Saturday, July 6, 2013

Training and Placement

I have mentioned in the past that we are very successful in training and placement. Except for a few verticals in healthcare, I would say that 2013 had been terrible. I have spent a total of about $300,000 over the last 5 month with a return of less than $50,000 over this period.  This is tremendous money that I an my students that have paid for classes have wasted together.

Most of our students join based on my word that the technology is in demand.  By the time we start a training and by the time we end a training the market changes and the demand may have disappeared.

I have always tried to be extremely honest in everything I tell my students.

So today we had an incident and I thought I would write about it.  I am sure there are lessons to be learned by everyone from this.

We started a class in November of 2012, because I had a technology that was in demand and I was given a verbal order for over 84 resources for the month of January and February by 2 large IT consulting companies.  This class ended up finishing in February and we started marketing our students then.  The large IT consulting companies bowed out, saying that either they lost a contract or that the client has not signed off on the contract as they promised and the project was on hold.

I collected a total of $12,500 from running that class, from students that had paid.  My cost for the class ended up being $58,000 for the teachers and possibly another $100,000 in allocated overhead.  I ended up placing just 1 student from that class (I have had a client say that they wanted 4-5 American or GC candidates in about 30 days, so maybe I can break even one day - We will see).

The market is full of full-time opportunities, but hardly any corp-to-corp opportunities.

I can the frustration of students from what I promised and what was delivered, and it is frustrating to me also that I could not deliver as I promised.

But from the point the class start until now, the market has changed so much, but it is simply indescribable.  I would never have imagined that this change would have occurred so quickly or caught me off guard like it did.  Forget the $250,000 that I lost, it makes to sick that I was unable to help people that I promised to help.  I may eventually be able to help them, since I feel a little traction now, so I guess we will see.