Advice?

jamie88

Hello everybody,

I am hoping someone can help me with which Certification i should aim for.

i am currently working in the I.T sector in the Army and am due to leave in the summer. i work on Windows 2003 based networks[FONT=&quot] [/FONT] as a metropolitan area network manager ( 2nd Line). i hold no formal I.T qualifications ( lots of army I.T quals which are non transferable to the real world).
They have given me £1500ish to spend on getting myself on some I.T courses for when i leave and i need to choose what i want to do.

my preferred job in I.T would be some kind of support technician role.

is MCITP enterprise support technician seen as a good qualification to complete ?
some people keep telling me do A+ and N+ .are they seen as the same level as a Microsoft certification?
(sorry for my complete lack of knowledge on I.T qualifications, I've never had to think about them till now)

any kind of help would be very much appreciated.

Jamie

docrice

I would say dive right into the MCITP (or perhaps the MCSE / MCSA if you want to prove your existing knowledge). The A+ might be too low-level for you, as well as perhaps the Network+ (although this depends on how solid your networking foundation is; it might help, it might not ... it depends where your skills stand). The Security+, on the other hand, might be a good CompTIA cert to get.

jamie88

thanks for the info and quick reply.

i would like to do the MCSE but time is not on my side and when i ring training companies up some say its an old qual now and doing MCITP would be much better to get a job ( they may just be saying that to get this money i have!).

i've just had a look at A+ and N+ objectives and am going to do N+ to get the ball rolling.

docrice

The Network+ is probably something you can self-study for if you have enough working experience. Since you mentioned training companies, I'm assuming you're planning on getting training courses for these areas. I'd save the budget for maybe some Microsoft courses.

jamie88

yes, most of that money i was given has to be spent in I.T training companies which means i have to pick a certification and find the best price going, some are accelerated courses which i have to physically attend for a week or so and you take the test at the end of the week and some are internet based learning which span over 12 months. that why i dont want to get this wrong and pick some dead end course as i only have one shot.

i think am going to do what you mentioned on the N+ I've just done some quick practice tests and i understand most of the questions so that can be my after work project