IT Courses

[Gaffer]

My wonderful parents have offered to buy me a course for my 30th birthday (which is on Friday ;) )

Now I have no idea what one to go for, where to look or the general cost (I know that they are £1-2k)

Every man and his dog seems to have got the MSCEDABCDEFG or what ever it is, so I want one that will just give me the extra edge.

I was thinking about SAP CRM (have you SEEN what those guys are getting money wise :yikes: ) or some kind of ethical hacking course.

Any ideas...?

Claire

[rebelstar]

I'd skip the MCSE type course, everyone seems to have them and you'll just end up being a regular IT monkey.

If I was in your shoes, I'd go for something that looked like fun. That probably means no to SAP! I think it's much more rewarding to enjoy what you're doing than earning stacks of money. Although if you can do both... let me know how you did it

[zumbruk]

Gaffer said:

My wonderful parents have offered to buy me a course for my 30th birthday (which is on Friday )

Happy Birthday!

Gaffer said:

Now I have no idea what one to go for, where to look or the general cost (I know that they are £1-2k)

Generally speaking, most of the IT courses I've been on have been around £600/day.

Gaffer said:

Every man and his dog seems to have got the MSCEDABCDEFG or what ever it is, so I want one that will just give me the extra edge. I was thinking about SAP CRM (have you SEEN what those guys are getting money wise ) or some kind of ethical hacking course. Any ideas...? Claire

You haven't said what your background is, so it's difficult to recommend anything, but I suggest you look at the various surveys sculling round on t'web and pick something that a lot of people are asking for;

www.contractoruk.com/jobs/top_ten_requested_skills.html

I wouldn't bother with the Microsoft cr*p - it doesn't have much of a reputation, everyone's got one and IME the people with them don't actually *know* anything, they just know which boxes to click on an MS "operating system".

[Gaffer]

My background is basic.

Helpdesk/Desktop/basic TCI/IP.

I was on the SAP rollout for Europe, this meant just creating accounts etc.

I did like the SAP work, thought it might be a good thing to get into.

Maybe not the BW side but CRM or ABAP/BASIS.

Think of me as a lump of clay ready to be moulded

Well I am not a lump of clay obviously, but can pick up most things quite quickly when I can be arsed.

Claire

[UpTheIron]

Gaffer said:

My background is basic. Helpdesk/Desktop/basic TCI/IP.

Then an MCSE/MCSA shouldn't be discounted, providing you can back up the qualification with some proven experience/on the job knowledge.

You mentioned hacking/security...perhaps something like the CISSP?

[Gaffer]

I have been doing Helpdesk/Desktop for over 5 years now and basically stuck in a rut, plus the pay side of things is getting worse.

Thats why I was thinking of SAP/Ethical Hacking.

Claire

[rebelstar]

Helpdesk is a good starting point for a whole host of other careers (in fact that's where I started out).

The most likely move from here is probably to some consulting role. This is a good thing for a while too, and it's almost certainly going to be better paid.

Any time I've had dealings with SAP it's been a pig to set up. This is probably why SAP consultants are paid so much!

The ethical hacking course sounds more fun. It could be pretty intense though; it depends on whether it's more focused on security audits, or delving into tricky stuff like exploits, stack overflows, code injection... very interesting if you're into that sort of thing, but it makes my head spin a bit!

[guydw]

SAP will be easier to get work - you're not going to become "an ethical hacker" in the space of one or two weeks - people I know who do penetration testing etc usually have 5 - 10 years experience in security and networking - it is a huge field and at the top end of the market you cannot replace experience with intelligence and familiarity with a few techniques.

Also, you need to be interested in whatever you are doing, so if you are interested in SAP, then that sounds a good thing to get into......

[Gaffer]

OK I am thinking SAP.

Having had a look at CRM and scared myself. I suspect the way to go is BASIS/ABAP.

Where is the best place to look for SAP courses, they seem to be a bit thin on the ground.

Claire

[fazz81]

You could try IBM's middleware, WMQ, WBIMB. Quite interesting. And I have used it to integrate SAP with other systems.