New Graduate

singhamrinder

Hi everyone, I am new to this Forum. I need a suggestion from you guys regarding my career path. I have done Bachelor's in Information Technology and Master's of Engineering in Electrical and Computer along with CCNA. I am looking for job but as I do not have any job experience, I am not able get anything. Please suggest what should I do.

Essendon

Welcome to TechExams, hang around here and you'll grow you like you never imagined!

How's your resume, does it have anything in there that would make an employer pick up the phone and call you up? With those degrees and no experience, most employers would call you too good for an entry level position and not good enough for a mid-level position. Consider dropping the degrees from the resume for now, maybe leave the Bachelor's in there and reapply.

Look at this another way - say you are heading for a holiday and need to board a plane. Now to fly the plane, would you let someone who's flown planes in flight simulator games fly you to your holiday? Probably not. It's not too similar an analogy, but you get the drift I hope. So you got to build the experience. Apply to everything, fix your resume, never lose hope, never back down, and you'll eventually get there. Good luck bud!

singhamrinder

Thank you very much for suggestion. I will surely fix my resume and drop Master's. Loosing hope is not an option. Lets see how it goes.

singhamrinder

Do you recommend doing more certifications like CCNP at this stage?

kristankelsch87

Dropping degree will help you a lot, I started my career by doing this , and I got my first job in 1 month time....So you should go for it and gradually as you will gain experience you will get better opportunity in future.

coreyb80

singhamrinder wrote: »

Do you recommend doing more certifications like CCNP at this stage?

No sense in collecting more certs along w/ the fees until you gain some experience in the field. You may want to start looking at Help Desk positions to at least maybe get your feet wet in IT. Maybe I'm wrong here and someone will correct me.

ande0255

I'd say go for more lower level certs if you are completely lacking experience, so you have some sort of exposure to the technologies that entry level jobs will expose you to. I'd say MCSA may be a good path for helping land an entry level position, as being familiar with Active Directory and the windows server environment will give you an advantage when interviewing for entry level positions.

Essendon

Yeah like the others said, not only with the CCNP be very difficult without experience it'd also be almost worthless. First, very unlikely someone would hire you as their mid-level network engineer right off the bat. Second, you'd forget anything you learned if you werent able to use the knowledge on a regular basis. Third, you risk coming across as a paper tiger. Like ande said, get another entry-level cert or two - the A+, an MCTS would be much better for you rather than the CCNP. Good luck once again!

singhamrinder

Thank you very much for your replies and suggestions guys. Will work on basic level certifications first.

Doyen

I never thought of the concept of dropping a degree. So there is a reality of being "over qualified" in IT. Though, during the interview process, would you even mention you had a graduate degree or is that mentioned long after your are employed?

singhamrinder

Hi Doyen, I have discussed with many people regarding this. Many people suggested me to drop your Master's degree in your Resume. One guy told told me that what you have done (Master's) and what IT industry actually needs doesn't match and doing Master's was wastage of time and money. He said you are not industry ready professional that's why you are not getting interview call.
But I am not going to give up. It will surely pay back one day or other. Getting first job is not an easy task that's what I have experienced. Lets see how it goes.

Essendon

@Doyen - happened to me more than a few times. My Master's made me too good for entry level gigs and no experience made me useless for them. Between the devil and the sea really. I did drop my Master's, rejigged my resume a tick and the calls began to come. Now that I have 8 years of experience, the Master's helps me resume stand out from the crowd.

@singhamrinder - keep applying mate, eventually you'll land something.

SteveFT

Networking is everything. If you can get your resume hand-delivered to the hiring manager, with a personal recommendation, then your chances of being hired increase exponentially. Start going through your network. You have two degrees, so you must know a number of other people that are out working in the field. Look at what your friends' friends do for work. Get going on LinkedIn because it will help you find this information easily. I would also go join some meetup group in areas that you are interested in (general IT, network, programming, etc).

Did you complete any internships in school?

singhamrinder

@SteveFT - I did internship back in India during my Bachelor's for approx. 1 year, did Master's from Canada but could not get internship (Co-op) due to lack of experience. Working on LinkedIn profile as well. In contact with my seniors from University. Putting best the efforts whatever I can but nothing in hand as of now.

Doyen

I can see now how you can be over-qualified for an entry level position causing you to drop a degree. Would this also relate to dropping non-essential degrees from your resume? Let's say a junior network administrator position, you would drop a BA: History or BS:Psychology correct? Is that the same with certs? Let's say your are a CCIE and applying for the junior network administrator position. You would drop the CCIE and just list CCNA or CCNP?

So, for the point of discussion, you are essentially down playing your skills. How is that any different than lying about your credentials, since that is really what you are doing by omitting that information. Or are we playing the honesty card and not mentioning it unless asked?

Is the concept of being over-qualified and not getting an interview primarily deals with not affording your skills for the position you are qualifying for? I am assuming that your degree or certification would demand that you should ask for more and they don't want to deal with it right? Maybe they feel "threatened" that they would be hiring their boss or replacement based on your credentials?

I am still curious about during the interview process, would you even mention you had a graduate degree or is that mentioned long after your are employed?

TechGuru80

singhamrinder wrote: »

Thank you very much for suggestion. I will surely fix my resume and drop Master's. Loosing hope is not an option. Lets see how it goes.

Huh? That is a terrible idea. It is a numbers game, and the economy is still not amazing. You have to keep applying but also try to get certs while you wait. Security+ would be a good one and maybe work on Microsoft stuff.

Doyen

It is assumed that they have been applying with no hits, which is why they are suggesting the idea of dropping the graduate degree for now to see if it may bring in some hits. However, I do agree that you should get some certs while you are waiting. Security+ and MCSA are not a bad investment.

singhamrinder

From replies of you all I believe that getting Microsoft cert. is also important atleast to get a breakthrough. I will go for MCSA first, lets see how things goes then. Can you guys suggest any website or Forum where I can get good study and test preparation material? Thanks

@Essedon: Will surely get something soon.

AverageJoe

Doyen,

It's not dishonest to not list everything about you on a resume. Your resume is your marketing tool -- everything on it should be 100% true, but you do not have to list everything about yourself on it. Think of it as a book summary. You don't list every detail of a book in its summary. The summary is true and honest, and your resume should be as well. But the resume is an abbreviated autobiography, so you decide for yourself what details you want to include.

As to the unrelated degrees, I would not say as a rule you should delete them, but it is worth considering. The value of a degree is not just the major itself. It also assures a hiring authority that you have a reasonable level of education across the board, that you can write, do basic math, and at least undergraduate level research. Those are good things, even if the degree was not IT related. A degree may also demonstrate that you can stick with something long-term and see it through, so leaving an undergrad degree off your resume is very different from leaving a master's degree off. If you have more than one undergrad you may not want to list them all, but I would make sure to list at least one -- the one that is most likely to get me noticed by the hiring authority.

On the other hand, if you're filling out an application then that is a horse of a different color. If an application says to list all degrees or all colleges attended or all previous employment, then it would be dishonest to mislead the hiring authority by not listing everything. You usually have to sign the application saying that everything is true to the best of your knowledge.

Joe