What type of work do you do? (A+ certifcation related)

What do you do in your job that requires an A+? I am curious how many people take it to help establish proficiency as a technician comparitively how many take it to say that they have an A+ background.

If you are certified, do you use this cert each day? Or did it launch you into another area of IT? Did you take the exam because you thought everyone else had it, so why not you?

Was anyone able to say, "nope, I don't need an A+ because I will be doing 'x' and it won't benefit me?"

Just curious how you thing the A+ exam fits to you and your career or doesn't fit.

Thanks

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crap I forgot my old pwd

I took A+ because I thought you needed to have it to get a good PC repair job. Now after working in the field for a little while, I work with a couple other A+ techs. You could never tell they even had it because they don't know anything. In fact, 1 of them who has it had never opened a PC before. So now looking back at it, A+ doesn't mean a single thing to me whatsoever. The uncertified techs I works with are better.

matts5074

I had a multi-person intereview to get my current job and one of the people pointed out the fact that I had A+ on my resume. I also had Net+ and MCSA 2000 on it.... but he seemed more impressed by the A+.

I think it is more well known than maybe some of the other certifications.

No, I don't use it everday. But it was useful and if I had it to do over again there is no way I would skip taking A+.

evanderburg

I took it originially to validate my skill set. I had worked on PCs many times in the past but now I use it as I teach a computer hardware class. And, of course, I still do house calls.

TeKniques

When I first got A+ I did a lot building and configuring PC's at my job, but now I don't really do that anymore at all. Occasionally I will help putting in a new hard drive or changing out some memory, but for the most part I don't need to do it anymore.

It was still good to get because it helped get that entry job I needed. I would still get it today if I had to do it over.

Ricka182

I took A+ because I figured it would help get me in the IT door. It didn't. It took almost another year, plus Net+ to get my resume noticed. My current position requires the A+ cert, although I don't really use those skills too much on a daily basis.

janmike

I wanted to "Get into computers", and in my research I found out about A+ certification. I read an article by someone who said that if you don't know if you really want to be in IT, study and test for A+. By then you should know if you really want to get involved in the field. True.

My first "computer" job was for a contractor, and the A+ cert helped me get the job. It lasted about 2 months. With the A+ studies along with an interest in hobby electronics for several years, I understood all that I was doing, although pretty simple.

A few months later, I went to work for my present employer. The departmental policy is to have A+ certification within 6 months of starting work. I do a little A+ type of work almost every day. I troubleshoot monitors, keyboard and mouse failures, bad cooling fans/ps and noisy PCs, bad hard drives. Reset memory modules. Run a recovery console on occasion. Probably, in reality, A+ tasks are 30% of what I do daily.

determinedgerman

I think anyone who wants to get into the IT field needs to have a solid background working on computers and knowing the technology.

It doesn't matter what you want to do down the road in the IT field. If you want to specialize in networking or systems administration you will need it.

Since the A+ certification like almost all of the CompTia exams is good for life why not go for it and put it on the resume. I have to agree with Ricka182 that the A+ certification will probably not help you as only certification. It is helpful to have the Network+ and or the CCNA certification to get a foot in the door. Also a lot of employers will look at your resume and see that you got the A+ than the Network + and so on and they like the fact that you are trying to better yoursefl and to move up. At least thats how I got my job.

AM I using the stuff from the A+ certification at all? No I don't! Actually never have but I am in the WAN field where I really fdon't use it.

JDMurray

I got the A+ and Server+ to have some sort of legitimate mention of my "sweet hardware skillz" on my resume. I'd been working in computer hardware and hand-building PCs and components since 1981, but my resume is that of a software engineer. I saw the fierce competition for jobs during the dotcom recovery, and I decided that adding a few IT certs to my resume would help me compete for job positions should I need to. Well, so far the A+, Network+, et al. never helped me get my foot into a door (as a software engineer) that I know of, but all the certs I've acquired have been a good learning experience for me. Education is rarely a bad thing.

entzilla

Plantwiz wrote:

What do you do in your job that requires an A+? I am curious how many people take it to help establish proficiency as a technician comparitively how many take it to say that they have an A+ background.

If you are certified, do you use this cert each day? Or did it launch you into another area of IT? Did you take the exam because you thought everyone else had it, so why not you?

Was anyone able to say, "nope, I don't need an A+ because I will be doing 'x' and it won't benefit me?"

Just curious how you thing the A+ exam fits to you and your career or doesn't fit.

Thanks

I took it to show employers I had knowledge of computers. I applied for several jobs where I would have used a lot of that information on a daily basis, but I ended up getting a job working with servers and server OSs. I couldn't have been able to do the job without the knowledge of the information the exam covers, but it wasn't applied as strongly as it would have been if I got a job as a PC technician or something similar.

ally_uk

Ive been fixing computers for two years for a company I have no A+ knowledge have flicked through the book on occasions

I don't really belive it's vital to absorb every fact and knowledge about a subject

I do what bruce lee did absorb the facts you need and get rid of the junk

Even Know i'm not A+ qualified I have maintained over must be about at least 300 computer now any faults I run into I just research

Knowledge isn't about how much you now it's about encountering the unknown and knowing to look in the right places for the solutions

Looking for clues is also essential

Dont get me wrong lol i have the A+ book ( got it recently)

And will eventually get certified

ally_uk

Dude's sorry about the spelling i really should use spellcheck

porengo

ally_uk wrote:

Knowledge isn't about how much you now it's about encountering the unknown and knowing to look in the right places for the solutions

That's how the Air Force trained us to work on mainframe computers. In fact, if you can effectively troubleshoot a problem, and know where to research the information you need...you can fix anything. The problem a lot of new technologists have is not knowing how to isolate a problem. Most will just "shot gun" the problem and not know exactly what fixed it.

JDMurray

ally_uk wrote:

Dude's sorry about the spelling i really should use spellcheck

If you use FireFox, have a look at the SpellBound extension. It spell checks any words in a Web browser text edit field. I use it on every posting that I make.

http://spellbound.sourceforge.net/