Career Watch: IT boot camp

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Q&A: Steve Gaudino

The COO of Training Camp talks about certification programs for unemployed IT workers.

You market your courses as being "boot camp style." What does that mean? We try to take an existing [certification] program and accelerate it. All of our classes are residential, so you would come and stay with us for a period of five to 14 days, depending on the program. We run classes from about 8 in the morning to about 9 at night. We try to stuff as much information as we can into those hours and make sure that not a minute goes wasted.

Companies often cut back on training in tough economic times. How has that affected your business? Business spending has cut back a little bit. But typically what we find is when business spending cuts back, we usually get more individuals, because people have either been laid off or they're concerned about being laid off. So instead of the company paying for it, the individuals will be the ones paying for it. Our revenues year-over-year have pretty much been flat.

Up until about a year ago, we were probably about 80% employer-funded and 20% employee-funded. Recently, it has been more like 60% corporate and 40% individual. We have seen a fairly nice uptick lately in government spending -- particularly, the military branches have been giving us a bunch of business. They're the one sector that seems to always be immune.

Are you finding that people are switching from less recessionproof careers into IT? Sure. There's a ton of examples, but one that comes to mind is a real estate agent who recently came through. With the housing market the way it is, she wanted to get into a new career, and the path she chose was technology. She had some interest in computers already, and she felt that with this cert, she could make herself marketable for a potential help desk role.

You recently announced a plan to offer free hotel accommodations for unemployed workers. What's the fine print? No fine print. As long as we can get some adequate documentation or otherwise believe the student is unemployed, we're going to help him pay for his training by covering the cost of his hotel and/or exams for him, depending on the program and what that student needs.

And to those who suggest your plan is more marketing than altruism? Well, we're obviously taking money out of our pocket to pay for the hotels or exams. The other thing we're doing is if someone comes and takes a class and ends up getting laid off, we're extending another free class for them that they can take down the road. So while we may enjoy some positive press out of this and may get some additional business, at the end of the day, we're putting our finances on the line. We're trying to help out.

-- Don Tennant

Don't Twitter Your Job Prospects Away

Do you doubt that things move fast in our highly connected world? In mid-March, someone with the username of "theconnor" posted a public tweet on Twitter: "Cisco just offered me a job! Now I have to weigh the utility of a fatty paycheck against the daily commute to San Jose and hating the work."

Tim Levad at Cisco saw the tweet and replied, "Who is the hiring manager. I'm sure they would love to know that you will hate the work. We here at Cisco are versed in the web." And that same day, someone else established the Web site CiscoFatty.com and shared the story. No one seems to know whether theconnor (or Cisco Fatty, if you prefer) took the job or not, but he or she did learn a lesson and instituted some privacy settings on Twitter.

Of course, there's a lesson for us all -- to watch what we say and to whom.

Are Layoffs Too Expensive?

Maybe some IT jobs will be saved if enough executives read a March 8 research note from AMR Research Inc.'s Phil Fersht and then are able to convince the top brass of the sense of Fersht's argument. Which is this: The cost of laying off an IT employee may exceed the benefit to be derived.

He says that should the economy recover in 2010, a company might derive only $50,000 to $100,000 in savings from each IT layoff, after all costs have been incurred. Then Fersht asks how those savings stack up against the cost of replacing the laid-off employee once conditions improve. "How can you put a price on replacing the inherent business knowledge of that staff member when you rehire a replacement?" he writes. "It may take another year or two to get the replacement up to speed, and will not only end up costing you more, but may also impede your executives from accessing critical data in a timely fashion. The overall cost of replacing that staff member could easily be three times the costs saved by laying her off. And these easily-identified direct costs are only the beginning; the costs incurred to your culture and morale can prove even more damaging."

Compiled by Jamie Eckle.

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