Cisco advice - Career change

Having read the above there is some very good advice in there. Whenever more people pass a certification it devalues it. The MSCE, CCNA boot camps etc have made the certs almost worthless unless backed up by a range of experience.

Another problem people face is that recruitment consultants are worse than estate agents. They have no idea what skills, qualifications or experience are relevant to jobs and don't understand anything above helpdesk work. Don't be afraid to punch (sorry push!!!) them hard to get what you want. I had one telling me I was too experienced for a job as it only involved desktop support. What the company was after was a technical lead to update and revise the IT infrastructure in one of their smaller divisions !!

We always struggle to get good IT staff especially at the technical project level. My only real advice is try doing some short term contracts to get experience. If you work hard on contracts often you will be given more work and sometimes a permanent position. We had one guy come in to do a desktop domain migration on short term contract and they progressed into helping out with a European project.

I will shut up now!!!!


Good Luck.

;)
 
DarkHorizon472 said:
Another problem people face is that recruitment consultants are worse than estate agents. They have no idea what skills, qualifications or experience are relevant to jobs and don't understand anything above helpdesk work.
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Or common sense in some cases. The other day a recruitment company called up my office offering me as a candidate for the job I'm currently in the process of leaving!! Fortunately my boss already knows, but imagine if I was trying to keep it secret :eek:
 
A note from the other side (having come from the big green machines way of thinking and seen the light) go for some non Cisco based qualifications. As people have said it has been done to death and every one out there has it. Get a cert from Nortel, Juniper or the like and you put yourself in a different league as you’re a rarer more valuable commodity.

An interesting point is I have just booked to do my VMware certified professional exam and they only allow people to take it if they have done their approved course at £3.5K for four days! It is there way of preventing college kids from reciting books and de-valuing their certification program.
 
you suggest going for the rarer qualifications, but the reason those qualifications are rarer is because either they needed expereicne (and the point of this thread is to talk about courses that can be used to help obtain that first bit of experience), are very expensive, or not possible to do localy (a lot of these things cost a lot, add on huge traveling expenses when no UNI localy does them, and all these costs all add up).

Edit: just checked the juniper site, and they have no UK locations for the practicle exam, i also checked the nortel page, and although they list loads of subjects, i couldnt see any that actully give a certification, just courses, and like juniper, no UK courses that i could see. So neither juniper or nortel certifications are realy viable for anyone looking to get into ICT, maybe for ppl who are already in ICT and are already past all the heldesk level stuff.
 
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Dist said:
you suggest going for the rarer qualifications, but the reason those qualifications are rarer is because either they needed expereicne (and the point of this thread is to talk about courses that can be used to help obtain that first bit of experience), are very expensive, or not possible to do localy (a lot of these things cost a lot, add on huge traveling expenses when no UNI localy does them, and all these costs all add up).

Edit: just checked the juniper site, and they have no UK locations for the practicle exam, i also checked the nortel page, and although they list loads of subjects, i couldnt see any that actully give a certification, just courses, and like juniper, no UK courses that i could see. So neither juniper or nortel certifications are realy viable for anyone looking to get into ICT, maybe for ppl who are already in ICT and are already past all the heldesk level stuff.
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Trouble is, its difficult to specialise in a particular area of I.T if you havn't worked or are not currently working in I.T. Its like joining the police force expecting to be a traffic cop, or in the armed division, having never been a policeman before with no experience. a lot of employers like someone to have been through the "basic stuff" to prove they actually like the industry and have a basic understanding of all the areas.
For people wanting to get into ICT, get a job working in I.T first, absolutley anything will do, then worry about certs. The CCNA is a friendley certification because almost everyone knows about Cisco, Juniper are more of a service provider heavy cert so no use for a beginner, nortel are very voice centric so again not such a great place to start.. You really want to be looking for a job you like, rather than looking for certs to fit a job.
 
IronFire said:
A note from the other side (having come from the big green machines way of thinking and seen the light) go for some non Cisco based qualifications. As people have said it has been done to death and every one out there has it. Get a cert from Nortel, Juniper or the like and you put yourself in a different league as you’re a rarer more valuable commodity.

An interesting point is I have just booked to do my VMware certified professional exam and they only allow people to take it if they have done their approved course at £3.5K for four days! It is there way of preventing college kids from reciting books and de-valuing their certification program.
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This is some good advice, especially certs like Network+ and some of the college stuff, as they're not vendor based it helps you understand the concepts, and theyre a lot easier and help you get some credit to your name quicker..
 
I'm going to dust off my Juniper JNCIA book I think and give that a go. It's the base Juniper cert but deals mainly with routing protocols such as OSPF,BGP,MPLS etc. It's a lot rarer than the CCNA and is more advanced, you are expected to know about IP addressing, subnetting etc.
 
JediFragger said:
Thanks for the additional advice guys, esp the stuff like Network+ looks like it's worth doing
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shouldnt take too long to do the N+ if you put in a couple of hours a week. it covers topologies, cable and connection types, routing, switching etc. its not too difficult to get to grips with its just the shear volumn of information and acronyms you have to remember. good luck :)

MW
 
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