How to land your first job herding packets

From the Packet Pushers blog, a post which is very near and dear to me because I am SO ready to leave the help desk hell/desktop support behind.

How To Land Your First Job Herding Packets

Comments about certs

Get some certifications. Tough. Expensive. Time-consuming. Do it if you can. Back when I was trying to break into the IT business, I refinanced my car to get the money for some IT training. Shortly thereafter, I wrecked that car and was upside down on the loan – a terrible scenario. You know what? It worked out. I got a certification, landed a contract gig because of it, and I’ve never looked back. I’ve nearly always been working on some certification or another throughout my career, and I have my eye on a couple for 2012. Why certifications? Because in IT, a certification is a (potential) demonstration that you have a proven level of competency about a specific product. Businesses use specific IT products, and need people that can make them work. Don’t give into the temptation to take a shortcut to certification, i.e. memorizing braindumps or buying test question databases. You don’t learn anything, and people like me will crush you during the interview process.

I need to look into this, get some good, reliable, cost-effective hosting:

Build a secure Internet-facing web server using Linux. Take a bare-metal server, get Linux running on it, configure Apache, and add PHP and mySQL support. Then get a small web site running using web pages you created yourself. Then stick an Internet-connected firewall in front of it and configure that firewall to allow the Internet to access the web server on the Linux box. Then configure a second web site on the same server. Use DNS names to access the sites. If you’ve never done this before, you will learn a ton of information that will help you in more ways than I can describe here. Once you’re happy with the Linux bit, do the whole thing again with Windows & IIS. Then do it again, except virtualized.

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Comments

the_Grinch

To put in my two cents, get a degree. Every job I have interviewed for (from small companies to huge ones to various government agencies) have come from having my degree and the coursework I did. Certs have helped, but it seems I've always heard more about my degree. Other then that, seems like some pretty solid advice!

JockVSJock

the_Grinch wrote: »

To put in my two cents, get a degree. Every job I have interviewed for (from small companies to huge ones to various government agencies) have come from having my degree and the coursework I did. Certs have helped, but it seems I've always heard more about my degree. Other then that, seems like some pretty solid advice!

Weird. Where I'm originally from (Omaha, NEB), a college degree means you can do entry level IT work, which typically fall under either help desk or business analysis.

What part of the country are you from?

vCole

the_Grinch wrote: »

To put in my two cents, get a degree. Every job I have interviewed for (from small companies to huge ones to various government agencies) have come from having my degree and the coursework I did. Certs have helped, but it seems I've always heard more about my degree. Other then that, seems like some pretty solid advice!

I'm 5/50 on this. I think you should get a degree, if you can afford to pay for it a.) Grants/Scholarships B.) Out of Pocket C.) Federal Loans not over $10k (not private loans) D.) Your company is willing to pay for it or someone else is.

No point in going into debt to start in IT making $25k/year. I'd much rather spend $150-$250/exam to get my foot in the door than $20k+ for a degree that I will then need to supplement with certs & experience. Also, start working in the IT field (or try) while in college if you go that route.

Bl8ckr0uter

vCole wrote: »

I'm 5/50 on this. I think you should get a degree, if you can afford to pay for it a.) Grants/Scholarships B.) Out of Pocket C.) Federal Loans not over $10k (not private loans) D.) Your company is willing to pay for it or someone else is.

No point in going into debt to start in IT making $25k/year. I'd much rather spend $150-$250/exam to get my foot in the door than $20k+ for a degree that I will then need to supplement with certs & experience. Also, start working in the IT field (or try) while in college if you go that route.

I agree with vCole. I don't think a degree is an end all be all. In most cases low to mid level certs will get you the same place a 2 year degree will (barring places who have special requirements that require degrees). I'll tell you this, I work at a multimillion dollar company as a tier II network engineer and I make very good money without a degree. I still get calls about jobs in my area. My certs allowed me to get jobs that built my experience which has carried me thus far. By the time I complete my AAS at the end of next year, I will have CCNP:S, CCNP, CWNA (and maybe CWSP) plus OSCP done. I can tell you that 100% of the job offers I get around then will not be because of my freshly minted degree.

Mind you I do think education is important but skills and experience are number one. Some places will throw your resume to the bit bucket if you don't have a degree but truthfully you probably don't want to work there anyway. If the worth of an employee to them is matriculation than there priorities are skewed. Get experience, anyway you can. Start a business if you must, take a noc job if you must but get experience and make sure it is progressive experience. No none wants a person who spent 10 years as a password reset ninja or stagnantly wasting away. IMO people with tons of experience and no skills are worse than people with no experience and very little skills. They have had time to get their act together but they were to busy doing what ever the hell they were doing.

At a previous place of unemployment we had many old timers like that. Mid to upper 30s doing the same thing they were doing when they were my age. They would say to me, "Oh I remember when you had to do X on windows 2000" or "I need one more exam to get my MCSE+I (at the time I had no idea what the +I meant)" and stuff like that. Be aggressive about your knowledge. Be willing to go the extra mile. In the 3 years (wow has it been that long) since I left there (on a chance with a contract job) I have seen more IT than they will probably ever seen and more than doubled my salary. It is possible. You just have to be willing to do it.

pham0329

the_Grinch wrote: »

To put in my two cents, get a degree. Every job I have interviewed for (from small companies to huge ones to various government agencies) have come from having my degree and the coursework I did. Certs have helped, but it seems I've always heard more about my degree. Other then that, seems like some pretty solid advice!

It depends on the job. If you're looking for a management position, then a degree is a must. However, for techie position like sys admin/network admin, network engineer, etc, you don't really need a degree. I'm still working on my associate degree, and have gotten plenty of jobs because of my certifications.

erpadmin

the_Grinch wrote: »

To put in my two cents, get a degree. Every job I have interviewed for (from small companies to huge ones to various government agencies) have come from having my degree and the coursework I did. Certs have helped, but it seems I've always heard more about my degree. Other then that, seems like some pretty solid advice!

In all fairness though, was it because of a college degree or because of your college degree? Drexel isn't exactly a crappy school....

Not disagreeing with you that any college degree will help....but some degrees in employer's minds are worth more than others.

In my case, I didn't need any certs/degrees...and I'm almost at six figures now. YMMV, of course, but I don't think I'd have pulled that off if I had to do that today.

erpadmin

pham0329 wrote: »

It depends on the job. If you're looking for a management position, then a degree is a must. However, for techie position like sys admin/network admin, network engineer, etc, you don't really need a degree. I'm still working on my associate degree, and have gotten plenty of jobs because of my certifications.

Bingo!!

Could not have said this any better.

JDMurray

Whether or not you need a degree ultimately depends on who is doing the hiring. Many tech companies require even a 2-year college degree just to establish a skills and knowledge baseline of their employees. Opting for certs over a degree is also opting yourself out of many job opportunities.

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

Some places will throw your resume to the bit bucket if you don't have a degree but truthfully you probably don't want to work there anyway.

That would include really cool places to work, like Google, Microsoft, HP, Verizon, Symantec, and the aerospace and defense industries.

My favorite recommendation in that article is "Stop Watching TV." Ever since Winter kicked in, I find myself coming home from work and hibernating on the couch in front of Netflix, or playing games on Steam, far more than I find myself reading my Cisco cert books and playing with Cisco equipment. I cite from the article:

"Get organized, get focused, get serious, and get determined. Make it happen. The television is a mind-sucking sinkhole of a way to waste your time when you have better things to be doing. The same goes for other pointless entertainments like video games."

NightShade1

pham0329 wrote: »

It depends on the job. If you're looking for a management position, then a degree is a must. However, for techie position like sys admin/network admin, network engineer, etc, you don't really need a degree. I'm still working on my associate degree, and have gotten plenty of jobs because of my certifications.

True that!!!

If you want techie pos i would recommend
My advice if getting certifications... thats how i landed in my first job which was noc technician l2
Never landed on helpdesk i landed directly on networking. In the interview they told me, i will give you a chance cause you got the ccna, if you do it good i will leave you permanently i did good

Geek1969

pham0329 wrote: »

It depends on the job. If you're looking for a management position, then a degree is a must. However, for techie position like sys admin/network admin, network engineer, etc, you don't really need a degree. I'm still working on my associate degree, and have gotten plenty of jobs because of my certifications.

+1 here. We just had this conversation at work. In our small IT department there are two Tier III engineers with 12 certs & 25 yrs experience combined but no degrees (yet). There are 6 Tier II Desktop people. Combined they have 2 Master's Degrees, 5 Bachelor's degrees and 3 certs.
I am mentoring them with A+, Net+, Security+ now.

NightShade1

Geek1969 wrote: »

+1 here. We just had this conversation at work. In our small IT department there are two Tier III engineers with 12 certs & 25 yrs experience combined but no degrees (yet). There are 6 Tier II Desktop people. Combined they have 2 Master's Degrees, 5 Bachelor's degrees and 3 certs.
I am mentoring them with A+, Net+, Security+ now.

How many years of experience does the tier 2 desktop people combined got? :P or at least 2 of them... because if they all got like 1 years of experience each heh.. owned...

the_Grinch

I am in the Philadelphia/NYC area. I will agree that experience/skills will and should trump a degree. Now that being said, as is often the case, how do you get experience when everyone wants it? I had a year and a half experience as a field tech, I was still getting few if any calls for jobs. Added the degree (along with coursework) to my resume and the sudden influx of interviews was measurable. In regards to whether it was where the degree was from vs just having a degree, I would say it was probably almost a 50/50 split. Locally, Drexel is very well known and that does present some chances at jobs that perhaps others wouldn't have been available. Two examples I could think of off the top of my head was a security position at a Philadelphia hospital. That position had always been a coop position (held by Drexel students) and one of the members on the team was a Drexel graduate/former coop student. Ultimately, they never converted the position to full time (saw it on the coop jobs board about two months after going through several interviews). The other one was the position as an Evidence Tech, this job was posted on the Drexel Student Jobs Board. Other then that, a lot of the places I have interviewed at, the coursework/degree was the focus of being selected.

I agree (since I've ultimately learned this lesson) it isn't beneficial to put yourself into an enormous amount of debt for a degree. With that being said, having a degree puts you at a distinct advantage in many IT sectors. I see a number of postings where it amounts to 6 years of experience or 2 years and a degree. Everyone will be different depending on any number of factors, but the other plus is my degree will never expire. I won't need to renew it, obviously that doesn't mean you can stop learning either, but it's nice to have once less renewal to worry about. If it can set you apart from the pack and you can do it without being killed by loans, in my opinion, better to do it sooner rather than later. Experience and a degree is a combo that is hard to beat.

Geek1969

NightShade1 wrote: »

How many years of experience does the tier 2 desktop people combined got? :P or at least 2 of them... because if they all got like 1 years of experience each heh.. owned...

6,5,5,3,2,1
My point was certs (direct IT knowledge) over degrees (General Education) knowledge. Everyone wants to hire both. Not everyone has both.

Bl8ckr0uter

JDMurray wrote: »

That would include really cool places to work, like Google, Microsoft, HP, Verizon, Symantec, and the aerospace and defense industries.

If you look at most of the job requirements at these places they place magic words at the end of their postings (degree or equivalent experience or similar language).

Google:

IP Network Engineer, Google Fiber - Mountain View in USA | Washington, D.C., United States and North America | Top Language Jobs

Microsoft:
Mountain View Network Engineer, Senior - Speech At Microsoft - 754356 Job - CA, 94035

Verizon:
Verizon - Job details

Defense:
General Dynamics Information Technology : Job Details
JobSeeker message
JobSeeker message

One thing that is important to note that development is a totally different market than "general IT". I think that general IT workers benefit from actual work experience far more than schooling simply because schools don't provide the same level of quality of experience that a person would experience in the real world for us (compared to developers). For an example, many schools don't have full test labs running with multivendor systems, geographically dispersed datacenters or multi-tenant networks. Some schools barely have a esxi server and a few switches for students to work on. But for our "development lab" we have plenty of copies of visual studio to give out to students. With development (imo) it is easier to have an environment that is closer to the "real world" because of the nature of development. Like I think that schools could better prepare developers to develop vs preparing general IT workers to work in IT. And I don't mean that in a bad way. This is just my opinion in my limited experience with school, developing and development classes. My development classes were way more worthwhile to the developers than my networking classes were for us in networking (maybe 2 other people). I think a lot of this has to do with history as computer science degrees (and software development which I know aren't really the same thing) are a lot more established than IT degrees and I personally think that many in academia turn there nose up to "functional degrees" (again in my opinion and in my experience with dealing with many professors who couldn't subnet, didn't know what the osi layer was, could tell me what a pathping is or how to create ACLs or even how to remove a virus from windows but were quick to rub their BSCS degrees in your face). I also understand that not everyone is like that.

But I said all that to say, none of it really matters if you can't hack it. If you can't development or you don't know your stuff then it doesn't matter what degree of cert you have. And this entire thread is (for lack of a better term) academic. There isn't one path nor one way to go about doing it. We can all give our opinions (based on our experiences or the experiences of others) and we can all go back and forth about the value of certs vs degrees like what has been done on this forum too many times (which I find funny since this is a technical certification forum). Know your market. Look at what people around you want and try to get as much of it as quickly as you can and make sure you can back up anything you say in an interview and your put on your resume and you cannot go wrong.

VAHokie56

That is a cool article ...on a side note packet pushers has a pretty decent podcast they put it out , I have been listening to it for about a year or so and enjoy it.

JDMurray

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

If you look at most of the job requirements at these places they place magic words at the end of their postings (degree or equivalent experience or similar language).

Also consider that the USA is currently experiencing an ongoing shortage of technical people, especially of those that work in networking. Hiring requirements will be lax to allow for a wide variety of candidates to be considered for open positions. When the job pool pendulum swings the other way, and there is a glut of technical people looking for jobs, you'll see the "degree required" monikers on the job postings once again.

petedude

the_Grinch wrote: »

I will agree that experience/skills will and should trump a degree.

Can't say I agree here. Experience is valuable and useful, but there should be a balance. I've seen people with plenty of experience but no certifications or education work their careers into a corner. I personally feel a highly skilled desktop tech is less useful without at least some minimal technical education (e.g. an A+ cert) as the ongoing consumerization of IT means there's more technical complexity that's hidden from users.

Bl8ckr0uter

JDMurray wrote: »

Also consider that the USA is currently experiencing an ongoing shortage of technical people, especially of those that work in networking. Hiring requirements will be lax to allow for a wide variety of candidates to be considered for open positions. When the job pool pendulum swings the other way, and there is a glut of technical people looking for jobs, you'll see the "degree required" monikers on the job postings once again.

So if a job doesn't require a degree the requirements are laxed? What will end this shortage? More degree holders and higher matriculation rates? Wouldn't that just flood the market with more people with degrees and make the degree even less valuable?

kriscamaro68

For the people that say you need a degree in this field I say BS. I have never needed one and I end up getting the job over the people who have degrees. I don't have problems getting calls for interviews as my resume is clear on my abilities. I also dont have problems getting the job because I can convey that I know what is on my resume and know what I am talking about. I am able to think on my feet and, I am able to answer the questions asked that are meant to test the interviewee's course of action when it comes to problems.

Degrees are worthless as far as I am concerned when it comes to technical knowledge. From everyone I have ever talked to that has a degree its always the same thing. They taught us stuff that is way outdated or they only taught part of how to do this or that. I do see some value in the other classes in getting you up to speed on math/english which I myself could use but, it has never stopped me from progressing my career. I am not one of those people that need college for people skills either as that in my opinion is just common sense on how to act in front of people. (unfortunely common sense is lacking these days with the majority of people) If you treat every interview as if you where talking face to face with the president (even though he is worthless in my opinion but that is another story) and are attentive then you probably just beat 65% of the people interviewing as like I said they lack common sense.

I dont know I guess maybe I was just raised different and respect people unlike most kids now days (I am only 27 so it wasn't that long ago) and this stuff just comes natural to me. All I know is I never needed a degree to get a job and certs never played a role either. My proven abilities and common sense is why I have never gone without a job.

JDMurray

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

So if a job doesn't require a degree the requirements are laxed?

"Laxed" as in "has been loosened up." A company formerly requiring degreed candidates may opt to interview non-degreed candidates if the available hiring pool is small. When there are more people looking for jobs than companies are hiring, degree can be required again to restrict those that can apply. Other factors can also be used, such as requiring less or more experience.

Bl8ckr0uter wrote: »

What will end this shortage? More degree holders and higher matriculation rates? Wouldn't that just flood the market with more people with degrees and make the degree even less valuable?

Degrees are not currency or a commodity. I don't hear people saying, "So many people have degrees from WGU that a WGU degree is worth anything anymore!"

The shortage of IT people will ease when the economy changes to the point where people are willing to risk moving to a new workplace, and new workers are comfortable with entering the field of IT because the money is good and jobs are available. It sounds like a Catch-22, but we went through this in 1993-94 and 2000-02 and came out OK.

Bl8ckr0uter

You (or rather your service) is the commodity. If only 1 person in the world can do what you do then you are going to be much more valuable than if 1Million people can. The degree loses its value (and I am talking about IT career oriented degrees, not degrees for enrichment or betterment of one's self) when it loses the ability to give you the expected return (ie a job). But the same can be said about anything. If all of a sudden the market was flooded with 1million more CCNAs with similar experience do you think the value of the CCNA would go up or down (assuming the demand stayed the same)? That's simple market economics.

If you think the problem of this "shortage" (which I don't buy entirely since I think it should read shortage of CHEAP workers who will work 75 hours a week with no OT and smile) is because people aren't willing to move to IT you are mistaken. Record numbers of people enrolling in CS programs would lead me to believe otherwise. People are willing to but the problem is with ability. Everyone can't (and shouldn't want to) work in IT. "Moving into IT" is as accessible as the nearest new horizons or community college offering MCSE/MCITP courses. The problem is being certified or having a degree doesn't mean that you know anything. I have talked to more people with MS degrees that didn't know anything than you would believe. I also know people with every cert under the sun didn't know anything either. Capability is something that is really only measured in practice, whether in home lab or on the job with the later being better.

I think that at the end of the day, what I said stands true: Know your market. Getting more certs won't hurt you. Getting a degree won't hurt you either. Make sure whatever you do, you tailor yourself to the market you are in or want to be in. But this is totally off topic and I will stop there.