Career in networking?

Caporegime
Joined
12 Mar 2004
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England
Currently, I'm In year 12 doing as levels in physics, biology, and possibly business studies and an oracle academy course in database design and java programming and I am thinking of getting a job in networking such as setting up and maintaining networks for companies, designing and building servers and configuring them etc... after doing some sort of IT technician job for a small company or something for a couple of years building computers and setting them all up for a network and maintaining it, to gain some experience.

From what I've heard and seen I don't think I want to be going to university, I can't even find any that offer networking and computer design courses. I don't know what qualifications I will need for this type of work, or how to go about getting them though I've heard a CCNA is a basic requirement for most jobs?

So I need to know what qualifications to go for and their cost, how they can be obtained etc... I'm only 16 at the moment and doing A levels I can't do a full time course anywhere, but I've heard you can buy the books study at home and then do an exam for a £100 odd or do 2 5 day courses for a couple of grand, which would be good because I could do them in the holidays.
 
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CCNA
CCNE
CCNP
(iirc not sure)
starting easyest getting harder, better jobs will require the last one (working with ISPs etc), but I've seen too meny "Networking" jobs that require other things (MCSE, MCSA etc) that don't realy seem relevent.

from my viewpoint your best off getting a degree and studying for the CCN- quals in your own time aswell.

ot, anyone heard about a course called the "I-PRO"?
was offered a place at my local college on this corse with funding from a local government inisitive (I pass, they pay the bill basicaly) so I thought I'd do it, just wondered if anyone else had tryed it?
 
IMHO if you're not going the Uni route I'd be getting a tech job somewhere for experiance and doing some quals in your own time, CCNx stuff. Yeah the job won't be amazing to start with (well it could be I guess!) but it's experiance in the field which is what you need. You could also be lucky enough to find someone who wants to help you do the courses, maybe with funding or training.

Networking degrees are out there, a guy at my place did one in Plymouth.

I know everyone, and a lot of guys here, say degrees not needed, but for some places it will help you get the job (where I am they don't look at people without degrees now, stupid thing is it doesn't matter what it's in you just need one!), what you have to do is weigh up the pros and cons of starting your career 3 years later with X amount of debt. But then you've got the chance of walking into a decent grad job at the end of it if you're lucky (and maybe do a sandwich year with a work placement). You can still study for other quals if they aren't covered in your degree.

Personally I'd go down the degree route, but that's just me.
 
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I'd might do a degree if there was one near me unfortunatley Lancaster uni don't seem to do one and I don't want to go hundreds of miles away to live at a uni either, Im not sure after 6th form that I'd want to do another 3 years of school style daily routine and then loads of homework. The idea of going to a 5 day course or studying completley at home is very appealing to me.
 
deppending how much you know about networking and how quick you pick things up can go to these boot camp course that take av: of 4 weeks to do


But not best place to start

plus like vent says there are jobs that for what ever reason need you to have some thing silly that has note to do with the job your doing

Take my best friend

tranned in cisco and has microsoft networking as well
the job is to look aftter cisco router config and maintance
also servers too
Now when he got to the interview they said he need C++ programing skills
HMMM why ???

I also see silly things out there to.. like this


But my best advise is not to but all your eggs in one basket but do some thing like

MCSA
CCNA

Should see you alright to start

But you all so need experiance in the I.T world lot jobs now days ask for min 1-2 yrs for around 18 24K p/y 3-5 24k+


also look at what jobs are around in your area by useing sites like
www.monster.co.uk and www.reed.co.uk

this way you will also see what ppl need for the jobs microsoft A+ CCNA Etc etc
 
Its unlikley you'll walk straight into a networking job, most people start from pretty low down on helpdesks and other sorts of things, and end up finding what they wanna do.. be it admin/servers/networks/whatever... not many people can really say they just wanna do networking, having never worked in IT before.. if you get a job working for a big company on their helpdesk, its a way into bigger things..
 
danieln1 said:
deppending how much you know about networking and how quick you pick things up can go to these boot camp course that take av: of 4 weeks to do


But not best place to start

plus like vent says there are jobs that for what ever reason need you to have some thing silly that has note to do with the job your doing

Take my best friend

tranned in cisco and has microsoft networking as well
the job is to look aftter cisco router config and maintance
also servers too
Now when he got to the interview they said he need C++ programing skills
HMMM why ???

I also see silly things out there to.. like this


But my best advise is not to but all your eggs in one basket but do some thing like

MCSA
CCNA

Should see you alright to start

But you all so need experiance in the I.T world lot jobs now days ask for min 1-2 yrs for around 18 24K p/y 3-5 24k+


also look at what jobs are around in your area by useing sites like
www.monster.co.uk and www.reed.co.uk

this way you will also see what ppl need for the jobs microsoft A+ CCNA Etc etc

I'd say the MCSE over the MCSA as more places ask for it.
 
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