IT advice

[Sutter]

Well, my son's getting older and I will soon be needing a job of some kind to keep me sane and living in a house with food.
I'm a big fan of IT, particullarly the physical side, and it seems that there's a lot of sys admin poeple here on Zgeek. I was hoping they (you) could offer me some advice.
What's the best way of getting more experience? How to go about getting a job in the area with such little experience?

[dwarfthrower]

Schools are always looking for people. The fact that they don't have much cash to throw around usually means that they aren't fussy about the level of experience you have. When I was DBA at Wesley we'd hire notebook techs straight out of highschool. All they'd need to be able to do was diagnose either a software or hardware fault, sort out the software faults and put the hardware faults on the shelf to be repaired (sometimes swapping hard-drives and that sort of thing).

Also, because they don't pay much (circa 32K) they have a fair amount of turnover - once people gather a modicum of experience they realise that they can get more $$ elsewhere - so they're always looking.

Check out the education section of the Age employment classifieds.