Simon Cockayne moved into FCR Engineer

My aim was to start afresh on a new career path, hopefully towards a future position in Cyber Security operations. The broad and comprehensive nature of the IT Career Switch curriculum appealed, and I believe that investing in it – both in money and time – was key to demonstrating my commitment to potential employers, who might otherwise have doubted the seriousness of someone in their 50s making such a big life change.

The Traineeship was properly challenging, but you can take it at your own pace. Dedication and determination are necessary to complete it within the deadlines and pass all the testing stages along the way. It’s a good feeling to master a tricky subject that at first seems like gobbledegook, and I felt my confidence growing at each stage.

My current role as a first-line engineer working for a large managed IT services provider (MSP) puts the knowledge gained from the IT Career Switch courses to the test in a fast-paced environment. Helping people with their IT issues can be very gratifying, even – or maybe especially – the very frustrated ones. Serving a variety of clients, all with very different IT environments, really keeps you on your toes, so the broad knowledge base from the course is extremely useful daily.