I always think that it will come back to bite the employers too in the future if they want to hire some new people and nobody has any experience. But then I guess they will just take on the current placement students.
I disagree that this will come back to bite employers. At least not for quite a long while, especially given the current general job market.
CF is an advanced discipline that incorporates many different practices. It is part computer technician, part Sys Admin, part investigator, part documentary producer, and the list goes on and on. If a student comes straight out of University/College with just a piece of paper I think that candidate will have a very difficult time finding employment in CF without any other computer experience. And I think that too many students think that the term experience means just in CF (although many of the posted jobs are advanced and do require CF experience).
As Mr. Patrick so eloquently put it, "This is why I'm worried about all the students who got sold on Computer Forensics as the flavour of the month degree, and are about to flood the market with degrees and no experience and wonder why there are no jobs."
Right now there are so many candidates and so few jobs that a person with just a Bachelors degree and no experience will have an uphill fight for jobs competing against candidates with a Masters degree, many of whom have published advanced research or the many candidates that have at least a few years of experience as Sys Admins or in computer security that are looking for advancement.
I see many people looking to break into the field asking how employers can ask for candidates to have 3-5 years of experience. The answer is that there are so many candidates that have less experience that want in the field that they can.
So if you are applying for jobs that want experience you are likely to be very frustrated and you will not hear back from the employer telling you that you are not being considered because they do not have the time or resources to respond to the hundreds of candidates that applied.
The job market tends to be very cyclical. We are in a trend similar to the '80s when getting a job upon graduation was pretty tough. Many of the jobs did not pay near what the colleges told us we would be paid. And many people did not get jobs in the fields they had just spent 4-5 years studying to get into.
But employers will not be sorry they did not give you an internship let alone a job. And that is the harsh reality of the current economic climate.
CF is an advanced discipline that incorporates many different practices. It is part computer technician, part Sys Admin, part investigator, part documentary producer, and the list goes on and on. If a student comes straight out of University/College with just a piece of paper I think that candidate will have a very difficult time finding employment in CF without any other computer experience. And I think that too many students think that the term experience means just in CF (although many of the posted jobs are advanced and do require CF experience).
Definitely agree with this, from what I've seen/heard about computer forensics degrees you seem to be better off getting a Computer Science degree and spending a bit of time in industry in an admin/technician/programmer role and then joining with that experience.
Maybe a bit of a generalization but most CF degree's seem to be taught by purely academics with little/no experience in the real world.
However to OP, have you considered contacting a local police HTCU, I believe some of them take students on to do grunt work, better than nothing.
CF is not part of all that thought. Employers would "LIKE" for it to be all those things, but the truth of the matter is that CF is CF, incident response is incident response. MF is mobile forensics, ED is ED
More and more companies are looking for someone with coding skills, who is also an expert in summation, and malware detection, but also has 20 years investigation experience along with the intrusion skills, and all the above listed skills.
On the other end, I think having a masters in CF does nothing, I'd much rather have that guy who had 4 years real world exp as opposed to one who spent a year working on 1 project or paper.
Like I said IMHO, only speaking for myself.
I always think that it will come back to bite the employers too in the future if they want to hire some new people and nobody has any experience. But then I guess they will just take on the current placement students.
I disagree that this will come back to bite employers. At least not for quite a long while, especially given the current general job market.
CF is an advanced discipline that incorporates many different practices. It is part computer technician, part Sys Admin, part investigator, part documentary producer, and the list goes on and on. If a student comes straight out of University/College with just a piece of paper I think that candidate will have a very difficult time finding employment in CF without any other computer experience. And I think that too many students think that the term experience means just in CF (although many of the posted jobs are advanced and do require CF experience).
As Mr. Patrick so eloquently put it, "This is why I'm worried about all the students who got sold on Computer Forensics as the flavour of the month degree, and are about to flood the market with degrees and no experience and wonder why there are no jobs."
Right now there are so many candidates and so few jobs that a person with just a Bachelors degree and no experience will have an uphill fight for jobs competing against candidates with a Masters degree, many of whom have published advanced research or the many candidates that have at least a few years of experience as Sys Admins or in computer security that are looking for advancement.
I see many people looking to break into the field asking how employers can ask for candidates to have 3-5 years of experience. The answer is that there are so many candidates that have less experience that want in the field that they can.
So if you are applying for jobs that want experience you are likely to be very frustrated and you will not hear back from the employer telling you that you are not being considered because they do not have the time or resources to respond to the hundreds of candidates that applied.
The job market tends to be very cyclical. We are in a trend similar to the '80s when getting a job upon graduation was pretty tough. Many of the jobs did not pay near what the colleges told us we would be paid. And many people did not get jobs in the fields they had just spent 4-5 years studying to get into.
But employers will not be sorry they did not give you an internship let alone a job. And that is the harsh reality of the current economic climate.
Can I maybe ask a simply question of the OP? Why did you chose to enter digital forensics as a profession? What did you want to achieve?
The reason for me asking this question is that it often helps one identify the appropriate industry to break into and where one should be seeking experience.
Now, I understand that they will want to take on good people, but surely the point of a placement is for the employer to make me exceptional. Found that quite odd.
No, it's for them to get cheap labour, and you to try to get experience/insight if you can. p
Hmmn, just though I would contribute my bit. I think employers look for a number of different attributes which tend to show up just by the way you present yourself via your CV, letter or yourself. Qualifications are good but they are not all. I was a bit shocked and more so disappointed at the way the original post presented the lecturers as well as at some of the responses. (The major drawback of being an educator I guess) As mentioned in one post its a much better idea to a less focussed degree that way you are a bit more marketable however you are already doing this so what now. I think you need to be humble and try to get whatever experiences you can get otherwise, use the resources on this site to help you and try to establish contacts on here. As you may have realised by now there are some willing, able and qualified practitioners here. I know I am a student also. Best wishes in your studies. Be Positive.
Now, I understand that they will want to take on good people, but surely the point of a placement is for the employer to make me exceptional. Found that quite odd.
This seems to me to be par for the course for modern youth - we have a society that seems to believe that they are entitled to everything.
Why should an employer be expected to make you exceptional - that is the job of your university - if they are failing at that then it is not the job of an employer (especially smaller ones) to spend time and resources sorting out their failings.
You may or may not have noticed that we are in a recession (or barely out of one if you believe the hype) this means employers are stuggling. laying off staff and freezing pay. If they take you on then they have to have a paid member of staff babysitting you which takes that member of staff away from doing their own job and costs the employer more money - and at the end of the year you walk away. For smaller companies this is often a very large and unacceptable overhead.
You need to make your own luck in this world - start by taking some of the advice posted earlier (people are taking the time to respond to you so the intention is to help) and get some experience of other software - I see lots of CV's which basically say that "I am familiar with x forensic tool) but very few that go on to say what they have done off their own back to further their knowledge. This wont guarantee anything but it may impress enough to open the door to an interview.
Sorry if this sounds harsh but its life - there are many more students looking for work than there are jobs "expecting" an employer to provide for you for the short term is unrealistic - you need to work at it and you may be one of the lucky ones. When there are more applicants for jobs than there are places then only the brightest, best and most determined will succeed.
As others have stated it's a tough environment for CF undergrads and grads there's simply a much greater supply than demand at the moment.
I'd suggest getting some general IT or IT security experience before going for dedicated CF roles. If you're determined to go only for CF roles then make sure that as a minimum you have 'reputable' certifications (tool specific or tool agnostic) if you haven't already it'll go some way to distinguishing from the hundreds of applicants who have 'familiarity with EnCase'.
If you are able to, making substantial contributions to existing open source forensics projects or starting your own has the potential to really distinguish you from the crowd.
xxxx
Thanks for the insight Mike
Seing as your initial interest was in Forensic Psychology, and evolved into an interest in Forensic Computing, and your specific interest in crime, I think it is fair to say that interest in the criminal justice field is a major motivating factor.
In this case, you probably have a few options. The one would be to volunteer at a local High Tech police unit and get some experience that way. However, for what my opinion is worth, maybe the option to give some serious consideration to is considering a career in a law enforcement or government investigating agency and trying to work your way into digital forensics from there. I am willing to bet that many of the experienced examiners (not all I know), got thier start in a similar way, and it is a good starting point as it establishes experience in the broader field in which digital forensics functions.