Passed 70-410 after 6 Month...lucky or no value?

Hawk321

Finally I passed with 940/100 points. Studied part time for the exam because I also go on college. Did a lot of labbing and my main source was the Pearson 70-410 Certguide and Pluralsight plus 4 VM's (2 on each computer) and as a foundation my cisco lab.

How does someone make it through in 5 days??? I know some guys who made the 70-411 but forgot all of its topics due to the lack of practice.

Question:

Do I all right or am I a worthless rookie? I see so many job ad's where the companies want a MCSA + plus experience...but on college the syllabus is far away from that, even with my CCNA R&S I know so much more than my docent does, but even here, companies wish ccnp's in R&S, Security, VOICE etc. plus all the MS Certs (in one person!)

What now? I'm confused.

poolmanjim

First, congratulations. Passing the 410 is a big step.

Companies list their dream requirements. This is mostly to wean out the truly unqualified and those who aren't ambitious enough to succeed.

On its own, the 410 qualifies you for very little. In many ways that is the basic knowledge of how things are done. Specifically that exam covers installing and configuring servers. I can tell you that if you end up in a Sys Admin or Sys Engineer role, that will maybe make up 20-30% at most of what you do. If you work for a larger company, that may end up being either 90% or <5% depending on the role. For me, I rarely do installing and configuring, most of that is already done in our images and by the time I get the server, its ready to be prepped for production. The 411 adds the needed components to flesh out the 410 and make it a usable skill set. Toss in your capstone test (412, 409, etc) which adds your specialty.

CCNAs aren't really the specialty of this forum but I can tell you from experience that most of the roles that hire CCNAs are interested in truly entry level guys, and they're right in looking for them.

Any certification on its own barely qualifies you for entry level (with exceptions being the higher tier certifications). Experience is the true measure of talent. If you are fresh out of college with 3 dozen certs and have zero experience you likely will have trouble finding a role that isn't simply entry level. You need to build up those skills first.

Be careful diversifying your skill set too much, especially early on. If you want to work with Microsoft, get a MCSA as it will be more useful than any other cert for working with Microsoft. If you want to be a network guy use your CCNA and maybe go for the CCNP.