Getting restarted in IT

DEL 707

DEL 707

DEL 707

Soldato
Joined
20 Mar 2004
Posts
4,580
I used to work in a shop repairing PC's and laptops, did it since I left school.
Now I'm out of a job with only GCSE's to my name.

I'm job hunting but I'm looking for certificates to get some knowledge and pad out my CV.
I'm mainly looking at online courses but I'm not sure what kind of courses I should be looking for.

I'm looking for an IT support role, possible networking.

A quick google search recommend Comp TIA A+ and Comp TIA Network+, are these worth pursuing?
Are there other courses I should know about or pursue?
Are they any free courses I could consider to start?
 
How long was you working there for?

The big thing in IT at the moment is Cloud, Cyber Security and A.I. coming too. If you was to go down the networking route then cloud such as Azure, AWS or GCP would be good for you

As for certs, dont bother with anything CompTIA. They dont hold much value outside the US. Go directly for vendor specific certs such as Microsoft, Amazon, Google, Cisco, Vmware, etc.
 
Warning: late night but still buzzing brain dump below:

Can you list a little more about your experience? You say you've been in the PC shop since leaving school, how long has this been? I ask this as it makes a difference to which certifications/areas of study make the most sense for you/are most appropriate for industry optics. Could you say which parts of the job you enjoyed, which parts you didn't, and if you have any proclivity towards something specific already? For example you mention networking, is this because you enjoy it/are interested in?

As for certificates, yes people are right about CompTIA but only in certain areas (for example, CySA is well regarded as far as I know).

As for me, I did the CompTIA trifecta, partly to rubber stamp myself and partly to give myself a structured path to knowledge/commitment to testing it outside of my day job (RAF IT tech at the time) that doesn't really exist anywhere else. With hindsight, A+ was a waste of time and I sort of knew it, but I thought doing "baby's first cert" with knowledge I mainly knew inside and out was a good idea, and in a way it was. I learned how to self study around a full time job, and worked out the exam experience in a low pressure environment due to not stressing about the actual knowledge. I suppose in a way it was fundamental, but I also had done Cisco IT Essentials (identical to A+ exam objectives) during tech training so it was definitely just an update. I'd say anyone with any real IT experience shouldn't do the exam, but going over the topics can't hurt as a baseline/exploratory exercise.

Network+ was more interesting, but again I had already done some Cisco stuff (Introduction to Networks, part 1 of what was a 4 part CCNA course [ccna exploration]) back in tech training, so it was a refresher. Net+ didn't spend any time teaching commands like Cisco did, just networking concepts, which I actually think is more useful for entry level bods. Things have changed however, and if I was looking at this now, I'd instead choose to do CCNA. At the time, the CCENT and CCNA certs were a little more focused/deeper around core networking concepts and services, ignoring areas outside this such as security, wireless and voip, whereas now they've brought it down a notch and spread it out to include much more content from these other areas. With that in mind, CCNA has actually become a lot more like Net+, which is good because it makes Net+ not really have any reason to exist and it's an easy choice imo. As stated, the image thing is real and Cisco's image in the UK is way beyond CompTIA's - for networking at least - so I'd forget it and do CCNA if you want to expand your networking knowledge.

Security+ was me wanting to finish the trifecta and also went alongside the Cisco Cyber Ops cert I got after going through their scholarship program for free training + exam fees. It's super generalised, almost to a fault really. I wouldn't recommend it unless you want to push for a security role that's not covered by any other specialisation, there's probably more specific stuff you want to be looking at depending on the role.

It really ultimately depends on what you want to end up doing. If you don't know the answer to this question yet, there's no problem with that and keeping it broad at first is what I'd do. If you wanted you could just become a total Microsoft monkey and get MS certs up the proverbial, nothing wrong with that. The same can be said for AWS or GCP. The A+ may help with informing this a bit more, and before wasting time deep diving it's important to work out what you want to do. I see a lot of people coming in to IT saying they want to be security, network engineer, or a dev, but with no idea just how much each role differs.
 
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Zefan said:
Can you list a little more about your experience? You say you've been in the PC shop since leaving school, how long has this been?
Click to expand...

I worked in the shop from 1999 till 2020, I was laid off doing all the covid lockdowns. I've been unemployed for the last few years due to personal health issues.

Started off in the early days just working on PC's, building, upgrading and repairing. Then we started working on laptops.
During the last few years I would say a good 99% of my time was spent on laptops, mainly dealing with hardware issues. Replacing screens, keyboards and motherboards. Cleaning up spillage damage, ultrasonic baths and occasional soldering work, replacing dc jacks and other ports. I used to do GPU chip reflowing, but in the end we outsourced that to another engineer who had better equiptment.
Software wise, I didn't go too deep, I would fix login issues, boot issues and problems with wifi. Too be honest, if a software issue was too troublesome, we just backed up the customer data and reinstalled Windows. I worked out quicker and cheaper.

Nearly all my experience is with Windows, I did used to work on Macs, but that stopped around the Snow Leppord era when another engineer took that role. I still occasional worked on macs, but only with hardware faults.

I honestly don't know what I want to do job wise. I love taking things apart, repairing them and putting them back together, but I understand that's not much of a career path.
I REALLY don't want to end up on some tech support phoneline, but I realise I might need to start there.
 
I would be tempted to list your skills, update CV and apply for some.

Keep applying and you will eventually be successful as long as you are willing to do qualifications and progress within the company.

Tech roles don’t need qualifications as such (depends what level). You just have to show competence on showing up on time, obeying workplace rules and wanting to learn.
 
Been looking at courses all over the weekend, I'm still very uncertain about what I want to do, but I saw this bundle on Reed.

www.reed.co.uk

Comptia : CompTIA A+ Bundle

Start your career in IT with the IT Support Technician Job Programme Was £1951, Now £749.00. Instalment option available from just £121 over 7 months Make an impact immediately with the IT Technician / 1st Line IT Support Programme offered by IT Certify: - Seven New to IT essential courses worth...
www.reed.co.uk www.reed.co.uk

Bit pricey for me and I don't have money to burn. But if it's good value for money and helps me get my foot in the door, I'll do it.
 
DEL 707 said:
Been looking at courses all over the weekend, I'm still very uncertain about what I want to do, but I saw this bundle on Reed.

www.reed.co.uk

Comptia : CompTIA A+ Bundle

Start your career in IT with the IT Support Technician Job Programme Was £1951, Now £749.00. Instalment option available from just £121 over 7 months Make an impact immediately with the IT Technician / 1st Line IT Support Programme offered by IT Certify: - Seven New to IT essential courses worth...
www.reed.co.uk www.reed.co.uk

Bit pricey for me and I don't have money to burn. But if it's good value for money and helps me get my foot in the door, I'll do it.
Click to expand...

As I said before, avoid anything CompTIA. Go for vendor specific certs, its cheaper. I have a few Microsoft certs, which cost me about £140. But you still need to find which path you want to take in IT. Just dont pick anything.

Looking at this bundle, its out of date. Microsoft 70-697: Configuring Windows Devices Windows 10 is an old cert which doesn't exist anymore, I took this exam back in 2017. Its been replaced by Microsoft 365 Certified: Modern Desktop Administrator Associate with Azure and Windows 11 stuff.

ITIL Foundations, it doesn't say which version. I did the v3 exam back in 2017 now they are at v5.
 
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Do you have any big data centers near you? Based on your experience you'd be wanting some sort of infrastructure role - basically dealing with server hardware. Break/fix type stuff, re-racking hardware, networking/cabling.
 
You don't need to pay that much if you really want to do the comptia a+.
If you are happy to self teach then try courses on sale at udemy.

I've recently just bought the A+ core 1 and core 2 course on udemy that cost £16 each on sale. Then just pay for each exam once ready. I only chose A+ because i will be out of work come end of July (telecoms job) and I'm not sure where I want to go next so It seems a decent course that covers a wide range of IT topics from hardware, which I know a little bit about to VMware and virtualisation etc which I know bugger all about.

I also bought a CCNA course on there which I will go through after.
 
Thanks for your previous reply with detail of your lengthy experience! You say you like taking stuff apart, repairing it and putting it back together does this refer only to hardware? The reason this doesn't tend to be a career path that grows is because it's not very scalable. I expect one can definitely make good money repairing devices/doing data recovery but I think this would be best on a self employed/running a small business scale. If you're not down for this, or the sort of physical infrastructure job mentioned in post above then you need to take that "explode, fix, unexplode" mindset and apply it to software.

I think I can see the thought process you're going through, and it's relatively common if so. There the urge to get going, to let someone else prescribe a course that satisfies multiple requirements for a given role, makes sense. However, I really don't think this exists in a way that provides good value for money, so you are already on the right path by being sceptical of their value.

I think you should do some research on the job landscape out there, find things that sound like something you'd like to do, and see what they're expecting. That course, although on surface level might read OK, is indeed out of date, crucially with versioning ref MS and ITIL as mentioned above.

Given your experience, I agree that you shouldn't do the CompTIA cert exams, although the content itself may be of interest anyway. The actual A+ credential is really for people who have very little/no experience with hardware/software, but depending on your software experience it could well plug some gaps and give you a wider view of the IT landscape. With that in mind, it can't hurt to check out the free content that's available on YouTube, there's legitimately good content for it on there from my experience:


Professor Messer 220-1101 A+ course: https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG49S3nxzAnnOmvg5UGVenB_qQgsh01uC

Professor Messer 220-1102 A+ course:
https://youtube.com/playlist?list=PLG49S3nxzAnna96gzhJrzkii4hH_mgW4b

I would absolutely not delve in to CompTIA beyond this.

If you like the idea of networking, ignore Net+ and do CCNA.

What's your server knowledge like? If you like the idea of server/systems stuff (system admin, future cloud engineer perhaps?), I'd look first to get your head around this as no amount of cloud knowledge is going to be useful if you don't have core functionality at least partially down. From an MS perspective, they used to have live certification paths for all their currently supported server OSs but they've binned them now on favour of a cloud focused approach. Although the exams are no longer running, the content for these is still available, the keywords you're looking for are "Server MCSA". MS did relatively recently bring in what they call the "Hybrid Administrator" certification which does cover a lot of this, while touching on how it all plugs in to Azure. It's what I'm recommending my less experienced System Admin do, to cover gaps in things that aren't touched on in our daily work.

Half the problem with advising on this is that people can go on and on all day, but ultimately it is a little subjective and only you can filter this information through your own leanings and doing your own research is key.
 
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Quartz said:
Have you considered an electronics assembly / repair role in the defence sector? That sort of stuff cannot be outsourced to the Far East.
Click to expand...
Oh yes this is definitely appropriate for people who like to turn spanner on hardware. I guess I don't really count this as "IT" so it didn't come to mind!
 
DEL 707 said:
Been looking at courses all over the weekend, I'm still very uncertain about what I want to do, but I saw this bundle on Reed.

www.reed.co.uk

Comptia : CompTIA A+ Bundle

Start your career in IT with the IT Support Technician Job Programme Was £1951, Now £749.00. Instalment option available from just £121 over 7 months Make an impact immediately with the IT Technician / 1st Line IT Support Programme offered by IT Certify: - Seven New to IT essential courses worth...
www.reed.co.uk www.reed.co.uk

Bit pricey for me and I don't have money to burn. But if it's good value for money and helps me get my foot in the door, I'll do it.
Click to expand...

I'd definitely not pay for that, plenty of free resources out there and books etc.. for these types of courses.

Employers often pay for vendor certificate stuff if you do go down that sort of route. It's perhaps worth paying up for academic stuff leading to actual credit-bearing qualifications - diplomas, degrees awarded by universities. In some cases a bootcamp *may* be worthwhile (maybe udacity nanodegrees too), in others, it could be a very overpriced route. For most other things, if you're just looking to learn about a topic then there are often either free resources out there or much cheaper online courses available from the likes of coursera, udemy, edx etc..
 
Thank you all for taking the time to reply.

So Comptia is off the table now, I watched a few of those video, and yeah, the knowledge is pretty basic.
Because of health reasons, I won't be applying for anymore jobs for the next 2-3 months, so I would like to get some sort of certificate to give sort of advantage over some school leaver who's got the same GSCE's I have.
Zefan, you mention Microsoft certs, can you recommend a good course to pursue to get the ball rolling? I'm looking at 1st Line IT support to get my started in the field again.

Zefan said:
What's your server knowledge like?
Click to expand...

Unfortunately it's pretty minimum, plug wires into a router and hope everything works.
I would really like to pursue a career in network engineering/administration, but my knowledge is definately lacking. Would CCNA be a good start down that path?
There don't seem to be many network engineer trainee jobs in Kent and I can't stomach the commute to London anymore.

Again, thank you everyone for helping out, I'm sorry I'm so clueless.
 
I'd also recommend considering JNCIA-Junos (Juniper - Cisco's biggest competitor) which has free learning material from Juniper themselves and the exam fee is only $50 or so - assuming you pass the test exams which offers a discount code.

https://www.juniper.net/gb/en/training/certification/tracks.html

Compared to CCNA, JNCIA is quicker and easier to pass, still shows good motivation or attitude to getting into the field, cheaper and doesn't require any sort of equipment or home-lab to run

There's also a number of free introduction to networking videos that Juniper offer that are worth a look to help make your mind up about entering network engineering.
 
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