VCP no IT experience

Atmosphere1991

I will be finishing my CCNA in may! I do not have a job in the field yet, but hopefully the CCNA will help me land a help desk or network technician gig soon. I have the opportunity to take a class over the summer for a VCP 5.5 certification. My question is, would this be a waste of time for someone at my current skill level?

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tomtom1

If you're interested in virtualization and preferably would like to gain some work experience with this, no, this isn't a waste as VMware has some great features out there. However, don't think you can pass this just by sitting out the course. Some more studying and a lab (really, this will help!) will help you achieve the VCP5 certification. VMware is still industry leader in virtualization.

gbdavidx

you would be a better fit for a desktop job then help desk w/ these two certs

SimonD.

See I disagree with the two guys above, you're coming in to an industry with certifications designed to prove existing knowledge, the CCNA is not an entry level certification (that's what the CCENT is for) and the VCP is aimed at engineers\sys admins with proven experience in the world already, if you want an introduction to virtualisation then look at something like the VCA rather than the VCP as it gives you a taster to virtualisation rather than full blown VCP.

I am all for certifications (I am a mod on another certification forum) but I am all for certifications for the right reasons, coming in to the industry with two certifications like you are aiming for with no commercial experience will, in my honest opinion do you more harm than good because you really don't have the experience that those certifications require.

Let me ask you a question, would you trust someone with no enterprise experience but with a CCNA? Would you trust them to make routing changes? config changes? How about a virtualisation engineer that doesn't understand basic OS requirements or storage or troubleshooting? If I hire someone for a role I want them to have experience as well as certifications and I steer clear of those who have too many certifications for their experience (having been in the industry now for 16 years I like to think that I have a little bit of experience to fall back on).

My advice at this stage of your career would be to stop getting certifications, get some experience under your belt and in a couple of years look to update your certifications in the direction you want to go, don't blanket certify at this stage of your career, certainly not with experienced engineer level certs like the CCNA and VCP.

ande0255

I consider learning topics in college and getting a degree the exact same concept as earning a certification if you don't just **** the exams, would you suggest people not go to college until they have relevant work experience in their major?

I just couldn't disagree with the above more, if you are honest about your experience level in interviews but be able to talk about the technologies, that could get you a great jr level within a good team.

Noone is going to consider someone for a network job without at least a CCNA or some experience, and if you at least have a CCNA it may get an interview, and then it's up to the person to seal the deal.

I encourage always expanding your knowledge if you enjoy it, definitely.

stryder144

+1 ande0255, I couldn't agree more with what you wrote.

YFZblu

SimonD. wrote: »

Let me ask you a question, would you trust someone with no enterprise experience but with a CCNA?

After properly vetting this person, why not? Let's sit down and talk about the technology this person claims to know, determine passion, drive, goals, willingness to be slapped around by senior-levels for a while, etc. The 'associate' designation exists for a reason.

Ultimately, experience does matter - but only if the person is competent in the first place. I've come across "IT professionals" with a ton of enterprise experience that had no business being trusted to accomplish anything.

Atmosphere1991

Thanks for the comments guys. I'm taking all of it into consideration, I probably will take the class. I learned so much this year with my CCNA, and I am very excited to learn about virtualazation. How would you guys compare the difficulty of the VCP materials to the CCNA R&S?

YFZblu

I do think you should be extremely careful spreading out - As you know, regarding networking, the devil is in the details. And if you don't use it, you lose it. Keeping the CCNA topics fresh needs to be your first priority. Now that you have achieved it, make a hard push for a NOC job and worry about everything else after you're employed in the field. Just my two cents.

SimonD.

ande0255 wrote: »

I consider learning topics in college and getting a degree the exact same concept as earning a certification if you don't just **** the exams, would you suggest people not go to college until they have relevant work experience in their major?

I just couldn't disagree with the above more, if you are honest about your experience level in interviews but be able to talk about the technologies, that could get you a great jr level within a good team.

Noone is going to consider someone for a network job without at least a CCNA or some experience, and if you at least have a CCNA it may get an interview, and then it's up to the person to seal the deal.

I encourage always expanding your knowledge if you enjoy it, definitely.

So I guess that's where the two countries differ then because here in the UK we simply don't employ people with no experience and certifications in to those kinds of roles, the certifications are designed to prove your enterprise experience, what enterprise experience is there if you just get the certification with no real world experience of working with the hardware?

You NEED some experience first, even looking at both VMware's and Cisco's CCNA requirements page where they express between 6 months and 3 years experience with the technologies used before attempting the exams.

I personally would prefer to hire someone with the right experience over someone with no experience but with an exam under their belt but that's obviously just me (having worked in industries where it can literally mean life and death or the loss of millions of £\$ if you cock up tends to swing people more towards experience than not). I just don't get it where people view certifications as a way in to the industry, they aren't, they are supposed to be there to prove your abilities and experience and unfortunately people who do choose to use these certifications as introductions to the IT Industry actually harm the certifications more than help them (paper NT4 MCSE's anyone??).

As far as college and degrees are concerned, have you talked to some recent academic leavers recently? the ones struggling to find entry level work in the IT industry, I have and whilst they may have good degrees they are still struggling to get jobs in industry and these are the ones aiming for the entry level positions, I can tell you that over on the site that I am a moderator on there are numerous topics started by exactly those people asking how to get their first role and I can also tell you the advice they get isn't to "cert up", it's to start at the bottom (yes even with a degree, because let's face it a degree says you know how to right a paper and party hard) and learn from your mistakes.

Please don't think that I am not one for expanding on knowledge, far from it in fact if you look at the posts on my blog and the other sites I post to but I am also one to encourage people to start at the right place and the CCNA\VCP as an entry level certification sure as **** isn't the right place to start.

ande0255

I got my current job as a Data / VoIP tech just by selling myself at the interview, as I have absolutely no VoIP experience, just a CCNA cert which is probably what they searched for when the recruiter found me on linkedin. I got very, very lucky with how I landed my job.

I also agree OP to really focus on one study so you have a good chance of surviving technical interviews, as before I had experience and didn't continue studying after getting certified those things destroyed me. I'd say once you get a job in your area of study, that's a good time to look into other technologies to study, and I would heavily suggest looking at the partner locator and apply at your local partners. That way even if you get a bottom of the barrel help desk spot, you can work your way up the ladder, and partners love people getting certified as that helps their partner status - win win situation

fredrikjj

the certifications are designed to prove your enterprise experience

They are useless for that purpose since you can just **** on the exams. Their only value is giving you a set of topics to study and to help convey to someone else roughly what kind of skill set you may have. They prove nothing.

iBrokeIT

If you are dead set on getting your VCP, I recommend the book called Mastering VMware vSphere 5.5 by Scott Lowe

ande0255

I'm reading the vSphere 5 bokk by Scott Lowe, very good read, really good foundation of how all the different vSphere products and features fit together. Not a whole lot of early adopters of 5.5 by customers at my job, so learning 5.1 is the better move to start getting hands on experience with it at work.

emerald_octane

VCP is no joke, probably one of the toughest from the list <-. I'll say it straight up, some of the stuff I saw on the exam I didn't see in any of the study material. Not the mastering book, not the VCP cert guide, not the official class. The only way I could've pulled it off was with my experience. It's a tough exam no doubt.