7 years work experience with no cert or degree

gghao · June 2014

I've taken a couple of crash courses in windows administration and have been working in the field for about 7 years now. i manage/work with:
-network devices(routers, switches, firewalls, web filters etc)
-windows servers(iis, dc, exchange, dns, etc)
-vmware esxi 5
-androids, iphones, blackberry(bes)
-voip: 3cx and trixbox
-helpdesk software and remote software

i cant quite get over my salary hump and was wondering what type of certifications i should obtain at this point in my career? preferrably, i'd like to self study without any courses. i'm not sure if i should focus on windows administration or do a vendor neutral cert or something else.

ajs1976 · June 2014

What interest you? Some options are the MCSA 2008 or MCSA 2012, CCNA/CCENT, Security+, CISSP (if you have or can get the experience).

Slowhand · June 2014

I'd like to expand a little bit on what ajs1976 asked: what is your current role? Are you on the sysadmin side of things, on the desktop support team, a NOC admin role, or perhaps in a network engineering position? The two factors to take into consideration is what you've been doing and what you want to be doing.

kriscamaro68 · June 2014

I would also add that if your vendor neutral cert choices are anything from CompTIA then skip them. I would say you are past the point of these doing you any good. I would say follow a vendor or multiple vendors. Maybe an MCSA\MCSE and VCP 5 would get you somewhere you want to be. Also like Slowhand said it will depend on what your current role is. Sounds as though you atleast past helpdesk so I would still say those would be a good path. If you prefer networking instead of sys admin type stuff then the CCNA-CCNP would be a good path as well.

iBrokeIT · June 2014

The easy way to a higher salary at that point in your career is to specialize. Pick an area you want to specialize in an start working on vendor certs in that specialization.

sasnimrod · June 2014

iBrokeIT wrote: »

The easy way to a higher salary at that point in your career is to specialize. Pick an area you want to specialize in an start working on vendor certs in that specialization.

+1

I think that picking an area of specialization is the way to go, if you want to secure a good salary. That being said - maybe I'm a bit biased over this since I hate being a jack of all trades (which is were I'm at, at the moment

).

7 years work experience with no cert or degree

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