Milesaaway

Oh dear, i'm struggling about where to start with this. Well, lets first mention the hulabaloo that happened when i started the course.

Amazingly, Zenos ******* managed to send people in the wrong direction EVEN BEFORE the course started! The site wasn't finalized until the week before, and half of the applicants didn't get a letter/e-mail/phone call as to WHERE on earth it was. The site was ridiculously out of date as well, so many people were left phoning the Regional manager the night before (aelbeit she was away from her phone until about 7PM) confused, and furiously trying to google maps the place.

Finally, we got an address, but then they chose to NOT tell us that this was on the 3rd floor. way to cause about half the whole academy (at the time) to be standing in the doorway of some random building WITH NO SIGNPOSTING.

at this point, i wish to point out we started with 50+ students.

Our First trainer was fired 5 days into the job (ironic really, the way he kept on blabbing about "be careful whay you say, or you'll get the old DCBM") 3 students from our class left due to the teachers harassment, 1 left because they found the course too hard to understand, and one moved into the other classroom. 1 from the other class left to get married. (i'm seriously not kidding) and nearly all of us were concerned how this course was going to fair.

We managed to snuff out who actually knew what they were talking about in the class, 3 of us got good scores in the first little quiz (see : quiz that serves little purpose) and immediately, everyone wanted to be their best buddies (unfortunately, i was in that top 3). Within the first week, we also had a security breach (here's a hint, THE DELETE CHECKBOX SHOULD BE OFF ON FILES AND FOLDERS) and someone managed to download the trainer guides for the whole course onto an external HDD (y'know for a business environment, and when testing is involved, it's generally a good idea to PASSWORD PROTECT YOUR COMPUTERS), and luckily, this was the best move said person made.

People moved, people left, trainers left, sick days everywhere, games on computers (EVEN I CAN CREATE A CUSTOM ISO TO REMOVE THE GAMES, IDIOTS) and rapidly, the amount of students in our class went from fully packed, to one person per desk. (2 computers to a desk, 9 desks a row, 2 rows.) The teaching just wasn't there, nobody was motivated, me and a few other people basically taught EVERYTHING THESE GUYS KNOW, I HAD TO TEACH THE CLASS ON ONE OCCASION ABOUT HARD DRIVES BECAUSE THE TEACHER WAS MAKING NO SENSE. I could clearly understand him, but to everyone else, he spoke in japanese.

Zenos admitted in that case they had hired wrong trainers. IT TOOK YOU FIVE FUCKING TRIES TO GET A TRAINER WORTHY OF STAYING FOR LONGER THAN A MONTH, AND THEN YOU ONLY GO AND CHANGE HIM A MONTH AND A HALF LATER BECAUSE "he wasn't the right man for MCDST."

Lemme give you a little protip kids, the A+ = MCDST (okay, the MCDST has a little more networking in it, but that is obviously it.here's what you should do, save up some money (about £200) go get a MCSE/MCSA book off of amazon, AND EARN A REAL FUCKING QUALIFICATION.

I'm not gonna discuss the coursework, we didn't do it, we just re-worded the trainer copies, it's not like they explained what we actually had to do.

However, all these are mere minor grovels, really, i shoudn't be complaining about the games, EVERYONE, including me brung in games and played said games when we should have been studying. I was confident, my next door neighbour was confident, the 3 people i personally tutored were confident, everyone else? well, they were just lost sheep, never helped early on, never encouraged, never invigorated, now you could technically rule that as thier own fault, but given the choice between studying and Need for Speed, i know which one 99/100 guys would take with no second thought.

ya see, the biggest grovel of all is that this was all happening in one class. This wasn't happening all next door, they only had one trainer and nearly every single one of them were getting perfect scores on the mocks and on the A+ exams.

Ya wanna know why?

The teacher was selling the answers. I am Really not kidding here, this also happened for the MCDST, pay £10, he'd point out the answers in the middle of the test. I really, REALLY wanted to hit him for this.

I WORKED HARD TO GET SOME OF THE WEAKEST PEOPLE IN OUR CLASS THROUGH ONE EXAM, CORRECTION WE WORKED OUR DAM ASSES OFF TO DO ZENOS' FUCKING JOB FOR THEMSELVES.

I was the first person to get all the qualifications zenos had to offer, and without any warrant of staying there, i did, and i helped these struggling people in my class, they needed it, everyone just wanting to get all the certificates out of the way.

also, remember how at the start i said there were about 50+ students? by this point there were 14 in our class and 19 in the other. nearly 1/3rd scarpered. they done the right thing if you ask me.

Not one person left our academy with a job, and half of our academy had passed everything. guess mainly which half.

There you go, the absolute truth from an insider

I'm going off to college this year, and i've bought a MCSE book i'm studying, i'm nearly the full way through it, i've got a part time job to save up money to take the tests, and i'm gonna just do it off my own back. Zenos was the biggest waste of time ever. EVERYONE in our class will vouch, NOT ONE SINGLE PERSON WILL SAY NO, i shall even paste proof when i get the chance.

love,
~Miles

smorg

maybe you should apply to be a teacher!

Administrator

Thank you for a very informative post, I have made this post a sticky.

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(Ex Zenos United Kingdom Student)

darrencain

Ha, sounds like a simular story in the Aynho acadamy. ( Sept 2009 - Feb 2010 )

Listening to music, playing games, 1 person helping everyone who struggled & many others.

Although, what wernt mentioned, but was a problem for the aynho lot, was lack of lights.

Mr.Unemployed

Zenos= WASTE OF TIME!!!

I haven't learnt a single thing about computers yet I passed all the qualifications (except N+). And this is simply because for the coursework we just copied what the teacher told us to (he was doing it on the projected board whilst we sat and copied).

The typical Zenos student- them annoying teenagers you see hanging around bus stops with their hoods up texting and listening to music, so as you can imagine it took about a week for them to do something that people who were actually concentrating (i.e. me and about 3 others) took about 30 minutes to do! This meant us 4 would be ahead of about the other 20. The teacher (if you can call him that, he was more like one of the annoying guys who weren't paying attention really. More like a mate than a teacher) gave us his teacher's copy and told us to get on with it!!! So most of us were finished with the coursework weeks before the rest, which meant we just had to sit there and 'revise' for A+ and after that MCDST. However it wasn't really revising, it was just take a mock test which contains every single question which could be asked in the exam and try and memorize it! Hence why I do not have a clue on how to actually fix a computer! I did learn one thing at Zenos though, my memory is a lot better than I thought it was! Oh and another thing about the typical Zenos student, more times than not there was a complaint about them from other people working in the building, the floor below us. It was exactly like school! We were told where we could go at break and lunch and even had to have a teacher come with us to the toilets, because someone kept chucking rubbish in the loo and sinks! On a few occasions the police were called because the 'students' were mouthing off at lunch time and fighting etc. and another time about 90% of the class had to go to hospital because some idiot decided to stick pins in everyone's leg and so were told we had to go have a tetanus shot!?! (although in the end they sent us back to Zenos saying we were fine :S).

So now it has been 5 months since I finished Zenos and I have been applying for jobs etc. for about 6 months. Zenos have not sent me one appropriate job vacancy. I have had to find them all by myself, even though they claim they will help you find a job once you leave! When they do occasionally send me a job vacancy it is always WAY to far away, despite the fact I told them specifically time and time again where I would like to work! The only 'help' I get from Zenos is a phone call about once every 2 weeks (sometimes longer) that lasts about a minute and consists of: 'have you found a job?' 'no' 'have you been looking?' 'yes, everyday. I have applied for about 10 jobs so far this week.' 'OK, good. Continue doing this. Bye'. That is their level of help! Oh no wait, once I did go in and speak with my little helper! It was pretty much the phone conversation but face-to-face... not. very. helpful.!!!

So yes there is my experience. If you want my advice? Go to college. Unless you just want some quick qualifications and some easy money for a few months! If you actually want a job and want to learn how to fix computers, then go to college!