Paris Brooker moved into Systems Engineer

I started the traineeship for a few reasons. I’d been looking to move out of freelance translation and language teaching into something with better prospects of career development. The pandemic scuppered my original plans, but I’d come across IT Career Switch before, and because I’d always been a bit of a computer geek, I revisited the idea of moving into IT. The promise of a guaranteed job was certainly a big draw, but so was the well-defined career path laid out by the traineeship – not to mention the earning potential.

I’d say the breadth of content was the most enjoyable, but also the most challenging. I’d always sort of known how computers and networks worked, but getting exposed to and understanding these in more depth has been very rewarding. It is a lot of content though, and there are a lot of concepts to get your head around. There’s repetition between modules which goes over certain areas, but I’d certainly recommend setting up your own lab to practice and drill in commands and procedures.

Really good. I’m working for a data marketing company in their small IT team. Because it’s a small team, I’ve been exposed to a lot of different stuff early on. I’ve only just finished my first month, and I’m doing everything from first-line support and AD account management to some SQL server maintenance and installing serve hardware at the data centre! Though I actually found this role through my own personal network before IT Career Switch really had a chance to find me something, I’ve had plenty of recruiters calling me with interesting positions, so I don’t doubt they’d have found me a job in short order.