What doors opened for you after obtaining CCNP?

I'm studying for CCNP at the moment and just wondered what doors opened for you guys after obtaining the CCNP?

Was there a significantly noticable increased interest in you from prospective employers when applying for jobs?

I know it depends on experience and the person etc but I'm experienced in network support and generally do CCNP level work at the moment.

Cheers

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dtlokee

If I see a resume where a candidate has a CCNP with the supporting experience (2+ years in networking) I will usually give them a call, if they have a CCNP without any experience I typically won't call them. I won't hire a person with a CCNP for a lower level position even if they are willing to work for less money because I know they won't be long term. These are some of the things I have learned when it comes to hiring certified people.

What does that mean to you? The doors are there to open if you have the experience to back up the certification (I believe you do).

malcybood

dtlokee wrote:

If I see a resume where a candidate has a CCNP with the supporting experience (2+ years in networking) I will usually give them a call, if they have a CCNP without any experience I typically won't call them. I won't hire a person with a CCNP for a lower level position even if they are willing to work for less money because I know they won't be long term. These are some of the things I have learned when it comes to hiring certified people.

What does that mean to you? The doors are there to open if you have the experience to back up the certification (I believe you do).

Thanks for the feedback dtlokee.

I'm sitting at around 18 months solid network support experience on an 2000 user network, but 5 years support exp in total (field and systems support) - It's a good mix I think.

I'm slowly but surely building up my project experience including an MPLS WAN migration this year on time/budget and 1st q 2009 an IPSec VPN rollout to potentially 250 DSL sites along with a VoIP system upgrade.

I also support all operational aspects of the network infrastructure as the only "network guy" in my team, (the other 3 are server specialists). These include checkpoint firewalls/secureclient VPN, IPSec site-to-site (cisco ASA's/877's), LAN/WAN infrastructure, VoIP system & redundant internet connectivity (F5 Link controller Big-IP's used as opposed to BGP)

I'm pretty confident the CCNP will only do good things for me and open doors. It's interesting to hear from other people's point of view what effect it had on their career and from hiring manager's points of view, as to how they rate/value the cert with experience.

empc4000xl

dtlokee wrote:

If I see a resume where a candidate has a CCNP with the supporting experience (2+ years in networking) I will usually give them a call, if they have a CCNP without any experience I typically won't call them. I won't hire a person with a CCNP for a lower level position even if they are willing to work for less money because I know they won't be long term. These are some of the things I have learned when it comes to hiring certified people.

What does that mean to you? The doors are there to open if you have the experience to back up the certification (I believe you do).

I finally heard somebody admit to it,lol. I was told if you had those certs and not much to back them, to not put them on your resume. Just put the basic CCNA, N+ stuff and work from there. Now I've finally heard it for real

kryolla

I expect to be able to find more work but less pay with my CCNP so I am using it as a backup in case I get laid off. I am already overpaid in my current position. If I don't get laid off then I will continue my study for CCIE and find a job with an equivalent salary if not more. I have about 9 years in my current job and done everything from capacity planning / design, implementation, and project management. Started out as a tech and doubled my salary. Unfortunately most of it is vendor specific that not a lot of companies use another reason why I am studying Cisco

nel

Good luck with the np Malcolm mate. I think your def doing the right thng with the experiance you have

6stitches

I wonder about this myself... I am pretty much branded as a unix person. I did network security for about 2 years, because the appliance ran on BSD. (a flavor of unix) I didn't know anything about switching, I learn a whole lot during that time and pass the bcmsn.

I think MikeJ said something about "get a job with a Cisco Business Partner" in another post. I think that would be great to get some real experience, question is would they hire someone like me after the ccnp? basically a senior unix admin with 10 years of experience and some networking experience.

It sucks that it's hard to break into high level anything, and that you are force to specialised in one thing to move higher. I feel like once I have ccnp, I have to make a choice

1) go towards ccie and I pretty much have to leave unix behind for a long time if not forever
2) back to unix and have the ccnp hanging there on my resume like a stub router never to be developed further

I don't see many companies hiring wellrounded folks.

gorebrush

I am hoping that a CCNP will net me a better paid job.

I currently have 3 years as a Systems Administrator and 1 year as a Senior Systems Administrator, but have 5 years in IT altogether.

I have an MCSE and CCNA, but hoping a CCNP will get me away from servers and more into networking...

That's my belief anyhow.

miller811

gorebrush wrote:

I have an MCSE and CCNA, but hoping a CCNP will get me away from servers and more into networking...

That's my belief anyhow.

Follow your dream

IT Man

I often wonder the same thing. I have had my CCNA for a little over a year now and I have been working in a network support role for about 10 months. I been thinking should I begin that journey now or give it a little while longer.

APA

started getting plenty more phone calls from employers...the minute I started handing out my update resume with CCNP added to the list of qual's.....

Opened up the door at one of the larger ISP's in Australia for me..... they wouldn't even have looked at me if I didn't have the experience and Qual's....

EdTheLad

I had 7 years networking experience but not in Cisco.I completed ccna/ccnp/ccip and had a hard time getting work.It would have been easier to take off the ccnp/ccip.I was lucky i had solid experience in networking that ultimately landed me a job.
With all the dumping going on these certs are pretty useless without specific experience.You will definitely have a better chance with ccna only, adding the ccnp just starts alarm bells ringing.

gorebrush

miller811 wrote:

gorebrush wrote:

I have an MCSE and CCNA, but hoping a CCNP will get me away from servers and more into networking...

That's my belief anyhow.

Follow your dream

The dream is two CCIE's

6stitches

EdTheLad wrote:

You will definitely have a better chance with ccna only, adding the ccnp just starts alarm bells ringing.

that's going to be the case for me, unix background with ccnp may ring the bells too.

dtlokee

gorebrush wrote:

miller811 wrote:

gorebrush wrote:

I have an MCSE and CCNA, but hoping a CCNP will get me away from servers and more into networking...

That's my belief anyhow.

Follow your dream

The dream is two CCIE's

At the same time?

redwarrior

Hmmm...

"You know what I'd do if I had a million dollars? 2 CCIE's at the same time."

(It's not so gross if you consider that I'm a female.)

mikearama

EdTheLad wrote:

You will definitely have a better chance with ccna only, adding the ccnp just starts alarm bells ringing.

I think this is the first time since I joined this board that I totally disagree with you Ed. I know that means little to you... but shoot, this comment is ridiculous.

Malcy's got 5 years IT experience, 18 months of it solely in networks. That seems to satisfy your requirement of "specific experience", even if not with a boatload of it. What possible reason would justify him not starting his NP journey?

By your math, he shouldn't even dream about the IE... if the NP gets bells ringing, the IE will get sirens blaring.

/opinion

EdTheLad

I never said dont do the cert, i said dont put it on the resume.Without specific experience working with Cisco equipment the ccnp will do more harm than good.The ccnp demands a certain salary and is supposed to be achieved while on the job.The ccna is what is needed to get a foot in the door.
Do i think its a crazy situation? yes, everyone is different and should be judged differently, are HR departments and agents on the look out for paper certs? yes.
At the end of the day i'm talking from experience, in the end i got lucky, if i was to do it again i would start looking for a job with only ccna on my resume, if after a month i had no success its easy to add ccnp and resend to the same companies, cant really work this the other way.
I had 7 years networking experience, i was hitting the "over qualified" barrier for ccna jobs and the "no cisco experience" barrier for ccnp jobs.
IE is a different story as you have proven yourself in the lab,IE written same story.

APA

most companies do hear alarm bells when they see CCNP, MCSE etc... on resumes, due to the brain **** based techs.....

What most companies will do though is bring you in for an interview and grill you with all sorts of tech based questions...... Which is where you prove to them your worth and eliminate any alarm bells they may have been hearing....

If you fail then at least they gave you a shot..... and they covered their arses....

Well at least that's how my most recent interview went... I'm not sure if they heard alarm bells but they certainly grilled me!!!! and from what I heard the reason I got the job was because I proved to them I had the theory behind me (only one to have answered all questions) and could cope when under pressure....

So Ed is right in a sense for making that statement..... but as I said above most companies don't simply ignore you because they hear the sirens......

just my 2c

malcybood

I don't think Ed's comments were directly aimed at me but I do have to say, what were you networking if you had 7 years in networking and a CCNP/CCIP and employers were still skeptical as to your experience?

That kind of indicates you weren't working in comms based roles during that 7 years, or that comms was a very small part of the roles which if that was the case you can understand why it was difficult. That's not really much different from someone working in desktop support, getting their CCNA and struggling to find an entry level job in networking, in the same context anyway.

Everyone I know in the industry who has a networking role (not server admin networking) supports the Cisco or whichever vendor comms/network infrastructure as a primary task along with other additional areas such as firewalls, VoIP etc.

My contacts in the service provider / managed services industry obviously get exposure to a larger variety of differently designed customer networks, although I wouldn't say that neccessarily means they understand the technology any greater / lesser than me or anybody else. It's all based on standards so if you're good, you will be able to interpret any network you walk into - anyway going off on a tangent there!

On the dumping subject, I think it would be easy to spot a CCNP dumper as the scope of complex questions you can ask them on the spot whilst expecting them to be able to answer is huge. If someone got a wrong answer or blanked once even twice at a push in an interview but gave a good detailed explanation on another subject they were asked about, then yeah they probably did just forget and need to look at a book to refresh the knowledge. It's when you get the vague answers or they blank for 4/5 questions the alarm bells would go off in my head.

I agree with certification pursuit, timing in your career is important to avoid becoming a paper cert holder. This is one of the reasons I never even thought about sitting my network+ or CCNA until I had about 3 years experience in desktop support and I was skimming the surface of networking, installing routers and switches in the field. The natural progression was to CCNA, as the CCNP is (almost 2 years later now actually - time flies) now with the project & support work I'm involved in these days.

Interesting posts guys, thanks

p.s. for the record my role is mainly Cisco focussed but I have a few other bases to cover which is just the nature of the job.

EdTheLad

malcybood wrote:

I don't think Ed's comments were directly aimed at me but I do have to say, what were you networking if you had 7 years in networking and a CCNP/CCIP and employers were still skeptical as to your experience?

That kind of indicates you weren't working in comms based roles during that 7 years, or that comms was a very small part of the roles which if that was the case you can understand why it was difficult. That's not really much different from someone working in desktop support, getting their CCNA and struggling to find an entry level job in networking, in the same context anyway.

My 7 years consisted of 2 years permanent and 5 contracting as a WAN engineer.I worked on Alcatel equipment, protocols atm/frame-relay,circuit emulation,ip,sdh etc lots of management stuff with unix boxes and snmp.I've worked all over the world,troubleshooting,providing training and have a hugh amount of experience, all in all i touched lots of different vendor equipment.
I was still getting blocked by agents, it was ridiculous, they said since i dont have any cisco experience working on a live cisco network it was impossible for them to put me forward for a cisco role. Eventually after about 2 months i got a break, my first interview with a company and i got the job, just happened to be with cisco, which still makes me laugh at the situation.
More and more companies are outsourcing the HR role to agents who dont have a clue, this is the problem.

GT-Rob

'NP has not opened any doors for me yet, however I have not tried to. I am sure if I really tried I would be able to move in my work or even find a better job, but my priorities have been elsewhere and my current job situation has been the best for me right now.

As for it hurting you, unless you have zero Cisco experience I can't see how it can hurt you. And if you do have zero experience, I don't know why you would do the CCNP anyway.

mikearama

A.P.A wrote:

most companies do hear alarm bells when they see CCNP, MCSE etc... on resumes, due to the brain **** based techs.....

What most companies will do though is bring you in for an interview and grill you with all sorts of tech based questions...... Which is where you prove to them your worth and eliminate any alarm bells they may have been hearing.

So they hear the bells, but bring you in for an interview anyway? Seems counter-productive, doesn't it?

Let's be clear... HR departments and recruiting firms LOVE certs. It's the quickest way for them to weed through the multitude of resumes and get to a short list quickly.

I think it's safe to say that almost all reputable companies will do a techy-type interview. Having a cert of two does not suddenly qualify someone for a tech interview, but someone with no certs gets to bypass it. That's ridiculous.

I believe, from my experience, that if the position's description calls for the NP, then the NP gets you the interview. If the min requirement is the NA, then the NP "may" overqualify you. But to not get the NP for any such reason is not prudent.

_maurice

+1

The only people who look down on certs are those that don't have them.

gorebrush

dtlokee wrote:

gorebrush wrote:

miller811 wrote:

gorebrush wrote:

I have an MCSE and CCNA, but hoping a CCNP will get me away from servers and more into networking...

That's my belief anyhow.

Follow your dream

The dream is two CCIE's

At the same time?

The mere thought makes me feel warm and fuzzy inside, but I don't think I could do that.

JohnDouglas

wonder if all this dumping makes a good case for getting ccie. my understanding is it's not possible to **** the lab.

mikearama

Hell yes, it's a good reason.

And then there's the detail that the salary average for an IE back in '06 (wish I had newer numbers) was $97,000 and change to $110,000 and change. Me thinks that's a relatively kewl reason.

jamesp1983

Dumpers will get weeded out in interviews. I used to compile tests for people I interviewed. I would just think of my experiences with the IOS and Server 2003 and compile tests based off that for applicants. I would ask them the test questions during the interview. It was fun watching them sweat.

mikej412

JohnDouglas wrote:

my understanding is it's not possible to **** the lab.

It's more accurate to say that you can't **** a CCIE Interview.

Sepiraph

My team has 3 CCIEs ... so relatively getting a CCNP would not be even seen as a big deal.

malcybood

Sepiraph wrote:

My team has 3 CCIEs ... so relatively getting a CCNP would not be even seen as a big deal.

Fair enough man, but relatively speaking this comment has nothing to do with the thread entitled "What doors opened for you after obtaining your CCNP"

I'm sure thousands of people are in this boat where they work with CCIE's myself included.

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