TE I need your advise!

Hi All,

I need to call upon the collective wisdom of my fellow TE members as I am in a bit of a pickle. I should begin by saying I have been a long time lurker of this forum, and I have spent countless hours scouring the various threads here. The advice and knowledge I have received from the community has been invaluable.

That being said, I need some counsel. I graduated with an MIS type degree from a traditional university back in 2013. My goal then was to start a meaningful career in IT, and have the type of career I could be proud of. On the advice of many threads in this forum, I decided to study for my A+ while still in college so that I could land and entry level position upon graduation. I was lucky, and the A+ helped me to land a work-study position while still in college, doing very basic IT support. I was able to leverage this experience to land a temp position at a big name university, right as I was finishing my 4 year degree. This temp position eventually led to a full time permanent position doing help desk. I was grateful to have this position, even though it was junior. I learned a lot during this time and solidified my desire to have a career in IT. I have since moved on to another position doing tier 2 support (same place).

I am now approaching my 4^th year in IT, but I have not had the career growth I had hoped for by this point in my career. I became increasingly unsatisfied with end user support, and really desired to move into what I consider the “real” IT field. (Systems, Networking, Security etc). I busted my behind for the past year and finally got my Cisco CCNA: Routing and Switching. My plan was to someday get into security. However, from my understanding, it is very difficult unless you have already mastered some other subset of the IT field. My hope is that with my CCNA I can begin a career in networking and then transition into security later in my career.

This is where the problem begins. I had been keeping my eye on the job market while studying for my CCNA, and the job market in Los Angeles for entry level networking jobs didn’t look very promising. I thought perhaps it was only temporary, and so I continued with my studies and got my CCNA anyways. Now I am on the job market and I cannot find anything to even apply to. I know a lot of people suggest NOC jobs, but there don’t seem to be many in LA, and I can’t work the night shift. Most of the jobs I see are for network engineer positions that require many years of experience. There are 2 network engineer positions for every 1 network admin. Yikes…top heavy. To make things even murkier, there is a new position being created in my department to do systems/infrastructure and I have heard my name attached to that position. The job will be posted in sometime this summer.

What would you do in this position? If I can’t find a networking position in the next couple of months, should I just take the systems job?

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Comments

anhtran35

Hmmmmmmm. I think IRIS is in the same location. What is the job market like for entry level NAs?

Node Man

Hi Emek!
Two things come to my mind:

1 ) "The job will be posted in sometime this summer."
- IMO never stay around for a potential job. I have wasted years waiting for those.

2) "I thought perhaps it was only temporary"
- This is anacotal, but it seems many great jobs/careers in IT begin as temporary.

NOC-Ninja

What are you trying to go for in IT sec?
Pentesting?
Vulnerability scanning?
Firewall / VPN?
IDS logs scanning?
Forensic?
Policy maker?

Its huge.

emek

Node Man wrote: »

Hi Emek!
Two things come to my mind:

1 ) "The job will be posted in sometime this summer."
- IMO never stay around for a potential job. I have wasted years waiting for those.

2) "I thought perhaps it was only temporary"
- This is anacotal, but it seems many great jobs/careers in IT begin as temporary.

I am of the same mind set of never waiting around for a potential job. That being said, it's May, and hiring tends to slow in the summer. I may be forced to make a decision if the opportunity presents itself before I can find anything.

Params7

If the systems job comes through, go for it. Any networkers who have systems experience have lots of value. People who can work with Unix systems or scripting are much needed in Networking. Specially if you want to specialize in Security, knowledge of systems and networking will give you the edge.

Keep applying for networking positions every now and then. Don't go overboard/get disheartened. In the meantime, brush up on your chances for that systems job by studying/labbing for it and get that job if you can.

emek

NOC-Ninja wrote: »

What are you trying to go for in IT sec?
Pentesting?
Vulnerability scanning?
Firewall / VPN?
IDS logs scanning?
Forensic?
Policy maker?

Its huge.

It's hard to say exactly without more exposure to the field, but I think I would be best suited for the defensive/operation side of things. Pen testing sounds sexy but I don't think I would be good at it. Conversely, forensics and policy making sound boring. Ideally, I'd love to end up in a network security role someday.

tmrt.wld@gmail.com

Hi guys
I pass A+ Network+ and Security +.
I have no experience. Can i pass CASP only by reading material without experience?
Tamrat

soccarplayer29

@trmt.wld@gmail.com It's probably best to start your own thread to get a discussion going on that. First look through other CASP threads to see what other's experience was with the CASP and what they used to study.

emek

I had an interview today for a System/Network admin position. Please wish me luck! I had to apply to 20 or so jobs to get this one interview.

sillymcnasty

emek wrote: »

I had an interview today for a System/Network admin position. Please wish me luck! I had to apply to 20 or so jobs to get this one interview.

That’s all? I wish I had that success rate lol

trojin

Good luck man!

renacido

emek wrote: »

It's hard to say exactly without more exposure to the field, but I think I would be best suited for the defensive/operation side of things. Pen testing sounds sexy but I don't think I would be good at it. Conversely, forensics and policy making sound boring. Ideally, I'd love to end up in a network security role someday.

If security interests you, you don't have to be "working in the field" to know what you'd like to do within the field. What interests you? Looking for bugs in software? Looking for evidence of evildoers in your network? Cracking a network or a web app? Keeping evil out of your network, and finding evil and eradicating it before it does damage? Playing detective and collecting/analyzing the evidence to figure out how a company's data was stolen?

There are free tools, free vulnerable images (for lab 'victim' machines), free hypervisors, free CTF challenges, free courses, free hackerspaces, etc., for learning about security, developing skills, trying things out. Tons of opportunity to get your feet wet without getting hired to do security work. In fact, many who actually work in security don't actually know much about it outside of their little niche, either because they ended up in that role via luck/circumstance (their non-security job morphed into a security role because of re-org, downsizing, new equipment/tool deployments, etc) or they read a silly salary survey and they saw what the average CISSP earns (although that salary is due to the high amount of security experience the average CISSP has, not the cert itself). Those folks who are in security by accident for just for the money don't usually go far in the field, with some exceptions. Those who have rewarding (personally and financially) successful security careers are in the field because they LOVE it (like I do).

So, that said, my advice is, find what lights a fire and makes you want to learn all you can and tinker, experiment, try everything as much as you legally can. Once you're doing that, getting hired somewhere to do it for a living gets a LOT easier.

At the entry level in security, the #1 attribute of a candidate that gets hired is that it is obvious that they have genuine passion for security work. Yes, a solid IT background is also very important, and skills and experience are also important factors in evaluating an applicant, but the one thing of all the aforementioned qualities that CAN'T be trained on the job is PASSION for security.

Hope this helps.

emek

I got word today that they want to bring me in for a second interview.

The recruiter said that out of 5 candidates, I was the only one extended a 2nd interview. They also made me do a lab (unannounced) in the first interview, and apparently I was the only one who scored well on it.