Share your VoIP experience with this Deaf job-seeker

DFTK13

Hello everyone! I'm a deaf guy who LOVES networking! I've been studying heavily for my CCNA and I really enjoy R&S and I definitely want to go for the CCNP after I achieve it. I've been applying and looking for jobs all over the place, and almost always I come across the "VoIP experience is a plus" or "Experience with Unified Communications a plus", etc. Literally every networking job desires this! Now this got me to looking at the Voice and Video side of networking and the new CCNA collaboration cert. I'm really intrigued with this and would like to try to pursue this as well.

However, before I go any further into this, I want to know your Hearing experiences with VoIP, whether its with Cisco products/environment or whatever else. Just to let you know, I can speak face to face with a person to an understandable level, and can read lips, but absolutely NO ABILITY to speak on the phone or understand any type of audio aside from F2F.

Do you think it's feasible for me to work with VoIP with everything that's involved from your Hearing perspective? I really don't know anything about it at all. Thank you so much for your time!

mistabrumley89

I commend you for making it this far. I can't fathom how difficult it would be to troubleshoot any networking issues without being able to talk on the phone. As far as VoIP goes, hearing isn't necessary in all aspects, but I'm sure hearing could come in handy. You could configure things all day long, but when it comes to troubleshooting...... that would be where you might run into a few issues. Not required though. You could generally have an idea if the voice is working or not. You might not be able to tell the quality if the call, but I'm sure you might be with someone who could let you know how it sounds... maybe? Not really sure, but the best of luck to you in your future goals.

DFTK13

Thanks! It just goes to show that if you REALLY enjoy something, you will do it no matter what! Also, I forgot to mention this as I just recently got this. I still cannot talk on the phone as a hearing person can BUT I have an App on my phone that's called Sorenson ntouch. It's a video relay service with an interpreter on the screen listening to the other end's conversation and the interpreter tells me they said in Sign language. However, I chose the option to do "One-line Voice-carry-over" and this enables me to speak to the hearing person on the other end without having to sign to the interpreter and they voice for me. However, I don't know how well this would work in help-desk, call-center or NOC where I'm sure you have to answer the company phone that has the number the customer called.

Thank you so much mistabrumley89 for your experience! I really enjoy configuring routers, switches, etc...however, I think what I enjoy the most out of it is figuring out exactly what went wrong and restoring communucations/connectivity. I really want to help people by troubleshooting problems within the network and anything else. It seems VoIP is pretty straightforward from what you've said...I think I would at least like to study the stuff at some point and know how it fits into the overall network. It's true with IT....you can NEVER know too much! Anyways, I appreciate it!

OctalDump

mistabrumley89 wrote: »

You might not be able to tell the quality if the call, but I'm sure you might be with someone who could let you know how it sounds... maybe?

I second this. Probably, the number one user complaint is call quality. However, it is subjective and issues tend to be intermittent, so being able to confirm yourself probably isn't vital. The only area I think it would be really handy is in new installs. The common thing to do to check if the phone is working well, is to just pick it up and use it.

There might well be more technical methods for testing, and analysing, most of the common faults, which is what I would look at if I were you. The irony is that it would probably put you at an advantage since you'd have hard data to work with rather than subjective comments. Like any disability, it's about focussing on what you can do rather than on what you can't - and hoping that employers have the same attitude

Russell77

DFTK13,

I can only give you my direct experience working in the industry. Voice and video work has a large amount of communication with customers as well as other technicians and engineers. If I am working day shift at my current job I am on the phone about 6 hours a day. Technicians are in closets with a lot of background noise and I am in a noisy room. Even with ideal hearing it is difficult to communicate. Blue tooth, speaker phones, and crappy codecs make modern voice calls like something out of the 1920's. It drives me crazy that in this day in age that most phone calls sound so bad that people scream into telephones.

Having said all that don't worry about applying for jobs where voice is a side issue. most of the time the IT guys are just calling the vendor anyway. They do not often dive into the voice side in depth unless they work for a very large organization.

DFTK13

OctalDump wrote: »

I second this. Probably, the number one user complaint is call quality. However, it is subjective and issues tend to be intermittent, so being able to confirm yourself probably isn't vital. The only area I think it would be really handy is in new installs. The common thing to do to check if the phone is working well, is to just pick it up and use it.

There might well be more technical methods for testing, and analysing, most of the common faults, which is what I would look at if I were you. The irony is that it would probably put you at an advantage since you'd have hard data to work with rather than subjective comments. Like any disability, it's about focussing on what you can do rather than on what you can't - and hoping that employers have the same attitude

Thank you OctalDump for replying! VoIP seems pretty much doable except for the call quality. That seems interesting about the technical methods, I think I will look into that more as I completely agree...I want tangible and obvious data that I can access myself instead of grabbing around in the dark in a sense. I appreciate the encouragement! I'm definitely researching and looking at all of the aspects as to what I can and can't do, that's one of the reasons why I love this forum...FEEDBACK from hearing workers in IT!

Russell77 wrote: »

DFTK13,

I can only give you my direct experience working in the industry. Voice and video work has a large amount of communication with customers as well as other technicians and engineers. If I am working day shift at my current job I am on the phone about 6 hours a day. Technicians are in closets with a lot of background noise and I am in a noisy room. Even with ideal hearing it is difficult to communicate. Blue tooth, speaker phones, and crappy codecs make modern voice calls like something out of the 1920's. It drives me crazy that in this day in age that most phone calls sound so bad that people scream into telephones.

Having said all that don't worry about applying for jobs where voice is a side issue. most of the time the IT guys are just calling the vendor anyway. They do not often dive into the voice side in depth unless they work for a very large organization.

Oh wow Russell...I've found that many jobs in IT has its fair share of talking on the phone, but in your case...6 hours?! :O Even if I was hearing, I would absolutely shudder at doing that...man, that sounds like a nightmare. I'm prepared to do anything to the best of my ability but it gives me relief to know that voice isn't that big of a deal of those jobs with it on the side or a bonus skill, so I can start off on an entry-level and feel things out. Thank you So much for your input, you made me feel a bit more confident in what I know about applying for Networking jobs!