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career advice

fonque

what should I do?

I am currently employed as a teir 1 helpdesk technician, on a government contract.
However I am trying to make a lateral move into a NOC also supported by my company.
I aquired my CCNA in november. But now the NOC management is saying that I might not yet have enough experience. Without a networking related job, I dont see how im going to get anymore real world experience.

Should I go after my CCNP, or should a different career path?

my only IT experience right now is 7 years of helpdesk, and a CCNA.
Is there such thing as an entry level Network engineering job where a CCNA can get you in the door? Work ethic is a non-issue with me, I just dont know how get past this entry level barrier.

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Comments

fonque

i should also mention that I have been training at said noc for the last 8 weeks for 6 to 7 hours a week.
This was a hard blow for me to deal with because I have been struggling to find a career path I can get into that will allow for me to support my family, which right now I really cant.

liven

There are junior level network admin jobs out there.

Might not pay much more than you make now. But after a year or two of that, you can apply for network admin (no junior). Which should be a nice jump in pay. Then 2 to 5 years after that you can apply for senior network admin. That is usually really good money.

Of course all of this rides on continuing to bust your tail, and not giving up. The exact time frame are hard to say. But eventually it will pay off.

laidbackfreak

NOC can be funny places in terms of getting a break into them.....
tend to like experienced people and ex telcoms for some reason....

if it was me, id be beeving up my cv adding in your training period and applying for another job....

fonque

what is cv?

well I have an interview in front of a panel of "experts" to assess my technical know how on friday. Panel consists of mostly core engineers with CCIE's or equivalent levels of expertise.

cacharo

fonque wrote:

what is cv?

Before Dynamik does it....

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Curriculum_vitae

Kasor

It is not going hurt you if you want to go to CCNP. However, there no such thing anymore as junior on any position. Either you came with the experience or you not,..

IT support already reach the limited, but depend on your location. You might still find some good position.

I can tell you that there are many IT guy title with Network or System engineer, but they didn't know much.

Experience is the key.

Good Luck

fonque

resume, yeah I understand that. A
And my resume is filled with lots of helpdesk experience (not bad for a NOC position)
but I only have CCNA related personal training, never took a class.
I have only recently had to chance to even touch a real device.