ccna,and other networking certs

[Mukik]

anyone else working on this cert or higher? whats the reward, if any , have you seen from it?

[Kulaf]

They look nice on your resume......really don't mean a damn thing once you are in the company.

[Klast Brell]

Going to school right now for associates degree in network administration. It will take me 4 years going part time nights, but in the end I will have a CCNA, MCSE, and be ready to test for a few others.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

They look nice on your resume.

So does 5 or 10 years experience. The certs and the experience are a good combination too, but I'd say the biggest reward to having the certs is getting the opportunity to get the experience - i.e. your foot in the door. From experience I can say that nobody ever says "wow, that guy has all the certs". It's more like "wow, that guy knows his shit."

[Kulaf]

For me when I was doing technical interviews it was more like.....ok that resume goes in the maybe pile.

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Yeah, I've done a lot of interviews for network engineers also. The maybe pile is a step up from the shitcan pile

[Kulaf]

Yeah but there are a ton of people who are paper certs.....they have no practical experience other than spending 5k on a two week exam cram class.

[Klast Brell]

I have about 8 years tech support experience. Once I get my first cert or two I'll probably have 10 years tech support experience. If you were hiring for a network administrator what pile would you put my resume in?

[Ddrak]

CCNA is a lot better than MCSE as far as certs go - I used to pay more attention to CCNA when running through resumes.

Dd

[Kulaf]

CCNA is a lot better than MCSE as far as certs go - I used to pay more attention to CCNA when running through resumes.

Dd

I think you are thinking of the CCNP.....not the CCNA. CCNA up until recemtly was the entry level Cisco cert.

[Kulaf]

I have about 8 years tech support experience. Once I get my first cert or two I'll probably have 10 years tech support experience. If you were hiring for a network administrator what pile would you put my resume in?

First question I always pull out was one I learned from my friend who was a consultant and did interviews all the time.

Do you have 10 years of tech support experience, or do you have 1 year of tech support experience 10 times?

[Klast Brell]

At that time it will be 9 years at my current job, plus a years worth of short term contracts back in 2000/2001

[Kulaf]

Right....so the question is.....did you learn new things and do new things during those 9 years? Or did you do the same thing your did the first year nine times as long?

[Freecare Spiritwise]

Shit with 9 years experience I'm not sure I see the benefit unless you're in a tight market or your company is pushing for it (at which point they should be footing the bill). I do know a couple guys who are freelance who have the certs. When you're freelance, every new client is like a job interview and it could help you drum up more business and differentiate you from the competition a little better. But the best networking guy I know has 20 years experience, no certs or fomal education, and makes shitloads of money. They give him something like a 2 grand a week cash bonus (under the table) in addition to his paycheck.

And from just a pure knowledge stance, I think a good mentor would give more benefit than the certs.

My job description has been Senior Software Engineer/Architect for the last 15 years (though I'm often called upon for hardware/networking tasks and advice). I'm a high school dropout, and towards the beginning of my career I walked into a university and spent a week with the guidance counselors who concluded that getting a degree just for my career would be a waste since I was already well established.

So having spent lots of time on both sides of the interview table, I'd say that a) having the talent and b) using that talent to kick major ass is far more valuable to a technical career than any piece of paper. Some companies have a strict policy of requiring degrees/certs, but those companies (especially the hiring managers) understand that the policy doesn't necessarily get them the best peeps.

And years of experience, awards, certs, etc. are worthles if someone doesn't have a great attitude or the discipline to back it up. That's why most of my career I've had some level of input for hiring - I have some weird talent for sniffing out the bad apples lol.

[Klast Brell]

Right....so the question is.....did you learn new things and do new things during those 9 years? Or did you do the same thing your did the first year nine times as long?

Sure. I learned a bunch of new things in the first years. But after so much time you hardly encounter new problems requiring you to learn new tricks. I have hit the wall as far as what new skills I can develop in my current job. That's why I'm going to school.

[Mukik]

I am always in favor of a 2 if not three pronged 'attack' hopefully this year is a transfer from operations back into administration. I did that back in the late 90's early 2k. Problem is, anyone with good organisational skills can be a half way decent ops guy. Doesnt matter to the company mostly if I can lower your down time to minutes just with my unix/nt and networking skills. It used to be fun to do what we were doing cause the skills were constantly being challenged. But lately its been ping and page or simply just sit there and wait. I like to use that time for pushing my knowledge and the latest is the ccna that I almost took in 2k but never got around to.

[Ddrak]

CCNA is a lot better than MCSE as far as certs go - I used to pay more attention to CCNA when running through resumes.

Dd

I think you are thinking of the CCNP.....not the CCNA. CCNA up until recemtly was the entry level Cisco cert.

Yep.

[Kulaf]

Right....so the question is.....did you learn new things and do new things during those 9 years? Or did you do the same thing your did the first year nine times as long?

Sure. I learned a bunch of new things in the first years. But after so much time you hardly encounter new problems requiring you to learn new tricks. I have hit the wall as far as what new skills I can develop in my current job. That's why I'm going to school.

That's sort of what I was getting at. If you show up at an interview and say you have X years of experience you need to be able to back it up with some concrete examples. Let me give you a quote from a guy I interviewed. I asked......"So, what are you good at?" His answer was......"Everything I am good at is obsolete." This was a career Honeywell guy trying to make the transition to a PC centeric world.

Don't be that guy.

[Klast Brell]

Sigh. That doesn't make me feel good. I tried to think about how I would answer that question.

I can build a computer from scratch and have done so 5 times.
I can quickly ascertain the level of experience of a user and talk to them using language at their level. From TLAs and blinkenlights for the pro's with a sense of humor, to plain spoken jargon free language for beginners. I can connect with a customer and make them feel comfortable and confident that we will get their problem fixed whether the person is a Luddite afraid to break their computer, or a hothead pissed off and lashing out at me because they are frustrated about their computer not working.
I can quickly learn new technologies and procedures and apply that knowledge to novel situations and the interactions with other procedures and technologies.
I can think ahead and anticipate potential problems and put safeguards in place to handle them should they come up.

Shit. that's 5 minutes of me pondering. I'd be sunk in an interview with you.

[Kulaf]

So you are telling me that most of your experience is with level 1 help desk support (phone support). Nothing wrong with that. I assume your new direction is to move to level 2 (PC tech) or level 3(Junrior Network Admin). What you would want to stress in an interview is pretty much what you did. I would suggest you read up on the Behavioural Interview process because that is pretty much what you are going to run into. It stresses what you have learned by asking specific questions and getting real world responses from you.