From...

June 22, 1999
Web posted at: 8:47 a.m. EDT (1247 GMT)

by Alice LaPlante

(IDG) -- When the mortgage company at which she'd worked for more than a decade closed its doors, Sharon Barnes had to make a decision. Should she attempt to get a new job in her field (she'd been a divisional manager in a 40-person department handling delinquent accounts) or try something new? After checking out the possibilities and realizing they looked bleak, Barnes decided to go back to school and embark upon a new career in information technology.

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"Opportunities for someone with my experience were very limited," Barnes recalls. After doing sufficient research, she found that a starting IT salary would pay as much as she'd earned as a veteran manager in her field. She promptly enrolled in Guilford Technology Community College in Jamestown, N.C., and began taking IT classes.

Barnes graduated in January 1997 with an associate's degree in business computer programming and was snapped up by Electronic Data Systems Corp. in Raleigh, N.C., which was looking for IT candidates. In fact, EDS had recently created a special training program specifically designed to fill gaps in its IT staffing; candidates needed to possess an associate's degree and were put through a five-week course before joining the year 2000 team at EDS.

At Guilford, Barnes took classes in Cobol, RPG, C++, FoxPro and relational database programming. "It was very hands-on," she says. In retrospect, she says she believes that really worked to her advantage. "When I got to EDS, I had to learn JCL and some specific mainframe skills." Her college training was all on the AS/400, but Barnes says she "had enough grounding in specific things to feel comfortable."

Her long-term plans are to continue her education and eventually earn a four-year degree in business management because she says she'll have more opportunities that way. But Barnes is a big proponent of two-year programs.

"You can always continue with your education later," Barnes points out. "But if you have a two-year technical degree, you can get out into the job market quickly and begin working. It's very practical."

A Second Career

After being laid off from his job as an aircraft machinist at The Boeing Co. in December 1993, Dan Thompson began to rethink his career options.

"I'd had recommendations from friends and family to get into the programming area," Thompson says. "I'd never tried it, but when I took a class, it happened to click." Thompson enrolled in the two-year program in computer programming at Bellevue Community College in Bellevue, Wash., and within 18 months had earned his associate's degree. Two days after graduation, he had a job.

Why did he choose Bellevue's two-year program over other education options? "[Bellevue] has an excellent reputation. I knew a degree from there would be very practical," Thompson says.

He also had financial considerations that made it a logical choice: As part of Thompson's severance package, Boeing had agreed to pay for a certain amount of retraining and "earning a two-year degree was a practical way of taking advantage of this and getting back quickly into the job market," Thompson says. He took double the number of programming classes required, deciding to get certified in both Visual Basic and C++ technologies (most students choose just one). "I wanted to get as much of a skills base as possible," Thompson says.

How easy was getting a job? The school sent out Thompson's resume just prior to graduation. "I was hired two days after my last class," he says. He spent eight months at his first job as a Visual Basic programmer before accepting a job at his current employer, System 1 Software Inc. in Fremont, Wash. There, he's the lead software engineer porting a leasing program from the mainframe to the Web.

His future plans? "I would like to go back and get the four-year degree," Thompson says. "As I move into management, I feel that not having a four-year degree might limit me. And part of it is personal. A college degree is a nice thing to have. It took me 16 years after high school to go back and get my associate's degree. I may as well go the whole way."

Opportunities, Opportunities

Keisha Powell hasn't even finished her two-year associate's degree (she graduates next month), but she's already lined up a job as a computer technician at Hammer Technologies in Wilmington, Mass., earning a salary of $40,000.

"The career opportunities are great," she says of her decision to study computer science at Springfield Technical Community College in Massachusetts. She began to take classes in chemical engineering immediately after graduating from high school, but she disliked the coursework.

A friend recommended a networking class, and she was hooked. She took classes in C++, assembly languages, Visual Basic and computer operations and found that the specific things she'd been taught helped enormously in job interviews.

"When I went for the interview at Hammer, they were very interested in hearing that I had [training in] both Visual Basic and C++, since the programming I'd be doing there involve both languages," Powell says.

Like the others mentioned here, Powell doesn't plan to stop with her associate's degree.

One of the reasons she chose Hammer was that the firm will pay for her continuing education. Although she says she will stay within the IT profession, "I don't have to be a computer technician the rest of my life. I'd like to go into management, which means getting my four-year degree or even more. The nice thing is that I will be learning what I like on this job and planning my future with the help of my company."

LaPlante is a freelance writer in Woodside, Calif.