Re: Tick-box recruitment not helping!
I’ve seen those, who cares what degree you have 30 years after doing it (I haven’t got a degree myself just Cisco qualifications). If you are just out of university it sort of makes sense if only to prove you didn’t spend all the time watching daytime tv.
There are a lot of technology companies around Cambridge and a few up in Peterborough but it is down to the type of work you do.
For myself being a Cisco engineer is fairly specialist as the systems I tend to work on are only really used by larger companies (FTD, Stealthwatch, DNA centre and a bit of ISE) a lot of small organisations can’t justify the cost of the solutions so they would only need someone like me for a few days before I ran out of work.
Have you tried CDW in Peterborough as they are often looking for tech staff?
Just rereading your original post it reminded me, a few weeks back an interview with a company wanting a network engineer, did the interview where I was told they had been looking since January! Said I was interested and got told well you passed the first stage and the hr department would be in touch next week, that was late October and nothing heard from them since…. Bet they are still looking.