So Jackson, who had been working as an Informix database developer for a retail-technology company, went back to school last year. He attended the Web development and Internet technology program at nearby George Mason University because it provided hands-on experience. The course ran 12 hours a week for six months and included a major project at the end of the term.
"Hands-on experience legitimizes the course for an employer," says Jackson, who landed a job in Web development and network engineering at a large telecom company in Reston, Va., just one month after completing the program.
The Web development program is part of George Mason University's Train to Technology, which is designed to provide the skills necessary for entry- and junior-level programming and networking jobs. This offering is just one of many programs supported by federal, state and local government funding that are starting to emerge, largely as a result of the 1998 Workforce Investment Act. This act provides federal funding for local public/private groups -- known as work-force boards -- to pay for training programs (see "Where To Find the Training You Need").
Even with the current economic slowdown, there is plenty of demand for IT workers. And IT training has been growing at a steady clip--by 15 percent from 1999 to 2000, according to International Data Corp. The training market was at $22.4 billion in 2000, up from $19.5 billion in 1999.
Today's IT training programs also are a way to work toward certification (see "Certification Equation"). These courses often offer the curriculum needed to pass technology certification exams in networking, Web development and basic computing skills, for instance.
"IT people have to keep learning things or else they get stale and bored," says George Liao, regulatory health information management specialist for the U.S. Public Health Service, based in Rockville, Md. Liao, who handles PC end-user support, has been training in computer security with the Computer Security Institute and the federal government's National Institute of Standards and Technology. And through self-study, Liao is pursuing certification from the International Information Systems Security Certifications Consortium.
Rene Warren of Fairfax, Va., worked as a C programmer for a decade but has stayed home with her children for the past 12 years. Now that she's ready to go back to work, she needs training in the basics of using a PC for programming in C. Warren is considering programs at local community colleges. "I don't know how to use development tools on PCs," says Warren, who started off programming on Unix-based mainframes. She also is considering learning object-oriented programming and Web development. "The more training I get, the more options I have," Warren says.
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FYI
IT companies consider certifications at least as important as bachelor's degrees, while non-IT companies rank certifications slightly less important than bachelor's degrees.
-- ITAA
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Many people who've worked peripherally in IT are looking to acquire IT skills, too. "I want to learn enough to get down and dirty with the code," says Jim Gaston, a former program manager with America Online who worked on international expansion of AOL's services. Gaston, who is looking for intensive courses in Oracle database technology, says with today's job market, acquiring new skills is even more important. These people are "motivated by fear" of losing their jobs because their skills are obsolete, he says.
Of course, it's not all about getting a piece of paper. Work and personal experience, even if it's not IT-related, counts too. "In the past if someone were retrained, they went to a whole new field," says Lisa Bacon, director of the Atlanta location of The Chubb Institute, an IT training school. "Now we're seeing a lot more people incorporating their life experiences with retraining." That's the case with Susan Dale, of Springfield, Va., a musician and former mainframe Cobal programmer who's on the job hunt. Dale is taking a four-month online course at Northern Virginia Community College called Writing for the Web, after taking a handful of other classes at local universities, including sound production for the Web and Java, from George Washington University.
She has been working temp assignments while job hunting and wants to develop multimedia applications for the Web, a nifty tie-in to her musical background. Dale also has volunteered on some Web projects, including designing a site for a friend's small business.
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