Help with the following required key skills

Currently, i'm looking to acquire A+, Net+ and Sec+ Certifications to further my Job Prospects, with the hopes of moving into a 2nd Line Role / NOC role.

A job has come up, probably 2-3 months early, but I do believe myself to have a good degree of knowledge and I have confidence that I could do the job after a week or 2 of training. Unfortunately, the hard part is ofcourse, is getting employed.

Here are the key skills required for the job:

Key Skills:
*Helpdesk Experience
*Understanding of Cisco devices
*Understanding of the OSI 7 Layer Model
*Understanding of WAN/LAN/Wireless
*Strong Communication Skills

Beneficial
*Solarwinds
*VoIP
*CCNA
*Security Devices (Juniper)

I have the helpdesk experience, working with a Service Desk at the present time, I understand how the OSI Layers work, and i have the communication skills.
The things I am lacking is an understanding of Cisco Devices, and I do not have any hands on experience with Solarwinds, VoIP or CCNA.

This job would be very beneficial to me so I would like to learn as much as I can over the weekend and apply. Even if I do not get the job, the interview experience would help and the knowledge I gain over the weekend would help aswell.

So what I really want to know is, what experience and knowledge is mandatory for an entry level, junior NOC Engineer?
How best could I prepare for this over the weekend? I know that the knowledge required is probably vast, but what would be the best way to start?

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Comments

Mow

The best way to start getting an understanding of Cisco devices is to get some Cisco gear or GNS3 and start studying for CCNA while following along with the lab you set up. It will take you a lot longer than the weekend, though, probably, unless you have some practical experience with another vendor's equipment and are just looking to see how Cisco does it. Good luck!

sj4088

Mow wrote: »

The best way to start getting an understanding of Cisco devices is to get some Cisco gear or GNS3 and start studying for CCNA while following along with the lab you set up. It will take you a lot longer than the weekend, though, probably, unless you have some practical experience with another vendor's equipment and are just looking to see how Cisco does it. Good luck!

Agreed. It's going to take a LOT longer than a weekend to actually learn CCNA material. For the normal person in his situation I would estimate it would take about 6 months. And some only if s/he is spending a lot of time reading, learning, labbing, etc. Obviously if you have experience you could cut the time frame down. But the OP appear to be a totally Cisco newbie. So he is looking at 6+ months at a minimum. I did my CCNA in about 2 months but I already had experience and wasn't starting from ground zero.

Chev Chellios

To be fair the CCNA etc is listed as beneficial not essential so you've got nothing to lose. Cram in what you can in the meantime and go for it man!

Also be honest at interview, if you don't know something say you don't know but you want to learn blah blah just don't try to blag everything!

Benj94

Chev Chellios wrote: »

To be fair the CCNA etc is listed as beneficial not essential so you've got nothing to lose. Cram in what you can in the meantime and go for it man!

Also be honest at interview, if you don't know something say you don't know but you want to learn blah blah just don't try to blag everything!

This is the way I see the opportunity. It's an opportunity to learn basics over the weekend and also the interview experience is going to do me more good than harm.

As somebody who's working towards CCNA at the moment, what equipment would you suggest I learn about? I'm more than comfortable explaining how a router, hub, switch etc do their job, but I assume the reason they want Cisco specific experience is because Cisco equipment is unique and offers unique features.

Could you suggest a start point? I'm under no illusions of thinking I could cover the majority of CCNA over the weekend.

Mow

More likely they want someone who is comfortable in the CLI. They are probably a Cisco shop and it sounds like they want someone who is familiar with how to set up some basic stuff like VLANs, IP Addresses, maybe make simple modifications to routing tables within specific routing protocols, etc. They might not want to wait around for someone to Google the answers, though once you do these things a few times, it's easy to remember. I doubt that they are looking for anyone to configure feature Whiz-bang at entry level.

Still not sure what basics you plan to learn over the weekend? Some folks (me included) took longer than a weekend just to get subnetting down.

Chev Chellios

Sorry man had a lovely weekend away from all tech in the great outdoors with the family- good to get away from everything once in a while! Not sure what you got to do over the weekend but I would've googled or check Cisco's site for the most popular Cisco routers and switches and checked out specs etc as well as learn whatever about how they operate and basic cmds etc

The more I study towards CCNA the more I realise it isn't that unique, for example we use Draytel routers and Avaya and Netgear switches here and they all offer similar functions and the cmd line stuff is similar for a lot of functions. Good luck for the interview, keep us posted!

Also based on my job and us upgrading Servers a lot in the near future I'm thinking of switching back to MS Server certs! Too much to learn, too little time, lol