certifications

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I am going to be graduating from Technical School in April with an Associates Degree in Information Technology. I am thinking about pursueing a certification to increase my chances of landing myself a good job. I was thinking either the CCNA or the MCSE. I have a lot more experience with M$ products however, obtaining an MCSE can be costly. I am also considering the CCNA becasue it's relatively cheaper, the test is more practical and challenging, and it's more valauble to employers. My only barrier is, is that I don't have that much experience with CISCO products. I don't think I am going to to bother with any linux certifications since M$ has cornered the market.


What certifications do you guys think I should get?

From what I've heard, MCSE people (as well as other certifications) are notorious for being clueless and incompetent. In fact, some people even throw out resumes that mention certifications. But take that with a grain of salt and do what you want.

I'll be pleasantly surprised if you ever manage to land yourself in a well-paid job revolving around the I.T. industry since it's oversaturated with young hopefuls who want to be a computer technician rather than a humble job as a carpenter or plumber.

Best of luck, anyhow.

The most brilliant computer engineer I've ever met didn't even finish high school, let alone get any of those certifications. He's written software for a major defense contractor that does things like conducting structural load testing on rocket casings. If anything were to go wrong with the software-- if he didn't control the testing equipment properly, it failed to see a dangerous condition and abort the test, etc. it could destroy millions of dollars in equipment and prototypes. Oh, and kill people too--the rockets had to be completely live in order to be tested properly. He had to be present for the testing, as yet more incentive to not mess anything up. He was compensated VERY well for doing that kind of work.

I used to work for a fairly large ISP. One night I was called in to help find out why our servers (Windows-based ) all got hacked. The network administrator, with his college degree and multiple certifications, never bothered to configure the routers to block any ports. NetBIOS, RPC, EVERYTHING was wide open to the world. And I'm not even gonna get in to the one single database server that handled every single aspect of operations for 50,000+ customers. If it went down nobody would even be able to log in, nobody could be billed, or anything. We'd just have to hope that any replacement parts were on-hand or locally available, and sit around while it recovered from a weekly backup tape and irate customers flooded the call center. Why was it like this, you ask? Well the network admin tried to set up a clustered system once, wasn't experienced in how to set it up, and ended up destroying the only live copy of the database. So they've been afraid to touch the thing ever since.

So long story short, certifications will not magically turn someone into a computer genius any more than English classes will make someone the next Charles Dickens. Either you have the interest, talent, and experience, or you don't. It used to be that a lot of companies didn't realize this and many of them thought certifications were very credible and a must-have for any applicant, but thankfully I think they saw the light and are getting away from that line of thought.

Well my AS degree provided me with alot of MCSE type training, as well as Linux, CISCO, and some hardware. However im not looking for an MCSE Im looking more for a CCNA.


But if certifications won't help me, what will help me land a job? i have about 3 months of "real world" experience on an internship fixing and deploying new PCs, ghosting PCs, setting up network printers, fixing PC problems, adding users and reseting passwords, performing upgrades, and configuring educational type software for the labs.

What would you guys suggest, or should just abandon my IT career all together,and be stuck working at Mcdonalds and paying off college loans?

Jman -

I'm in IT, and one thing I wish I would have done in school is gotten an internship. It gives you real-world experience, plus it helps when you are trying to get a job right after college. There are quite a few places that look for graduates with real-world experience in addition to coursework.

Good luck!

speaking as a network nut here, I know my soon to be CCNP, (level above CCNA) is FAR morevaluable then even a bachlors degree in comptuer science for network magament positions. and speaking from experence in my classed, a MCSE, A+, or NET+ means S**T for competency, I personally completed the two CompTIA certs in about 15 minutes a piece for what I was told are 4-5 hour exams. And I've meet more incompetent idiots who just clicked random options on those exams then knew the material then I can count.

I would ONLY consider the CCNA as a maybe employable person were I hiring, though I would look for a CCNP first. I would make sure to give them some sort of practical skills test during the interview. A MCSE of A+ person I would only hire if I needed someone to go to end user systems and plug in the keyboard cable that came out, because I don't know if I could count on them for anything more complex then that.

The market is VERY flooded with idiots who are VERY good at destroying computers, and that's the problem. When I am doing repair business on the side I see at LEAST half of my customers have already had some "expert" try to fix their system, only to screw it up more, then they come to me.

I'd recommend the CCNA stuff over the Microsoft stuff. CCNA will give you a much better opportunity for calling your own shots, working when and where you choose instead of having to put on a suit and kissing some client's butt. We're getting offers for miminum of $10 per hour internships at school with instant f/t jobs when they get their CCNA's.

And grab the A+, too. That little card in my wallet lets me charge at least double what I used to w/o it. The test was simple enough, but the test vouchers can be costly. Make sure you shop around for a deal.

IT is an cert-heavy industry. You can never have too many certs.

I'm an MCSE who used to teach a couple of the certification courses online, and I say go for the CCNA instead.

If you're already good with hardware and operating systems, challenge the A+ exam rather than taking the courses. Look for a good exam prep book... One that's rich in background information rather than just a quick outline with multiple-choice questions.

If you don't have any certifications whatsoever, the first one you should get is an A+ Certificate. It's a prerequisite for a lot of other certificates, and looks nice on the resume.

My reading about certs on the web leads me to recommend you to go for the A+ at the very least. Aspie1 is correct about it being a prerequisite for other certs. In the MIS program at my college, there is a required course that leads to A+ certification if one chooses to take the A+ test instead of a final exam; I am a CS major, but I want to take this class as an elective just to get the A+ cert.