Continuing Education Direction Help

Hello all,

I am new here, my name's Lorand and came across this forum while googling my heart out for the right direction to take with studying.

I currently passed the CompTia A+ and am looking at studying for more during 2017.
I am currently unemployed and I have little job experience into computing. Mostly my experience and knowledge came from my own desire and need to know more about computers. It's a field I always felt attracted to as a child growing up. I passed the A+ after two months of study and practice on my own computer. Some things I knew about and some were new to me but I really liked learning and reading about all that stuff.

Now I'm on a break as family came over for Christmas holidays, but after New Year I plan on starting to study for another certificate. I have the whole year of 2017 to study and pursue new certificates as I am not going to work and will be home most of this time.

I am looking at Network+ and Security+ to take next but I am stuck as in what to follow eventually after.
I was taking a look towards Cisco and CWNP but I can't make up my mind. Some people advice towards Cisco as it is more recognised, while others I see prefer CWNP as Cisco is being vendor specific.

I am more inclined towards security, but I understand security will work better with networking together.
What would you advice considering all the study and experience will come from home and not from the field?

Thanks a lot,
-L

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Comments

Verities

Hi and welcome to TE. In your situation obtaining a IT degree would help you immensely and if you go through WGU (a lot of forum members are graduates/attending), it has a degree program that sounds right up your alley:

Online IT Security Degree | Information Security Degree | WGU College of Information Technology

While you're doing that, look for somewhere to volunteer and/or obtain an internships. Non-profits are ALWAYS looking for unpaid help with IT since they usually don't have a lot of funding but often have at least 1 JOAT that can teach you a lot very quickly. This is how you will gain experience and in the process you'll have many networking opportunities.

ming746

Ignore that degree crap and save your money bro. Set your lab up at home and buy the study material.

Cicso is difficult but pays well. Security will compliment it nicely! I'd start with network+ to get your feet wet in networking before diving into Cisco certs however.

I can't stress that enough

Verities

ming746 wrote: »

Ignore that degree crap and save your money bro. Set your lab up at home and buy the study material.

Cicso is difficult but pays well. Security will compliment it nicely! I'd start with network+ to get your feet wet in networking before diving into Cisco certs however.

I can't stress that enough

Normally, I would agree with you, but WGU is about as cheap as it gets and there are some jobs where they require a degree. Its literally so cheap, that if you have a full time job (making minimum wage), you can actually pay for the degree without taking out loans.

DatabaseHead

Try to get into the work force doing something that aligns with your skills. Search job boards with the name of the skills you possess and then apply for the jobs that make sense.

As far as certifications goes, security + seems like one of the favorites on this forum.

Thoth_Dhwty

Problem is I cannot get a job right now. I relocated after getting married to live with my wife and where we live right now ( in the Caribbeans) is hard to get a job at all and I still don't have a work permit to be allowed to work. That's the reason I decided to get some certifications and study some before we move away, most probably in 2018.

I just want to get some basics/foundation done before we move so I could pursue a career in IT somewhere else.
I guess Net+ and Sec+ would be next call then.