Need Advice.

Well a quick summary about me: currently 20 years old, living in the SF Bay Area in California, never had a job, working on degree in networking/communications management. Also have A+, Network+, MCP, Exchange 2003 certified.

It's depressing when I've applied for over 12 jobs on Craigslist and no response except 1 from FireDog. Apparently I had 2 interviews with them. I never got a call back. Called a few days later, no response from the supervisor. Called today and his response was "sorry Mike we went the other way"... Dang at least if you don't want me tell me right away!

What would you do in my position? Keep searching for an A+ type of job, or continue to receiving my MCDST?

Thanks and have a nice evening. I'm going to have a cigar now haha.

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kripsak

Keep on chuggin man! On average, I've sent 40 resumes a month, and I'll get 3 interviews from those.

Slowhand

Keep at it. I live in the same area, get very much the same responses with my 5+ years experience and certs. You have to keep sending out those resumes, and don't just look at Craigslist. There's Monster, Dice, Careerbuilder, etc. Although, I will admit that I've gotten pretty much all my previous IT jobs through Craigslist.

As for what type of work you're setting yourself up for, this is my take: don't settle for Geeksquad or Firedog. You may end up doing some helpdesk work for a while, that's how life goes. But, you don't have to stay there, especially if you spend some time buffing up your skills and getting those certs. You spend a year, possibly two, doing a "less than ideal" helpdesk-type of job, them move on up to a sysadmin or network admin position. Another way to go is to hit the contract-jobs as hard as you can. It can (sometimes) be a little easier to land a short-term contract position with little experience. Even 3 or 6 month contracts will look good on your resume.

And, of course, if you're still hurting for work, drop me a private message. I have plenty of associates and friends in the Bay to possibly give you a hand with getting a foot in the door with their respective companies. Warning, you must enjoy working with SERIOUS geeks.

Mmartin_47

Slowhand wrote:

Keep at it. I live in the same area, get very much the same responses with my 5+ years experience and certs. You have to keep sending out those resumes, and don't just look at Craigslist. There's Monster, Dice, Careerbuilder, etc. Although, I will admit that I've gotten pretty much all my previous IT jobs through Craigslist.

As for what type of work you're setting yourself up for, this is my take: don't settle for Geeksquad or Firedog. You may end up doing some helpdesk work for a while, that's how life goes. But, you don't have to stay there, especially if you spend some time buffing up your skills and getting those certs. You spend a year, possibly two, doing a "less than ideal" helpdesk-type of job, them move on up to a sysadmin or network admin position. Another way to go is to hit the contract-jobs as hard as you can. It can (sometimes) be a little easier to land a short-term contract position with little experience. Even 3 or 6 month contracts will look good on your resume.

And, of course, if you're still hurting for work, drop me a private message. I have plenty of associates and friends in the Bay to possibly give you a hand with getting a foot in the door with their respective companies. Warning, you must enjoy working with SERIOUS geeks.

Thanks Slowhand. Yeah all the jobs I've been applying for so far are help-desk. I think I should get my MCDST so I can me considered? Even though it's not asked for. In the meantime if I do land a job working for help-desk I can study on the side towards MCSE. Basically it's hard finding a first job that's related to what your studying. Firedog and Geek Squad are no longer options. Can't you believe it's 70% sales and rest is removing spyware? I was thinking earlier about joining so I can gain experience and hopefully move up to a mobile-tech, but apparently I was beling "led-on".

gravyjoe

Martin, I know what you're going through. I'm from the Bay Area too, East Bay to be exact. There are a lot of tech jobs in the Bay, but a LOT of candidates too. It took me 6 months to find a full time help desk job. Before this job, I sent about 15 resumes a day to employers. Sometimes I would get just one reply back, sometimes none. I went through more than 20 interviews before I found this job, rejection after rejection. It can do damage to your self-esteem. Just know that other people are going through the same thing as you Martin. Don't let it get you down.

Slowhand brought up some good points. Go to those websites that he mentioned. Those are the best ones. A great way to find a job is to network with people. Slowhand is willing to introduce you to some friends of his that are in the tech business. If possible, i think you should take him up on the offer. Opportunities like this don't come up often.

If you like, if I hear about any opportunities in the future, I can let you know about it. Unfortunately, I don't know about any at this time. Just keep going. You'll find something

Mmartin_47

gravyjoe wrote:

Martin, I know what you're going through. I'm from the Bay Area too, East Bay to be exact. There are a lot of tech jobs in the Bay, but a LOT of candidates too. It took me 6 months to find a full time help desk job. Before this job, I sent about 15 resumes a day to employers. Sometimes I would get just one reply back, sometimes none. I went through more than 20 interviews before I found this job, rejection after rejection. It can do damage to your self-esteem. Just know that other people are going through the same thing as you Martin. Don't let it get you down.

Slowhand brought up some good points. Go to those websites that he mentioned. Those are the best ones. A great way to find a job is to network with people. Slowhand is willing to introduce you to some friends of his that are in the tech business. If possible, i think you should take him up on the offer. Opportunities like this don't come up often.

If you like, if I hear about any opportunities in the future, I can let you know about it. Unfortunately, I don't know about any at this time. Just keep going. You'll find something

Yeah man just applied for this job out in downtown Oakland. 5 minutes from BART! WHOO HOO! Hopefully something will come up. Just curious what city you from?

gravyjoe

I'm from Walnut Creek. If you get that job, that'd be sweet! BART is the best way to travel, especially during commute hours. Do you live in Oakland?

Mmartin_47

I don't actually. I live in Hercules, it's towards Martinez heading on Highway4.

gravyjoe

Hercules is nice. When I went to Pinole Jr. High, I knew a lot of people from Hercules. I lived in San Pablo though. From Hercules to Oakland on public transportation is a big commute. Unless they have a WestCat bus that goes from the Transit center in Hercules to the Del Norte Bart station. That'd be nice.

Mmartin_47

gravyjoe wrote:

Hercules is nice. When I went to Pinole Jr. High, I knew a lot of people from Hercules. I lived in San Pablo though. From Hercules to Oakland on public transportation is a big commute. Unless they have a WestCat bus that goes from the Transit center in Hercules to the Del Norte Bart station. That'd be nice.

I went to Pinole Jr. High too. Until Hercules Middle/High was built I was transferred to there. I lived in San Pablo before too, near the Grand Prix Car Wash. They do have a WestCat that runs from the transit center. A lot of people park there. My house is just down from there anyways towards the new homes. Not the victorian style, the other side.

drthtater

Just keep trucking.

The company I currently work for called me back ONE YEAR after I applied for a job. They had hired someone else previously, and that didn't work out. They went through someone else that didn't work out, then called me, looking at a now outdated resume.

When they called I couldn't even remember applying for the position. so I went to check on it and sure enough, I had a log in at they're website. So I did 2 interviews over the phone, and on my way to an interview with another company, they called me and made the offer. They offered me 5k more than I was asking, and I took it, turned my car around, and went home.

Been here a year and a half, and it's the best job I've ever had.

Mishra

You are going to need to spice up your resume if you aren't getting call backs.

The problem with the no/low experience resumes is that it looks very dry because there isn't a whole lot you can add. You need to be able to stick out from the floods of resumes that the companies receive. There are ways to fix that.

Look at getting more certifications to liven up your resume. Things I would avoid is getting certs like Exchange if you have no experience. I probably wouldn't even list it on the resume because it would just confuse the person reading your resume.

Also go get experience. This is the most important. Look for internships to participate in. Ask all your friends if the local churches need free computer help, or if anyone is interested in free work. Free work does not mean you go to your Uncle's house and fix his printer. Looks for things on a bigger scale you could actually list in your resume.

Good luck.

Mmartin_47

I think by adding MCDST I will most likely increase my chances. Hardest part about working is finding the first job that's related to my major. Of course I will keep trying. If all else fails go to my college and see about an internship. Wish I could work with my father though, he works in a datacenter here for a power/electric company. But I have no chance since their mainly a unix environment. Only useful there if I know SAP, Oracle, or SQL. Ah well.

Slowhand

I know how it goes with the retail-tech positions. I worked for the Big Red Retard (CompUSA) for quite a while, in their techshop. As for the MCDST, I'd say skip that altogether and focus on your MCSE. The MCSE will have a lot more weight during interviews, it has a lot more industry recognition, so I don't think that the desktop cert will help you as much as you think. Stick with the MCSE plan, then get yourself up to MCITP: Enterprise Administrator. Since you want to move up to sysadmin work in the future, you don't need to spend the extra time on helpdesk-focused certs.

Good luck with that job in Oakland, that would be a perfect situation, commute-wise. And keep on posting up your resume, keep putting it out there. And, of course, don't underestimate the power of a well-written resume. Places like Monster and Dice offer services to help you spruce up how your resume looks and how it's formatted, and there are countless resources available if you search Google for "writing resume", or something like that.

Mmartin_47

Slowhand wrote:

I know how it goes with the retail-tech positions. I worked for the Big Red Retard (CompUSA) for quite a while, in their techshop. As for the MCDST, I'd say skip that altogether and focus on your MCSE. The MCSE will have a lot more weight during interviews, it has a lot more industry recognition, so I don't think that the desktop cert will help you as much as you think. Stick with the MCSE plan, then get yourself up to MCITP: Enterprise Administrator. Since you want to move up to sysadmin work in the future, you don't need to spend the extra time on helpdesk-focused certs.

Good luck with that job in Oakland, that would be a perfect situation, commute-wise. And keep on posting up your resume, keep putting it out there. And, of course, don't underestimate the power of a well-written resume. Places like Monster and Dice offer services to help you spruce up how your resume looks and how it's formatted, and there are countless resources available if you search Google for "writing resume", or something like that.

What I'm afraid is that when I do receive my MCSE, people will not want to hire me because lack of work experience. My way is to become MCDST for a while, and hopefully then maybe with the same company, start performing MCSA/MCSE work. At least I can build trust. I don't know if this works in the real world. Any ideas?

Slowhand

Mmartin_47 wrote:

What I'm afraid is that when I do receive my MCSE, people will not want to hire me because lack of work experience. My way is to become MCDST for a while, and hopefully then maybe with the same company, start performing MCSA/MCSE work. At least I can build trust. I don't know if this works in the real world. Any ideas?

It's up to you, which you feel more comfortable with. My advice stands, simply because I've seen lots and lots of work asking for MCSE, but next to none specifically requiring MCDST. As for not hiring you due to work experience, that usually applies more to mid-to-advanced positions, like sysadmin or network administrator. Landing a helpdesk or jr. admin position requires less experience, and the certs will help you.

Good luck, whichever path you choose to follow.

Mmartin_47

Slowhand wrote:

Mmartin_47 wrote:

What I'm afraid is that when I do receive my MCSE, people will not want to hire me because lack of work experience. My way is to become MCDST for a while, and hopefully then maybe with the same company, start performing MCSA/MCSE work. At least I can build trust. I don't know if this works in the real world. Any ideas?

It's up to you, which you feel more comfortable with. My advice stands, simply because I've seen lots and lots of work asking for MCSE, but next to none specifically requiring MCDST. As for not hiring you due to work experience, that usually applies more to mid-to-advanced positions, like sysadmin or network administrator. Landing a helpdesk or jr. admin position requires less experience, and the certs will help you.

Good luck, whichever path you choose to follow.

Well right now I'm leaning towards Server+, hopefully trying to pull a job working at a datacenter doing cabling type sort of work, and repairing servers. So far nothing =(

Course looks easy. I have a large library of books online for free provided by my past IT certification school. I don't know. I'm willing to work for any amount of $ provided now. It's just real depressing to me. No idea how to handle this.

nel

Hi,

Everyone goes through this at an early stage so keep at it.

Going from what you read you need to be realistic and take one step at a time. No disrespect but server+ is unlikely to get you a job repairing servers (or at least from what ive seen), jobs like these usually come higher up the chain.

If i were you i would start on your MCSE like slowhand recommended. Like you say people could look down on you for not having the experiance but a large number of the people looking at cv's from job posts are recruiters who dont know much indepth apart from the "buzz words" they look for - MCSE being one of them. So it MAY lead to more interview responses but like verything in life you have to accompany it with the correct qualifications. Your mcse will also allow you to learn alot of info concerning the MS infrastructure which will be a great learning curve for you.

most people Starting out begin at the helpdesk level. Although not the greatest job in the world it gets your foot in the door, gives you great experiance not only technically but communications skills etc also. So i would recommend looking here. You will probably get more responses too.

Im not sure what its like in the US but you could consider contract work for the short term on things like desktops rollouts etc. Again a good start and something strong to put on your CV.

Remember everything is a stepping stone and everyone starts at the bottom.

Keep at it as im sure it will work out!

Mmartin_47

nel wrote:

Hi,

Everyone goes through this at an early stage so keep at it.

Going from what you read you need to be realistic and take one step at a time. No disrespect but server+ is unlikely to get you a job repairing servers (or at least from what ive seen), jobs like these usually come higher up the chain.

If i were you i would start on your MCSE like slowhand recommended. Like you say people could look down on you for not having the experiance but a large number of the people looking at cv's from job posts are recruiters who dont know much indepth apart from the "buzz words" they look for - MCSE being one of them. So it MAY lead to more interview responses but like verything in life you have to accompany it with the correct qualifications. Your mcse will also allow you to learn alot of info concerning the MS infrastructure which will be a great learning curve for you.

most people Starting out begin at the helpdesk level. Although not the greatest job in the world it gets your foot in the door, gives you great experiance not only technically but communications skills etc also. So i would recommend looking here. You will probably get more responses too.

Im not sure what its like in the US but you could consider contract work for the short term on things like desktops rollouts etc. Again a good start and something strong to put on your CV.

Remember everything is a stepping stone and everyone starts at the bottom.

Keep at it as im sure it will work out!

Well reason why I want to work now, and put my MCSE on the side for now is because I ran into a few family problems. Parents are getting divorced (2nd time). They were re-married not too long ago but problems came along the road. My father can't support me any longer due to bills and so and so. Plus I have 2 little sisters that he needs to take care of. So far nothing turned up job-wise at least. I can't really get much I guess. All I have is my high school diploma, A+, Network+, MCP. Either I can find a job hopefully as a data center operator or desktop support. That's why I'm pretty fixed on studying everyday and trying to hurry up hopefully landing one of those 2 jobs I mentioned.

human151

would you be willing to move?

Dude you live in like IT central there are so many "Geeks" in your area. Id imagine theres CCNP's doing structured cabling jobs out there

You may have better luck in another market, one where the candidate market is not so saturated with qualified and over qualified candidates.

I hope everything works out.

and dude, never had a job? I was working@ MCDonalds when I was 16.

Mmartin_47

human151 wrote:

would you be willing to move?

Dude you live in like IT central there are so many "Geeks" in your area. Id imagine theres CCNP's doing structured cabling jobs out there

You may have better luck in another market, one where the candidate market is not so saturated with qualified and over qualified candidates.

I hope everything works out.

and dude, never had a job? I was working@ MCDonalds when I was 16.

Well lucky you! My parents didn't want me to work back when I was in high school. They supported me well until now...

human151

didnt mean any offense.

Consider yourself lucky but that may be part of the problem. My employer would never hire anyone who never had a job, atleast not in my department.

My advice, its going to be hard getting into IT, with your lack of experience. I would get a job at best buy/circuit city/frys Even if you cant get into firedog/geeksquad. Just become one of the sales associates. Being a PC sales associate @ frys would be a cool first job, or try to become a sales associate in the PC component dept selling RAM and Hard drives and such. Its sort of related and would definetly look better on the resume than not having anything.

Mmartin_47

human151 wrote:

didnt mean any offense.

Consider yourself lucky but that may be part of the problem. My employer would never hire anyone who never had a job, atleast not in my department.

My advice, its going to be hard getting into IT, with your lack of experience. I would get a job at best buy/circuit city/frys Even if you cant get into firedog/geeksquad. Just become one of the sales associates. Being a PC sales associate @ frys would be a cool first job, or try to become a sales associate in the PC component dept selling RAM and Hard drives and such. Its sort of related and would definetly look better on the resume than not having anything.

Heh, believe it or not I just applied for both. Best Buy didn't want to hire me because I failed their "personality quiz" and FireDog appeared that they wanted to, unil they never called me back for a week. Called 3 times until I finally was able to talk to a supervisor, and I've been rejected.

Then again I can always re-apply for a different location.

Slowhand

human151 wrote:

Dude you live in like IT central there are so many "Geeks" in your area. Id imagine theres CCNP's doing structured cabling jobs out there

I must have missed that memo. I was working as a systems engineer for a large datacenter/tier-1 ISP before I had my CCNA.

jarjar

I wish I had that magic answer for you because I know how you feel for at one time I too sat in that very place. It is painful and very disheartening, but keep your chin up because persistence is just as important, if not more important, then skill. At one time in my life I couldn't get hired by CompUSA. I knew some of the monkeys who worked there and they didn't know the difference between ATA and SCSI. Then I got a job at a large company. 4 years later I am the lead everything guy there (Computer, Server, VOIP, network, etc...). STICK WITH IT! And make sure you're there to pick me up after we merge this winter and they fire my keyboard pounding ass.

Mmartin_47

Heh CompUsa.. reminds me. Went down to one by Emeryville. SlowHand knows what I'm talking about. They went out of business! Found out their only located in Florida now. Heh.

jarjar

Mmartin_47 wrote:

Heh CompUsa.. reminds me. Went down to one by Emeryville. SlowHand knows what I'm talking about. They went out of business! Found out their only located in Florida now. Heh.

There is a reason Fark has a "Florida" tag....

Mmartin_47

Right now all I can do is blame myself for not gaining experience while still in high school. But I think I will continue my server+ just to see if anyone wants a datacenter operator. Believe it or not to take the exam its $240!!! Oh my!

Better not fail this one. After that will continue towards MCDST. I'm on the vista course right now and sort of put my MCSA/MCSE towards on the side for now. 2 things I lack are: previous work experience at all, and a college degree. Both are in progress, but number 1 is failing so far.

Mmartin_47

Slowhand wrote:

Mmartin_47 wrote:

What I'm afraid is that when I do receive my MCSE, people will not want to hire me because lack of work experience. My way is to become MCDST for a while, and hopefully then maybe with the same company, start performing MCSA/MCSE work. At least I can build trust. I don't know if this works in the real world. Any ideas?

It's up to you, which you feel more comfortable with. My advice stands, simply because I've seen lots and lots of work asking for MCSE, but next to none specifically requiring MCDST. As for not hiring you due to work experience, that usually applies more to mid-to-advanced positions, like sysadmin or network administrator. Landing a helpdesk or jr. admin position requires less experience, and the certs will help you.

Good luck, whichever path you choose to follow.

Heh believe it or not Comcast in Concord is hiring for a desktop technician. Gave that a shot. Hopefully something will happen. I do meet their qualifications.

jarjar

Mmartin_47 wrote:

Right now all I can do is blame myself for not gaining experience while still in high school. But I think I will continue my server+ just to see if anyone wants a datacenter operator. Believe it or not to take the exam its $240!!! Oh my!

Better not fail this one. After that will continue towards MCDST. I'm on the vista course right now and sort of put my MCSA/MCSE towards on the side for now. 2 things I lack are: previous work experience at all, and a college degree. Both are in progress, but number 1 is failing so far.

Excellent!

human151

Slowhand wrote:

human151 wrote:

Dude you live in like IT central there are so many "Geeks" in your area. Id imagine theres CCNP's doing structured cabling jobs out there

I must have missed that memo. I was working as a systems engineer for a large datacenter/tier-1 ISP before I had my CCNA.

you ever hear of sarcasm?