Career Advice

utkgrad · August 2011

I am in the process of changing career at the age of 36. Just wanting to get some advice on which certifications are in most demand? I have a couple of different paths I can take:

1. There is a local CC that is offering a CCNA class.
2. There is a local university that offers a graduate certificate in information assurance and security. It would take a year to do but I already have a Bachelors degree so the graduate program is somewhat appealing.

Any thoughts or advice on which path would be better?

Sykk · August 2011

utkgrad wrote: »

I am in the process of changing career at the age of 36. Just wanting to get some advice on which certifications are in most demand? I have a couple of different paths I can take:

1. There is a local CC that is offering a CCNA class.
2. There is a local university that offers a graduate certificate in information assurance and security. It would take a year to do but I already have a Bachelors degree so the graduate program is somewhat appealing.

What were you doing before switching to IT?

It depends on how IT literate you really are and what you want to do.

Don't do the CCNA yet IMO. It's pretty overwhelming and offers little if you don't have some years experience to back it up.

I started out by doing the CCNA through the Cisco academy. Once I finished I still had to start on the bottom of the ladder with a support job. Any CCNA engineer positions generally require at least 5+ years of networking experience.

If it's networking you want to do, start with the A+/N+ then look for the MCITP's as generally 90%+ of businesses run microsoft systems.

Once you've got a few years experience behind you, then move onto the CCNA and take whichever cisco route you like

Hope this helped.

Career Advice

Comments