Com Tech unveils new course

By Adam Gifford

INFORMATION technology training company Com Tech Education Services is launching a programme to bring new blood into the computer industry.

General manager Steve Ross says Com Tech Network is a three-month course aimed at people wanting to switch careers.

The package includes classroom and self study, job preparation and job placement.

If a student doesn't get a job within three months of the course ending, they get half the $9500 fee back.

Loan finance is available if needed, with principal repayments starting after six months.

"By that time they should be getting a computing industry salary to pay the loan back," Mr Ross says.

Students will come out with A+ software and hardware support qualifications and Microsoft certified professional certification.

"It is based on global certification," Mr Ross says.

"We want to make people ready for first-level jobs on help desks, LAN [local area network] administration, PC support and pre-sales."

Worldwide, he says, at least 10 per cent of IT jobs remained unfilled. A Com Tech survey of New Zealand and Australia found only 40 per cent of information systems departments considered they had adequate staff.

Some 17 per cent described themselves as "extremely" understaffed.

"There is a deep skill shortage in the middle to high end. But unless we put people in the bottom we can't free others to move up to the next level," Mr Ross says.

He says the release of Microsoft Windows 2000 will create a huge amount of extra work as firms deploy the new operating system.

Also, the Internet wave changes the way companies do business. E-commerce is open 24 hours a day so there is a requirement for more staff to keep the system up.

"Often, the sort of trainees we're looking for won't go to recruitment agencies, but we need people in the industry to grow the industry."

He says that only one in three people who apply for a computer science course at a tertiary institute are accepted. They take a long time to come into the industry, often without work-ready skills.

Job preparation is important because "a lot of people only know how to present, or haven't been to a job interview for a while."

Mr Ross says prospective trainees will be vetted for aptitude and they are expected to have a PC at home.

"If you don't like technology you won't like this industry. You have to turn a hobby into a career," Mr Ross says.

"All these jobs require interpersonal skills. The majority of jobs these people will go into require some customer contact, so people need the human interface as well as the technical interface."

The first Com Tech Network courses started in Australia in February. Trainees included ballet dancers, actors, mechanical engineers and "people with skills that don't take them anywhere.

"People these days are not looking for job security. They are looking for career security and if they're certified they have that. These are global skills - they can leave Auckland on Friday and walk into a job [overseas] on Monday. Few other professions allow you to be this mobile."

The first Auckland class starts on June 21 and a Wellington course on July 12.