hi, im relativly new to networking, am writing my ccna exam in about a months time. not really sure what course to study after that. from what ive been seeing in job ads, it seems there is a demand for ccna, coupled with red hat or mcse. not really sure which would be best option. maybe there is something else apart from those?
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little bit of advice on study courses
- Thread starter tjoppie
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- #3
tjoppie,
Don't be disheartened by negative feedback about certs as yes experience would make you shine but certs would get you to the interview.
However, make sure to get as much hands on with your ccna i.e. routers, a switch preferably 2950. If you can't get your hand on this get semsim or boson netsim and a good book cisco press. Lastly, don't give up or listen to cert bashers cos they probably don't hold any.
Don't be disheartened by negative feedback about certs as yes experience would make you shine but certs would get you to the interview.
However, make sure to get as much hands on with your ccna i.e. routers, a switch preferably 2950. If you can't get your hand on this get semsim or boson netsim and a good book cisco press. Lastly, don't give up or listen to cert bashers cos they probably don't hold any.
tjoppie, I have to agree on getting as much hands on as you can. Something we've done within my organization, and I've heard of others as well, is giving a little test just to try and help judge where a person is at.
Something you may want to consider to aid in your experience, would be to try and find an internship. It may be some grunt work, but you would have an opportunity to be with people in the field and look over shoulders, get additional help, meet people that could be used as recommendations on an application, etc.
Something you may want to consider to aid in your experience, would be to try and find an internship. It may be some grunt work, but you would have an opportunity to be with people in the field and look over shoulders, get additional help, meet people that could be used as recommendations on an application, etc.
- Thread starter
- #6
Firstly, experience and exposure are paramount. If your experience is all lab based then demonstrable understanding of the concepts is a good substitute at first. Whoever you get in front of will already know what your professional experience is.
It is important to not become too much of a one trick pony so while I would recommend progressing to CCNP I would think of what else a sysadmin or network tech will need to stand out from the competition.
Linux/Unix experience alongside Cisco certs is attractive, and an MCSE alongside Cisco will certainly keep you in work.
It is difficult to judge what is best without taking the time to decide exactly what you want to do in networking. Not all roles are desirable and once in a type of role a lot of employers will typecast you.
As a good start, and it sounds academic, Routing OSPF and BGP, their operation and fault finding are very valuable and if you get in front of an employer and can demonstrate that you are proficient in these it will fire you up the list.
As a side thought my opinion is that the optimal roles in networking right now are MPLS, convergence, QoS and multicast.
It is important to not become too much of a one trick pony so while I would recommend progressing to CCNP I would think of what else a sysadmin or network tech will need to stand out from the competition.
Linux/Unix experience alongside Cisco certs is attractive, and an MCSE alongside Cisco will certainly keep you in work.
It is difficult to judge what is best without taking the time to decide exactly what you want to do in networking. Not all roles are desirable and once in a type of role a lot of employers will typecast you.
As a good start, and it sounds academic, Routing OSPF and BGP, their operation and fault finding are very valuable and if you get in front of an employer and can demonstrate that you are proficient in these it will fire you up the list.
As a side thought my opinion is that the optimal roles in networking right now are MPLS, convergence, QoS and multicast.
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