Edison----
Zafar Khizer married his wife four days after he met her,
so it shouldn’t come as surprise that his business, PC Age,
is growing so quickly. Zafar does things fast.
Business
Profile
PC Age is a school for people who want to learn specific skills
to market themselvesin the high tech field, where
demand in New Jersey is acute but qualified applicants are
in short supply. Computer networking routinely ranks among
the most desirable career choices.
The
38 year old Zafar is fond of saying that his students earn
an average of $40,000 when they leave the course, which can
last from six months to nine months and cost up to $7,000.
He also says that among the students who have completed his
courses and passed three or more Microsoft certification tests,
he has a 100-percent placement rate.
The
business brought in about $1.2 million 1997, and Zafar expects
that he will do about $3million in 1998. He jokes that his
biggest problem right now is how to handle growth.
Zafar
came to the United States in 1985 from Pakistan where he had
earned a master’s degree in electronics, determined to get
a master’s degree in computer science, but intending to return
to his native country once he got his degree. A few things
got in the way.
“The
educational opportunities were in this country,” he explains
in PC Age’s Edison office, one of the two in New Jersey. “I
saw that what I wanted to do was here.”
After
getting his master’s from the New Jersey Institute of Technology
in 1988, Zafar went to work for a Cedar Grove company, setting
up its computer system and networking its computers.
But
he was restless. In 1992 he began consulting on computers
with other companies, and soon left his job to consult full
time.
Still
he was having trouble finding clients and explaining his expertise.
“I had no idea about advertising or marketing,” he says. “It’s
a big mistake to think everyone is your customer; you have
to understand who needs what you do.”
Eventually,
Zafar, who had taught science to students when he was living
in Pakistan, realized that education was his first love. By
combining it with his new found computer training, he created
PC Age.
“I
can explain things in a way that people understand,” he says.
“I take a very difficult topic and make it very simple.”
He
began by teaching basic networking privately, and had six
students taking two-night courses for which Zafar charged
$70.
In
preparing to teach networking, Zafar read the existing manuals
on Novell and Microsoft operations and found they were difficult
to understand. Instead of writing a letter to the publishing
company, he wrote a better manual. Since then, he has written
16 other instruction books, and they are being used by New
York University and the Chubb Institute, among other places.
In
the beginning, writing books and teaching at the same time
became a little hectic. Zafar remembers writing a chapter
out in long hand, then giving it to an assistant to type,
and going to teach a class.
“They
would print out the chapter, and I’d be teaching, and they
would bring in the chapter while I was doing that to give
to the students,” he remembers, laughing. “That’s how fast
it was going.”
And
his business is expanding at a rapid pace as well.
PC
Age moved from the 200 square feet Zafar had originally rented
to a 1,000-square –foot office then one twice that size within
a month. He was in a 7,200-square-foot facility in Fairfield
when he opened PC Age II in Edison in 1995, and the 3,800
square feet here was recently expanded by about 3,000 feet.
“I
think very soon, we’ll need more,” Zafar says.
There
are 24 full- and part-time employees in the company, and about
10 in Edison, in addition to eight consultants. But there
will be far more employees if Zafar’s plan to franchise PC
Age all over the world takes hold. He says that within two
years, he hopes to be offering franchises, and is on his way
to making PC Age an international company, already talking
with someone in Pakistan about beginning a training facility
there.
The
current glut of high tech jobs, and the relative lack of trained
individuals to fill them, has contributed greatly to Zafar’s
success. He cites a Wall Street Journal estimate that there
are 190,000 vacant jobs in the United States in the information
technology field, and that college enrollment in that area
is down 50 percent. This, says Zafar, can only help a company
trying to train people to fill those positions, and doing
nothing else.
“This
is the best time for anyone who wants to change careers,”
he says “Even if you’re making $60,000 a year in a business
that you think is dying, you can change to this field and
be making more than that within a year.”
It
is that dedication to a specific goal, certification by Novell
and Microsoft, that makes PC Age unique in its mission. Zafar’s
approach, not surprisingly, is to be fast.
“This
is very fast-paced and hands-on education,” he explains. “We’re
not wasting their time trying to teach them so many different
things. This is very focused training.”
