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Certs!!!!!!

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ComputerDork

Registered
Joined
May 20, 2003
What are the best certs to obtain to help land a job. For example, I am A+ certified and working on getting my Net+. After that, what next? Any recommendations on what certs would be wise for me to persue? Anyone out there care to share their certification past history and the route they pursued to obtain them?
 
MCSE and CISCO are supposedly big ones; MCSE consists of I think 7 tests on the different Windows operating systems, Cisco I'm not sure about; I'm going for MCSE myself, at the moment, and it's not as bad as some people may say, you just gotta know your stuff (inside and out)
 
MCSE is 7 tests. Cisco has several different certs starting with the CCNA. I'm getting both at the moment.
 
I found the "bachelor's degree" certification to be very helpful in finding a good job. These days, the "master's degree" cert is even better.
 
Sadly, almost no certs will help you. I have my A+, NET+, MCSA, CCNA, plus my assoicates degree in Computer Science with a LAN minor. And i couldn't find a job for some 14 months. Eveyone wanted experince as opposed to education. The closest i got was a school where i almost had a job, but then i lost it to someone with no education but 13 years experince..... I finally landed a Systems admin job just two months ago.

The IT field is the absoulty worst field to get into, if i were you i would switch carrers. If i wasn't buried in school loans, then i would switch to a laywer or something. Good luck.
 
Dude, bite the bullet and get a degree. Try to get a job with the school fixing computers or printers or something so you can say you have some experience. Then get an internship somewhere for corporate experience.

This isn't 1999 anymore...you can't get a 40k-50k job anymore by just having your MCSE. I have my MCSE 4.0/2000, CCNA, A+, Net+ and previous experience and all I can get a job doing is fixing desktops and printers. No one will even look at me for a network engineer position since I dont' have a degree.
So that's why I've decided to go back to school (DePaul University).

Good luck though. IT is a very competitive field now, you gotta really know your stuff if you wanna make any sort of money because believe me, there's hundreds of people with their MCSEs that can take your place.

-D9K
 
What kind of experience do employers care about? I'm going to be setting up and maintaining a small heterogenous (windows 98/XP, OS9/X and Linux) network next September. Would typical employers care about that, or do they only care about what I've done in the real (ie corporate) world?
 
I've found they want both education and paid job experience. There's no end to the qualified applicants either. It's sadly a buyers job market out there. I've had to just learn about computing for the fun of it as I know I can never realisticly start a supporting career with in it. I may even get some IT certifications just for the knowledge.

I'm starting a medical career now so I can afford to support my family and have enough left over for hobbies like computing.

However if you want it bad enough, you'll have to get those ceritfications and degrees. Be willing to take lots of low level and unpaid internships. It's going to be a marathon, not a sprint.
 
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