Needed: Career Guide

[Jtalk4456]

It is my experience here and I think a lot of fellow forum user's experience to be wanting to start or currently trying to start a career in tech. I currently have comptia A+ and am looking to get CCNA, but I'm kinda making this up as I go, and after CCNA, I have no clue what certs lead where and what I need or can ignore. And I've tried searching for career roadmaps, and there are plenty, but most are by a company. For example I can find the cert roadmap for Cisco, but it doesn't include certs from google or microsoft, and I don't know if I need those or not. 

In conclusion I think it would be awesome to pull together a guide for Certifications for the main career paths in a way that not only told me what I need for certain paths, but also helped me understand the specializations in case (like me) I know i want networking, but have no clue where in networking I want to go. I figure we have enough people here who could use this info that it would be worth putting together

[BisquTz]

believe it or not I am currently doing an apprenticeship in networking and on one of my training courses I was given an awesome career roadmap, will email round and try and find it for you, thought id message first and let you know so you don't lose hope of a reply ;),
BisquTz

[BisquTz]

It is done by an independent training provider so its not just for cisco, or Microsoft, it shows the best cert routes

 

[cluelessgenius]

not sure how the market over there works but at least in my case i didnt need any certifications. i work as a IT Consultant in Software development and yes for my initial job application my boss obviously got my papers for graduating college but more important were the references i could list and from that point on in all of my projects so far it was way more important what i had worked on before than what certifications i had.

i get that maybe its not directly comparable i just thought id share my point of view

[Jtalk4456]

9 hours ago, cluelessgenius said:

not sure how the market over there works but at least in my case i didnt need any certifications. i work as a IT Consultant in Software development and yes for my initial job application my boss obviously got my papers for graduating college but more important were the references i could list and from that point on in all of my projects so far it was way more important what i had worked on before than what certifications i had.

i get that maybe its not directly comparable i just thought id share my point of view

That's one way to do it, but it requires experience, which I can't get without the certs telling an employer that I know my stuff since i'm lacking in college degree

[Canada EH]

Its probably best to get proper information from proper sources and not from the internet.

 

Get your info from known successful people.

[Jtalk4456]

Just now, Canada EH said:

Its probably best to get proper information from proper sources and not from the internet.

 

Get your info from known successful people.

Do you know any I can talk to? I'm not exactly blessed with a big social circle

[cluelessgenius]

20 hours ago, Jtalk4456 said:

That's one way to do it, but it requires experience, which I can't get without the certs telling an employer that I know my stuff since i'm lacking in college degree

for me at least i also had no previous experience job wise. i also listed projects i worked on myself in my own time.

that maybe a bit tricky with networking but with software development it was quite easy listing all the projects i worked on during my time in college. for example a buddy and i worked on a concept for having your own music cloud and streaming it to your phone right before spotify really became a thing around here and basically made it obsolete. i also wrote a couple of analytics tool for website that really dont offer enough of it like for example getting the price/benchmark points rating for graphics cards on the german version of craigslist and so on. and then obviously the organized project we did for the local mercedes partner where we made a very basic konfigurator using the kinect sensor back when that was actually some hot new shit now they all have vr setups

you get what im saying exxperience doesnt have to be work experience it can also inclue projects you do on your own time.

[Jtalk4456]

7 hours ago, cluelessgenius said:

for me at least i also had no previous experience job wise. i also listed projects i worked on myself in my own time.

that maybe a bit tricky with networking but with software development it was quite easy listing all the projects i worked on during my time in college. for example a buddy and i worked on a concept for having your own music cloud and streaming it to your phone right before spotify really became a thing around here and basically made it obsolete. i also wrote a couple of analytics tool for website that really dont offer enough of it like for example getting the price/benchmark points rating for graphics cards on the german version of craigslist and so on. and then obviously the organized project we did for the local mercedes partner where we made a very basic konfigurator using the kinect sensor back when that was actually some hot new shit now they all have vr setups

you get what im saying exxperience doesnt have to be work experience it can also inclue projects you do on your own time.

Fair enough, though like you said that's harder (expensive) for networking

[Techicolors]

8 hours ago, cluelessgenius said:

for me at least i also had no previous experience job wise. i also listed projects i worked on myself in my own time.

that maybe a bit tricky with networking but with software development it was quite easy listing all the projects i worked on during my time in college. for example a buddy and i worked on a concept for having your own music cloud and streaming it to your phone right before spotify really became a thing around here and basically made it obsolete. i also wrote a couple of analytics tool for website that really dont offer enough of it like for example getting the price/benchmark points rating for graphics cards on the german version of craigslist and so on. and then obviously the organized project we did for the local mercedes partner where we made a very basic konfigurator using the kinect sensor back when that was actually some hot new shit now they all have vr setups

you get what im saying exxperience doesnt have to be work experience it can also inclue projects you do on your own time.

which project you think stood out the most to the interviewer? 

[Christophe Corazza]

On 22/5/2018 at 7:10 PM, Jtalk4456 said:

That's one way to do it, but it requires experience, which I can't get without the certs telling an employer that I know my stuff since i'm lacking in college degree

 

Although I don’t have any experience in this... I do know that it’s not necessarily about the work experience. They would like to know what you’re capable of and what you can accomplish.

 

If you can really prove that, then you’ve basically won them over. Tell about the tech related projects you were involved in.

[cluelessgenius]

9 hours ago, Technicolors said:

which project you think stood out the most to the interviewer? 

to be honest im not sure and i wouldnt call either of those projects impressive myself. i like to think what he liked most in my case was just how  i approached those projects. showing that i know my way not only around code but also not shying away from very new ad experiimental technologies. a lot of software developers become one trick horses after theyve been in the business for a while.

[Teddy07]

On 21.5.2018 at 7:02 PM, Jtalk4456 said:

In conclusion I think it would be awesome to pull together a guide for Certifications for the main career paths in a way that not only told me what I need for certain paths, but also helped me understand the specializations in case (like me) I know i want networking, but have no clue where in networking I want to go. I figure we have enough people here who could use this info that it would be worth putting together

1

I think it is good that you think about it but don´t worry I also have no clue yet. I enrolled for a Bachelors in computer science and let myself drift for now. I want to make a master in the end but I have no clue yet which specialization I am interested in. 

[Jtalk4456]

16 hours ago, Christophe Corazza said:

 

Although I don’t have any experience in this... I do know that it’s not necessarily about the work experience. They would like to know what you’re capable of and what you can accomplish.

 

If you can really prove that, then you’ve basically won them over. Tell about the tech related projects you were involved in.

i haven't been in any, that's the problem

[Christophe Corazza]

2 hours ago, Jtalk4456 said:

I haven't been in any, that's the problem

So you haven’t coded anything in your spare time? Done anything tech related?

 

That’s what I mean with tech related projects

[Jtalk4456]

Just now, Christophe Corazza said:

So you haven’t coded anything in your spare time? Done anything tech related?

 

That’s what I mean with tech related projects

I went to college for something unrelated, so i haven't worked on anything. And I'm not in coding

[Crunchy Dragon]

On 5/21/2018 at 1:02 PM, Jtalk4456 said:

It is my experience here and I think a lot of fellow forum user's experience to be wanting to start or currently trying to start a career in tech. I currently have comptia A+ and am looking to get CCNA, but I'm kinda making this up as I go, and after CCNA, I have no clue what certs lead where and what I need or can ignore. And I've tried searching for career roadmaps, and there are plenty, but most are by a company. For example I can find the cert roadmap for Cisco, but it doesn't include certs from google or microsoft, and I don't know if I need those or not. 

In conclusion I think it would be awesome to pull together a guide for Certifications for the main career paths in a way that not only told me what I need for certain paths, but also helped me understand the specializations in case (like me) I know i want networking, but have no clue where in networking I want to go. I figure we have enough people here who could use this info that it would be worth putting together

Get the rest of the Cisco certs, and a few CompTIA certs if you want. Networking+, Security+, etc.

 

I wouldn't worry too much about the Google/Microsoft certs. If you want to go into repair like me, a repair cert from Apple, Dell, or Lenovo would help you.

[Jtalk4456]

 

1 minute ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Get the rest of the Cisco certs, and a few CompTIA certs if you want. Networking+, Security+, etc.

 

I wouldn't worry too much about the Google/Microsoft certs. If you want to go into repair like me, a repair cert from Apple, Dell, or Lenovo would help you.

There's a lot of cisco certs, do i really just get them all? And someone told me if i was getting ccna to just skip net+ as it would be redundant, do you agree?

[Crunchy Dragon]

Just now, Jtalk4456 said:

 

There's a lot of cisco certs, do i really just get them all? And someone told me if i was getting ccna to just skip net+ as it would be redundant, do you agree?

I guess CCNA would make Net+ redundant, I didn't think of that...

 

I know a guy who has a friend  that makes 250K/year traveling around fixing networks and stuff, he's got all the Cisco certs.

 

I guess I should have said get the certs that would be relevant to what you want to do. You seem to be going into IT, what do you want to do there?

[Jtalk4456]

Just now, Crunchy Dragon said:

I guess CCNA would make Net+ redundant, I didn't think of that...

 

I know a guy who has a friend  that makes 250K/year traveling around fixing networks and stuff, he's got all the Cisco certs.

 

I guess I should have said get the certs that would be relevant to what you want to do. You seem to be going into IT, what do you want to do there?

I know I want networking, the system design aspect works well with my personality. As for what I do in networking, I have no clue

[Jtalk4456]

1 minute ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

snip

I certainly wouldn't mind making 250K/yr

[Christophe Corazza]

1 hour ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

I know a guy who has a friend

 

Seems legit ;-)

[Crunchy Dragon]

1 hour ago, Jtalk4456 said:

I know I want networking, the system design aspect works well with my personality. As for what I do in networking, I have no clue

Net+ can't really hurt then, can it?

[Jtalk4456]

2 hours ago, Crunchy Dragon said:

Net+ can't really hurt then, can it?

It can when it costs money to take the test and that money could go toward something else

[Crunchy Dragon]

10 minutes ago, Jtalk4456 said:

It can when it costs money to take the test and that money could go toward something else

Makes sense.