Looking to move careers

Talk to the counselors at the school about available co-op or intern
positions. These types of employers expect employees to be still in school
and have little/no experience.

This will allow you the time to continue your education as you work.

--
~~~
C'Ya,
mrfelis
mrfelis@yahoo.NOSPAM.com
just remove the spam
Cameron <cmars637@netscape.net> wrote in message
news:39807890$1@news.dev-archive.com...
>
> I am 20 years old, currently the Chief Graphic Designer for a book
publishing
> company, living in Wisconsin,
> and want to change careers to programming. I have a correspondence course
> diploma in C++, and
> am going to take my A+ certification exam in a couple of weeks (just to
have
> more under my belt),
> and I also am learning Javascript. My question I guess lies in two parts:
>
> How should I go about changing careers? Who do contact for an entry level
> position with the capabilities
> of still learning while hired by that particular company? Is there an
easy
> way to find companies to contact?
>
> Would it be better to complete a track on Programmer/Analyst at a Tech
school,
> or would I be able
> to jump into a career?
>
> I am desperately seeking a career jump, and I would like some input if it
> was at all possible...
>
> Thank you
>
> CAMERON

"Cameron" <cmars637@netscape.net> wrote:
>
>I am 20 years old, currently the Chief Graphic Designer for a book publishing
>company, living in Wisconsin,
>and want to change careers to programming. I have a correspondence course
>diploma in C++, and
>am going to take my A+ certification exam in a couple of weeks (just to
have
>more under my belt),
>and I also am learning Javascript. My question I guess lies in two parts:
>
>How should I go about changing careers? Who do contact for an entry level
>position with the capabilities
>of still learning while hired by that particular company? Is there an easy
>way to find companies to contact?
>
>Would it be better to complete a track on Programmer/Analyst at a Tech school,
>or would I be able
>to jump into a career?
>
>I am desperately seeking a career jump, and I would like some input if it
>was at all possible...
>
>Thank you
>
>CAMERON

Cameron,

I don't think the A+ certification is going to help you at all as something
to put on the resume or tell prospective employers at a job interview, if
you are looking at programming jobs. What A+ tells me as a consulting company
owner is that someone has done a lot of basic computer hardware training.
I would probably be more leery of such a candidate than I would without
knowing about the certification.

That said, I don't think you should NOT get the certification if you have
already invested a lot of time and effort and money. It will be good practice
for other certifications you may take in the future.

The correspondence course diploma in C++ is kind of tough. Personally, I
am again leery of hearing that someone has a "correspondence course diploma"
in something, it just raises a red flag. Why didn't they just take community
college classes, or classes at a university? I'm not trying to say you didn't
learn a lot in your course, it just makes me as a potential employer raise
questions in my mind. I think I would recommend you *not* make a prominent
point about the course on the resume.

So what do you do to make yourself a good candidate? Here is what I recommend.
First of all, you need to decide what you want to start out doing in the
programming arena. Do you want to write business software, embedded software
for appliances, commercial applications, or what. Writing business software
is currently the biggest market and the easiest to break into.

I'd be glad to offer more advice if you can let me know what specific kind
of programming job you would like to have.

Matthew Cromer
matthew@sdaconsulting.com