[nfbcs] Help for older students

[Deborah Armstrong]

>college was about 20 years ago and nothing came of the promises with placement or a second so called guarantee after completing a specialized programming program graded by it managers.

It's my opinion but I think all these job training programs are more marketing than substance. You get yourself some skills and you market yourself to your friends, their friends and anywhere else you can think of. And who would want a guaranteed job anyway, sounds like make-work for the handicapped!

Though I've been a rehab client several times, DOR never actually did much in helping me score the jobs. I used DOR to fund all the classes I wanted to take, but I think searching for jobs is best done without agency interference!I got this current job because I was interviewing for another position here and went beforehand to the restroom. My husband, who had driven me to the interview helped me find the restroom before he left, and happened to see the current job I now hold posted on a notice board next to the wrestroom. He used his phone to take a picture of the job posting and over dinner later read it out loud to me. He knew it would be something I wanted, and he was right; I immediately set about with all my resources to score this, the perfect job for my desires and abilities.

Before that, I found my job at Stenograph when a friend of a friend described it to her friend, and said they were really looking for a person with a special skill set. 

I got my job at Caere because I was an OmniPage user. I just called and badgered them; said quite truthfully that I liked the product and wanted a position starting out in support.

I got my job at Aveo, a company that's now defunct because I got lost at a job fair when I went to relieve my dog. The nice man who helped me back to the convention center  started talking about he couldn't find a programmer with strong writing skills and I sold him on agreeing to look at my portfolio. Thank goodness my dog needed to go out that afternoon!

And I've gotten jobs off Craigslist and from room-mates too. A job you hunt for yourself, and earn yourself is the job you want, one you'll work hard to both acquire and keep.

As for skills, there is so much free training out there now. If, say I wanted to learn Windows Powershell, I can download books from Bookshare, get stuff from Youtube, (some is not as visual as other training), listen to the excellent Coding 101 podcast segments on Powershell and above all, write lots of powershell code to do hobby stuff, like catalog my MP3 collection, or make registry editing easier. I don't want to learn PowerShell right now, but for you maybe it's Wordpress, or PHP, or JavaScript, or something. I want to learn Python because it looks fun, and I want to learn Java so I can write some apps. So figure out if you can learn a skill where there's plenty of free training online and just go for it! Then when you know it you can start looking for work doing it.

So stop trying to get some agency to "get you a job";  it's just silly!


--Debee