Cesco IT Solutions training course

[inVINCEable]

The other week attended a seminar from Cesco IT Solutions, with the prospect of training to become a contract network engineer. The course used to have a fee of £4,000, but now they don't charge for the course and get the money back from placements/contracts in work.

There was an exam of which I passed and I have been put onto their two week training course in Crewe as of the 5th September.

All I was wondering before I pay for the hotel for two weeks is, it all sounds a bit good to be true, is this the case? Has anyone done the course and been successful with receiving a contract?

Any help would be great,

Thanks
Vin

['Yadi]

Cynical me thinks it sounds iffy. 'Cesco' vice 'Cisco' looks a little opportunistic.

Would this course be the only relevant networking skills you'd have? An which qualification would you be getting out of it? Hard to believe you'd be getting enough knowledge and experience in two weeks that you could be contracted out to a customer base?

I had a chap sit down one Monday a few years back as a contractor on the next desk. MCSE qualified. He'd been a baker the month prior to that. Totally out of his depth in a busy IT department where he was expected to be a self starter. He didn't get the opportunity to get the experience with us that our HR folks had assumed he'd got. Have avoided 'bootcamp-ers' whenever I've had a say in recruitment as a result.

Don't want to rain on your parade - maybe I've misinterpreted. No such thing as a free lunch....

[jpringle819]

I did a course with a company called Cerco based in the same area. It was a 7 week course when I did it about 12 years ago and cost about £2000. I got a good job working on a big project for the Inland Revenue and started within a couple of weeks of finishing. Some of the other jobs they had weren't particularly good such as replacing monitors and other hardware. You will probably find that you are forced to accept the job they offer or you will end paying for the course. This could mean that you end up in a job you don't like.

[monkey gland]

I think he means Cerco as well. They're a training company who also have a recruitment arm, a model which a lot of companies adopt as they can get people to pay for courses and then place them in a job and get commission on that too!!

The internet is rife with tales of people with buyer's remorse after going on a course promising to take them from no IT skills to earning 35k a year (i'm sure you've all seen the adverts of years past to that effect)

It's good how there's anecdotal evidence on this thread of that not ALWAYS being the case, and that you are at least are going into this with your eyes open.

If it is Cerco and not cesco then I suggest you google them, you will find lots of reports from people who have been on their courses, as well as plenty of shills from people on the inside.

Is this course going to give you an accredited certification at the end of it? Any exams to pass? Beware of anything that claims to get you MCSE/MCITP/CCNA certified after x days - usually highly dodgy and these sorts of certifcations should only be taken after proper experience with these technologies.

[jpringle819]

I am not sure I would do such a course nowadays, mine was fairly in-depth troubleshooting at a hardware level. I went from a £9K a year job in a warehouse straight into a £19k job in IT and haven't looked back since. I think if I had been stuck with a job doing hardware replacements I probably wouldn't be in IT today.

[Puggit]

A decade ago I paid £1000 to attend a course run by someone called 'Prince' - same concept, someone recruits you at the end and pays the rest of your fees. I had no real IT experience (plenty of deep home PC use before that).

Veritas (now Symantec) picked me up from the course, and I soon started on £22k pa. I'm now on many multiples of that salary, so it can work

Prince obviously sounds like it's connected to Prince project management, but nothing to do with them - they went bust not long after I'd been there

[TooLateForAName]

If they're calling themselves Cerco then that also sounds like its meant to be confused with Serco the huge outsourcing business.

[GeraldSmith]

Cerco are based in Crewe so it is highly likely to be them, they also go under 'Unique IT Training'.

An issue that used to be the case with them, maybe still is, is that the certification you get isn't industry recognised. So whereas MCSE, for example, is recognised, Cerco whatever doesn't mean anything to many of us.

My suggestion would to check how industry standard the qualification is and make sure that it is something we all recognise.