Certification advice

Bryzey

Hi all. Australian seeking certification advice.

My original plan was to go comptia A+,N+,S+,L+ however I am thinking of scrapping that plan due to the fact that I live in Australia and don't believe comptia certification has any weight or employability for when I am ready to move on in a few years from my current role.

I am looking to move into a system admin role in a few years so was going to do some intro certifications to various subjects to kind of find my place in IT and develop a broad skill set along the way studying things I have an interest in. From there I will find something to specialise in and know what I enjoy the most.

Instead of the original comptia plan would it be better for me to do something along the lines of A+ (already complete), CCNA, the new MCSA, maby a virtualisation cert and L+ over the next 3-4 years?

From what I can tell vendor specific certification seems to be more sought after in the job market.

Any advice would be greatly appreciated.

WilliamK99

The key is for you to do some research and see which certifications are most coveted in your country, additionally try planning ahead and get some certifications that may be big in a year or 2. Your best place to start is online looking for jobs in your area, see what certifications are listed, this will give you a baseline as to what you should start working on/ Like you mentioned, if your country doesn't think too highly of Comptia certs it would be a waste for you to get them, but don't underestimate the knowledge you will gain from studying for those lower level certifications. Quite of few of the higher level exams (CISSP, Microsoft, Cisco) exams assume A+/Net+/Security+ level knowledge in their questions.

pert

There is no reason to take Cisco certs if you're not going into Cisco networking. If you're going into Sysadmin role focus on certs pertaining to that role. Your time is limited, study what will help you on the job the most. If you're going to be a Linux admin study LINUX, if youre going to be a DB admin study databases. There is virtually no reason to study MS or Cisco stuff unless you will need to use it on the job.

Iristheangel

It sounds as if you have SOME IT experience as I'm assuming you're not looking to move into a system admin role with zero IT experience (I might be assuming incorrectly here). If this is the case, you probably already possess the A+ and N+ base knowledge and it wouldn't really benefit your career to spend money on those two.

Now the S+ and L+ exams might actually be useful for a system admin role because if your system has anything set up on a Linux box, you'll at least need to understand how to navigate your way around and have a baseline understanding of security. The CCNA can be useful as well because it's always good to have a system admin who understands both sides of the house but I would recommend getting this one last. The MCSA and Virtualization certifications will be your best and most direct path to a system admin role and I would say to go for those FIRST and then follow them up with the S+, L+ and CCNA.

Anyways, good luck. I hope that helped