Not skilled enough to keep a job

[Mashinga]

I’ve completed a web design and PHP course online. I’ve invested maybe 100 hours. I’ve applied for jobs and been very clear that I’m a mum who has done this IT training at home while my DS was at nursery, I have no prior training in IT (my degree was in history). I’ve shown interviewers my portfolio and said that’s the extent of my current skills.

I’ve been hired twice. Both times I’ve been sacked within a couple of weeks because I couldn’t do stuff they were asking for, they wanted more programming skills than I had. Even though I was very clear about the extent of my skills.

I don’t know what else to do. Surely the employer should know what skills they want and ensure the candidate has them?

I should say this is not a new experience for me. There have been a few occasions prior to this where employers have hired me on minimum wage and been disappointed to discover I can’t do stuff that’s way beyond my pay grade. DH says it’s just shitty little employers wanting the moon on a stick for min wage. But it’s really knocked my confidence and I now feel like I’m just not skilled enough to get a job.

I did an IT masters conversion course, one year, full time. It was hard work. A lot of the class would spend several full nights a week in the computer lab working on various programming exercises. Problem solving was a big part of it - we learned various programming languages, the hard work was about applying them to solve various problems. Those of us who were successful were putting in around 70 hours per week for a year.

The UHI blurb literally says “If your knowledge and experience of computing are already beyond that of an end-user…”.

agree with pp, you don’t know what you don’t know. Data modelling and analytics are not “fannying around with excel”.

for gods sake. You’ve done a tiny bit of online learning - tiny bit! Whatever you’ve been told about it being similar to a master degree is obviously rubbish for gods sake. Stop taking it as gospel.

you clearly have no idea what you are doing - and I actually feel for the employers who employ you thinking you do- based no doubt on what you are telling them- only to find out you don’t even know the basics.

this isnt rocket science - you think you are more qualified than you are, and keep being found out. Really not difficult at all.

what the hell do you want any of us to say?!

Yes it does. And if you’d bothered to read the page you’d see that people who don’t have that entry level tech knowledge are advised to do the alternate version of the same course. The Web Tech With Management course does not require prior tech knowledge. Hence why I said that’s the one I was looking at.

you clearly have no idea what you are doing - and I actually feel for the employers who employ you thinking you do- based no doubt on what you are telling them- only to find out you don’t even know the basics.
I told them I’ve done these courses, here are the links so you can see what topics are covered, here’s my portfolio so you can see what I’m capable of. If it isn’t in the portfolio I haven’t covered it yet. Why is that not acceptable? It’s up to the employer to look at that and say yes it meets our needs / no it’s not enough.

i know people who have done masters conversion courses and they are really, really intensive. I think you have underestimated these courses. Or maybe just looked at one that is not very good!

I don’t think the op is. I think she likely has other skills, she is able to sell herself convincingly at interview, but the questions she poses on here have very obvious logical answers, and she would know the answers if she was logical,

it’s also very difficult to comprehend how she has come to th conclusion she has on her ability levels, and she appears to think fifty to sixty hours of tuition with maybe a hundred hours in total on her own, on her online php course, makes her the same as someone who has done a minimum of 240 hours in a wider msc. That’s both Illogical and irrational.

she is clearly not being fired so quickly because she can’t do one thing Ie the one program on house search or OOP but can do everything else requested. She’s being fired fairly immediately so it’s obvious she can’t really do any of it and doesn’t really try, no one fires someone who can do everything else requested apart from one thing and has a can do attitude.

however the op simply won’t accept it’s because she’s done very little training and continues to believe herself to be at masters level, focusing heavily on this one msc course and declaring she should be able to do what people who do that course can do on completion , when she’s not done that course or anything close to it. Which, again, is both Illogical and irrational.

It does however explain why she is getting hired by small companies who don’t test, as she is totally convinced she has abilities she doesn’t have.

Trying to keep this simple.

• You haven't done anything like the hours that would be expected for proficiency. 100-20 hours isn't an investment, it's a deposit.


• You describe your portfolio as though it is entirely composed of exercises that you have done for your course. Course exercises are a very shallow portfolio.


• You think that the non-programming modules that form an MSC are irrelevant. The programming modules are the How, the other modules are the Why. If you don't understand the Why you're not going to be able to work independently, and you'll be constantly asking for supervision and instruction. You risk being a very hard work employee.

As mentioned already above, you're clearly very good at selling yourself at interview. You're lack of experience/competence is then getting discovered very quickly.

The Estate Agent has done you a huge favour. They've given you a real world web application problem to solve. You may not know how to do it now, but there's nothing stopping you learning how to do it other than your own ego. That will give you a genuine portfolio piece of value.

100 hours on one course doesn't necessarily correlate to 100 hours on another course though. You may have had a similar number of hours programming learning as somebody on that masters, without developing the same level of skills and knowledge as them.

You need to accept you are woefully under skilled for the roles you have applied for. Attitude and approach account for a lot in a workplace and if you want to compete in the current job market you need to reflect on the gaps in your skill set ,attitude and approach. Otherwise you will continue to be disappointed.

Goodness, you are like a dog with a bone about this one course you looked at and have managed to convince yourself that your 2 weeks of work experience is equivalent to a Masters! I expect the person on the phone couldn’t get through to you either!

Anyway m I think op you need to decide will you do the additional programming training, which is likely going to be at least another two hundred hours, possibly much much more, becayse rhe less capable you are the longer it takes you to do something, or try another sector. In addition with many of these on line courses just doing it doesn’t mean you are actually any good and can work independently and apply to other settings. You can get through them and be shit.

I strongly suggest another sector, becayse this must be totally humiliating, they must be spotting pretty much immediately you don’t know what you are doing for them to fire you so quickly and that’s going to kill your self esteem,

stop applying for these roles. You’re going to keep getting fired,, don’t do it to yourself, they are always going to find out when you start, as getting the job is one thing, doing it is a whole other ballgame as you’ve found out.

go do something else, this isn’t an easy work solution, it takes dedication and prolonged hard work.

How did you define the tasks that are in your portfolio? If they are the end product of step by step exercises that you are walked through as Patey of the course they don’t really count. What you need are examples of here is the problem, here is how I decided to approach it and here is what I developed to resolve it.

It’s a bit like maths gcse questions, if faced with the pure maths element many can solve it. However they are worded in such a way you first need to understand what they are asking then decide what skills/knowledge to apply to solve it.

It works be good for you in your own time to try and solve the puzzle you were given at the Estate Agents. That’s the kind of things you need in your portfolio, real world application of skills

My first degree is history and then I did an MSc Comp Sci conversion,mostly on the grounds that it was just one year, and would give me an idea if I liked computing enough to do it as a job, and even if I didn't, having more knowledge in the area wouldn't hold me back in whatever I did end up doing.

I had to keep timesheets for the funding I had, to submit the hours I spent on it each week, and I was regularly doing 70+ hours. It's a hard, intense slog. I am not sure what the percentage was on programming, but part of it was learning the principles of programming, so you could pick up other languages more easily, and also instil good practice like commenting programs (something many of my colleagues have not learned...) Other modules were on things like project management methodologies, networking principles and so on. I came out at the end being pretty certain I didn't want to do programming as a full-time job, because I find it frustrating, though I could do it quite well. I got a job on a 2 year graduate trainee scheme with a blue chip company, so got to move round different roles, which was useful experience. But the MSc (and lack of penis) got me the interviews in the first place.

I still work in tech, in systems admin. I have had external training paid for by my employers over the years in the particular tech skills they want. I would say on a day-to-day basis, I probably use skills from my history degree more - writing and analytical skills, even though it's still a technical role. Programming is probably more solitary, but there are no roles where you can totally avoid working with others. I'm in an area where we do have some colleagues whose social skills are less than ideal (possibly including me, but being the only woman in the department, I at least attract others for the novelry factor...) and they can be a bloody nightmare to work with. It is more effective to work with someone who may not be as technically excellent but tells you what is going on and communicates, than someone who may be technically brilliant,but then produces what they think you should have asked for, not what you asked for (after analysis and discussionwith various stakeholders), and just won't tell you how things are progressing and when you can expect something delivered.

And you can need a strong personality to survive as a woman in the more macho areas of tech, because it can be hard going. It's not the same in all companies or even all departments In tech, but it is still there in places, and women in IT programmes won't fix it, because it's the twatty men with their fragile little egos who won't involve others who need fixing, and I've not yet seen any workplace efforts to sort them out. Fortunately, there are also reasonable, even lovely men who work in the industry. And some have more competent interviewing skills, too...

My point wasn't about you needing to live the life of a teenage boy. It was just an example of how people in this field do way more than the hours on a course. It's a language they learn and use a lot so they get fluent, able to apply it to new situations and to solve problems they aren't immediately familiar with. You don't seem to have this aptitude or interest at all and just want - as with the basic estate agent role - to do a simple task and not be asked to think beyond that, and if you don't know something then it's not your problem. This simply isn't the mindset of a programmer and it's good in a way that you're finding out now and can pivot into a more suitable career path...

But you really have to listen to what all these responses are telling you, on top of your bitter experience with these two roles, which were indeed badly recruited. As PP said, any decent recruiter would have given you a tech test and you likely wouldn't have made the grade. You seem fixated with this one quite random chat about the one quite random Masters and unable to move past that, despite what everyone where - some very knowledgable people from the sector - are telling you. It's not about the hours. You don't even want to be a programmer for anything other than extrinsic factors. Your comment was telling about how history would only get a job in a museum. There's something very rigid about how you're thinking and it's going to trip you up in this line of work the same as it has with the history. Perhaps it's worth investing in some proper careers advice so you aren't making big life decisions based on bum steers that don't suit you.

I think you're getting a hard time, OP. If you were clear about how much experience you had then it seems to me that the expectations of these employers were unreasonable. Separately - lots of posters have said "100 hours isn't a lot" - OK, so it's not equivalent to a Masters and there is a long way to go before you can comfortably work in this area, but I have a little one at home and I know how hard it can be to motivate yourself and find the time to upskill in an unfamiliar / difficult area - I am trying at the moment and sometimes 30m a day feels like a real achievement. You've done well getting this far - don't write yourself off. Keep taking small steps - if this is what interests you keep going, if you need a job more urgently and/or can't afford to maybe try and get something in a different field for a while.

Agree with @tortiecat . Also, the market in different locations is going to be different - different jobs available for different skills/languages. It seems like that particular university masters course does not prepare well for a programming job (more for non-technical project management jobs within the tech sector) - university courses vary a lot in quality and are not always worth it, so be careful.

Your comment was telling about how history would only get a job in a museum. There's something very rigid about how you're thinking

I'd agree with this. People I graduated with have worked in banking, management, HR, teaching, IT (without a conversion course, as well as me with,) social work, libraries (less likely these days,) journalism, accountancy... and these are just the ones I know about. Obviously some had to fo other qualifications as well. The only ones I know doing anything with museums are there as volunteers in their free time. And I am one of at least 3 history graduates in my division at work, but I'm the only one who did a conversion course. We have the ability to take in a lot of information in a short time, good analytical skills, the ability to write well (not something to be taken for granted in IT,) the ability to read data, and loads more. All very useful in business.

You need to look at all your transferable skills, because there will be loads of things you can do, and you clearly have good interview skills. You need to find something you are interested in and will have options for promotion and maybe training. There will be opportunities if you open your mind to them.

I would say take the experiences of what they wanted you to do in the last job and learn and maybe try in your own time to do things like that. Just build up your skills by practicing and maybe taking more courses. There can be a gap between theory and actually doing a job so don't beat yourself up too much. Just be willing to learn and to keep learning forever really in this career. There are also many many different paths but it takes effort to get started. I'd suggest being comfortable enough to take programming tests in a language of your choice and then aiming for better companies that can help you grow.

This is such a really odd post, it reads like hey you’ve a kid so who can be arsed. Plus the poster hasn’t even bothered to read the ops posts. She’s clearly stated she doesn’t have a passion for this, or any other work, and is doing it as she had perceived ir as a flexible job, and she needs a job. I don’t understand why you’d rush in if you can’t even be bothered to read the ops posts.

most of us posting have had or have little ones, it’s not some unusual debilitating experience and we still manage to train and work.

I did in fact read the entire thread, including the OP's posts @Dirtylittleroses. I was just trying to encourage them as they sounded pretty down - lots of people work, study and train around childrearing it's true, but that doesn't make it easy. I never said why bother - after all I said I was attempting it too - just said they've made a good start and could build on that, but equally could change direction if that's what they want to do.

Well done on trying to get into IT and studying in your own time to try and learn the skills you need to start a career in this area

i would agree with you on the masters you will not come out of that with the skills you need. My advice to you would be find a company that takes on juniors, trains them up for a few months in a bootcamp then and places them with big companies where they are supported. There are a number of companies who do this (fdm being one)

No matter what path you choose all of the real learning you will do on the job and you need to be proactive and research online if you dont know how to do something. Degrees/masters are only a stepping stone

i say this as someone who has worked as a software engineer for 20 years in large corporate companies, earn over 6 figures now and started off doing a masters in IT when i barely knew how to switch on a computer (the course was theory and very little programming and that still seems to be the case)
i still remember the panic on my first day in a new job being asked to do something and not knowing how but i got there and you will too, just keep learning and trying. I recently had a change in technology skill set and had to spend my own time teaching myself. Its a continuous process

IT is a fantastic well paid career especially when you have children, most of the jobs i have had have been very flexible and i work mainly from home now

good luck