the market place. as peopel have said there are areas of it that are still in demand. one that i know is is cobol programming - a good cobol coder can name their own price (if they really know what they are doing) as there are a number of big comanies using legacy systems which are too embedded in their current way of working to change. database programming is also an area that seems to be quite bouyant. web stuff is, to be blunt, in the shitter cos everyone thinks they can have a crack at it. best though is hardware, installation, networking, maintainance, etc. especially in the private sector is really a good place to be right now as people who normally wouldn;t bother buy a pc with broadband - this means things like firewalls, ad/spy ware killers, anti viruses etc. all need installing and setting up. some poeple even have problems taking it out of the box and plugging it all together. also things like home networks, wireless networking and integrated htpc's are starting to take off so a good place to be overthe comming years. not glamourous though and skull crushingly boring.

 

I'm DEAD AGAINST Julian's advice myself - I've never felt it right to go to an interview and take a job that you don't have the skills for - it's deception, and you WILL be sacked eventually for it, and it'll tarnish your record for years. I know the IT industry is rife with this, and personally, I think it's a pretty shITty thing to do...

BTW - on unemployment - 3 months (and I was bored after 3 weeks); I went to 40-odd interviews, and then finally, one of the first interviews (I'd totally forgotton about!) came through as a job

The simple problem with IT is too many people chasing jobs - the market's saturated. If you REALLY get stuck, do plumbing at night school, and then sit back and RAKE in the cash - within the next 5 years there's going to be a massive shortage of qualified plumbers apparently, so get in while you can - the money is far better than any starting IT job (my mate Robbie (a plumber) makes around £5k more than almost any of my mates who have IT jobs).