Ch-ch-ch-changes

I mentioned a while back that I was accepted into a training program through Chicago Career Tech. This is a program created by Mayor Richard M Daley last year to help Chicago residents gain the skills they needed to land the jobs in the growing tech field. I saw an ad on the bus about this, went to the website and gave it a shot. I’m part of the 3rd group of people to go through this program.

I had no idea that this was a competitive program to get into. I assumed they helped everyone. Yes, we had to take computer tests and drug tests and interviews and bring them all kinds of papers and forms and jump through a lot of hoops. It just never dawned on me that it wasn’t an easy thing to do, and if I had known this was so competitive I’d probably have been a lot more nervous. In the end about 250 people were accepted, they told us around 2,000 people applied. We have 7 people over 60 in our group.

I was accepted into the web development program. It’s a whole new career path from the one I’ve been on. But it’s also something I’ve always been interested in learning. At the end of the program I’ll be CIW Certified and our instructor said she’d help us with any other certifications we want to get. I know this wont be an easy process. Going back to school after all this time will be hard. But I’m looking forward to a structured routine for my days. If you see sudden changes to my website you’ll know I’m practicing what I’ve been learning. And if I don’t post here for the next 6 months you’ll know that I’m just way too busy. You should probably call me.

I will be attending classes at IIT (the big tech university, not ITT that has commercials on late night television) for the entire 6 months of the program. And in addition to the classes, I’ll be working for three months with one of their partner businesses and three months I’ll be working at one of their partner non-profit organizations. I find out Friday what my posts will be. They’re keeping us busy 6 days a week between the on-site learning as well as the classroom stuff. And we get a stipend during our training which is incredibly helpful.

I’m extremely excited about the whole process and how much assistance they are giving us. They’ve partnered with Challenger, Gray & Christmas to help participants create resumes, search for jobs, write cover letters and practice interviews. They are giving us so many resources and I had no idea things like this existed.

I highly recommend if you’re on the hunt for a job and you haven’t been able to find anything that you try looking up job training programs. I bet there are a bunch of them out there, waiting for you to take that first step.