I just checked and it's £15k, but I am sure it bumps you up after the apprenticeship development scheme. I have a friend in the company who came in via the scheme, and he is just exiting it now. So once he knows his salary (he is the first group of apprentices in our company), I can relay here. I will PM you the link for the scheme.
Your local paper is always a good bet for jobs with smaller local places. But also try the big job sites, these two will be good to start with: www.reed.co.uk/jobs/it-telecoms/manchester www.hays.co.uk/job/it-jobs But all the normal job sites (monster, fish4, jobsite, totaljobs, indeed, etc) are worth a try as most recruitment agencies will advertise on the big sites. Setup email alerts, the results won't be perfect but help make it easier to spot a newly advertised job. Search for agencies in Manchester, there will be plenty of them, give them a ring and ask to speak to someone about IT Vacancies (don't email as it's impersonal and often gets ignored), you'll be able to talk about your skills and what type of job you'd like. You will need to have a very well presented CV as that's all potential employers will judge you on when you're ut forwards by a recruitment agency. Put the time into it now as it's easy/quick to update and reuse again in future. (I should work in recruitment rather than IT the amount of people I've advised about getting into the industry!)
Cheers for the advice Atomic - I have re-worked my CV to make it look as presentable as possible Am looking at all those sites to check for jobs. Fingers crossed I can find something I really enjoy doing sooner rather than later