Eliciting Input From IT Professionals

[Kennah]

I’m 43, and on March 31 I was laid off. I’m a mainframe COBOLer (Unisys and HP NonStop, no IBM experience), and the job prospects do not look good for me. With 3 kids, the wife and I are not keen on chasing around the country pursuing 6-12 month contract gigs.

I have been in the IT race doing mostly COBOL for almost 21 years, but I do have other skills: SQL, MS Access, VBA, Office Automation, and scripting.

I have done a lot of “fundamental” (which I think is a pretty word for rudimentary) data extraction, transformation, and loading into MS Access leading people to call it a data warehouse. I’ve gained a lot of experience and become pretty adept at data mining some of the more “aged” databases (DMS, DMS II, and Enscribe) in this manner.

If I could land an IBM COBOL job, I’d do that in a minute since I have the most transferable skills for such a move. However, despite the number of applications I submit, I’m not finding a lot of strong interest.

I’ve tried applying for any number of ETL or warehousing gigs, but without Informatica experience or something similar, it seems no one is interested.

I’m considering pursuing either a .NET or Java curriculum through a community college.

I welcome any thoughts, input, or critiques. Many thanks.