Lottery Offers Free Tech Training For Life

Training firm Firebrand is running a lottery: the prize is a lifetime’s worth of free training (which apparently could add up to more than £1 million in value) and the draw has a pyramid-like twist.

Firebrand, who taught us the rudiments of Windows Servere 2012 in a one-day course last year, offers training in major areas such as networking and security, on technology from the likes of Cisco, Google and Microsoft, along with partners such as ISC and ISACA.

The firm reckons a keen learner who wins while aged 25, could clock up £15,000 a year of training, and retire as the world’s best qualified IT staffer  in 40 years’ time – having used £1 million of training (assuming inflation is 2.5 percent).

Your friends can help

To enter the draw, sign up at Firebrand.  Here’s where the clever bit comes in: when you enter, your get a personalised URL for the competition to share with your friends. For every one who enters, an extra entry goes in on your behalf, increasing your chances [the link above is to the regular site, not our personalised URL. We’re not taking unfair advantage – Editor].

“It could be won by a homeless person, who would live at our training centres,” said Ed Jones of Firebrand. “He or she would have to take the courses though”. They’d also get a limited amount of tea or coffee, and possibly some biscuits, we understand.

More seriously, the UK’s skills shortage is serious – and has been cited as a danger to national security, and a concern for the Department for Education. While organisations like to have skilled staff on their books, many are reluctant to stump up the costs, in money and staff time, for employees to acquire better skills.

“A recent EU survey shows that instead of falling during the recession, IT jobs have been growing by 3 percent across the board, and are set to continue to rise, ” said Frank Højgaard, UK and Nordic managing director . “However, even with the increase in numbers, the EU estimates that by 2015 there will be a shortfall of 700,000 IT-trained staff.  As far as we’re concerned there’s never been a better time to be in IT and to win IT training for life.”

There is plenty of time to enter – the closing date is midnight on 1 September 2013, and the winner will be announced, rather strangely,  at 13.13. on Friday 13 September, 2013.

Try your skills in our quiz: How many raspberries in a Raspberry Pi?