The IT industry is a fast-paced one, and changes so rapidly that without constant training, developers are in danger of falling behind.
That’s what happened to Jim, who worked in the industry for years until he suddenly found himself out of a job. He realised he needed to retrain, and that’s when he found Industry Connect.
Tell us a bit about your background
I came over from England in 1990 and worked as a software developer in New Zealand for many years up until 2015, when I found myself at the job for various reasons. It was pretty clear to me when I was looking for another job that I needed to retry because all my previous experience was with desktop applications and most of the development work today happens in all the applications that run in the browser. So I was looking around for ways of making that happen and I came across Industry Connect online and got in touch and that’s where it all started for me.
What would you say the greatest technical skills were you picked up along the way?
At Industry Connect the focuses on the microsoft.net and ASP.NET stack, so it’s all about C# for the backend, obviously SQL server and SQL on the backend as well. JavaScript, jQuery and various other JavaScript libraries, plus HTML and bootstrap.
What soft skills did you pick up along the way that helped you secure your new job?
I’ve certainly sharpened up my skills in being interviewed since I’ve been to Industry Connect. There’s quite a huge emphasis here on getting people ready to be interviewed and that has been hugely valuable to me. I was also given the opportunity to present various things to groups of people, which is all good practice as well, because that’s very much required in the marketplace these days.
What would your advice be to someone who’s potentially coming to Industry Connect?
I would say first of all don’t let any conceptions about your background hold you back. I don’t think there are any particular requirements or prerequisites in terms of background, and my personal background is completely different for most people who come here. When I approached Industry Connect it was with a certain amount of trepidation. I thought “what will everyone think of me” given that I’m not the usual profile. But it was a very positive response. They said “well we don’t see why you shouldn’t join us and let’s give it a go!”, and I thought that was a fantastic response.
Was there a lot of value for you working on live projects here at Industry Connect?
Very definitely, yes. One of the requirements of New Zealand employers in general is that they put much more trust in people who have actually worked in a real project in the New Zealand workspace. So being fed through the bootcamp style training course that Industry Connect offers into a real workplace where you’re working alongside people developing real applications is also enormous value. I wouldn’t hesitate, anybody who wants to get into software development in New Zealand or testing from whatever sort of background, give Industry Connect a go, and I’m sure you won’t be disappointed.
What is Industry Connect?
We have been helping career changers, recent IT graduates and people with career gap to start their IT/software careers.
Over the years, we have helped hundreds kick-start an IT/software career. (Verifiable evidences are available on this website)
OUR CORE
We are an innovative software training school backed by global/local software companies. Our ecosystem is an incubation process that supports our participants until they launch a tech career.
OUR PROGRAMMES
Our Job-Ready training programmes focus on,
- Software Development
- Business Intelligence (or Data Analyst)
- Test Analyst
PROGRAMME STRUCTURE
- Six Weeks Training Classes (Practical Tech Skills)
- Three Months (or more) Structured Internship on Large Commercial-Scale Projects (Learning enhanced, flexible Hours)
- Employer Network (job analysis and internal referral if goals are met)
You can join us via Zoom (live face-to-face meeting) remotely from anywhere and "download" the valuable knowledge & experiences from our tech experts across different tech centres.
Watch 300+ Stories of Career Starters in IT/Software
Click the image to watch those who changed their careers to IT, had gap years and recent IT graduates.
