working as a technician with no real experience 4

[greetcup]

Hi,

I was wondering of what kinds of opinions experienced technicians on this forum could give.

I have my A+, Network+ and MCP certifications but I have no real experience except for taking apart my old XP computer.

I found this job where I will be traveling from client to client, and it requires knowledge in PC hardware for laptops and desktops, and maintaining comptuers at client sites.

I have only book knowledge and I have only experience fixing my computer. Do you guys think that if I just review books on desktop and laptop repair like crazy for one week I should be ready for the job? Thanks!

 

[rclarke250]

Personally I find A+ certification to be kind of a joke. I have it, never did me a bit of good, and the little card hasn't fixed one broken computer yet.

 

[goombawaho]

Yeah, I'm not picking on the OP, but experience trumps just about everything whether it's plumbing, brain surgery or IT stuff.

Experience gives you a whole battlefield of stored knowledge so you almost always can have an intuition about what the problem is when it's flaky or unusual.

Sometimes, a hunch is all you have to fix something if it's not screaming at you.

 

[kjv1611]

I got a book for the A+ Cert once, and read some of it. Does that count for anything?

 

[goombawaho]

Don't know - never seen said book. I was a certified network manager without ever having other certifications for PC stuff. In other words, I'm unschooled, officially.

We don't need none of that book learnin' around here.

I think I looked at an online test once for that stuff and I honestly would have failed it. But the questions are so esoteric and not based at all on fixing real world problems. It's about the origin of the PC bus, DMAs, etc.

 

[FredWagner]

Certification Tests are written by the same people who write the books and sell the courses to prep you for the test - so the test questions are on topics you'll find in the books and the courses, not on topics that you learn by experience. I've got books on the shelf on Netware, Windows 2000 Server, SQL 2000 - hardly got anything useful out of them. The good learning came from forums like his, and early on the Netware forums on CompuServe. Good classes I've experienced were vendor taught on specific products -Kofax, FileNet, Laserfiche - and the valuable info was not so much in the books, but in the presentation and hands-on exercises.
The end of course tests were open-book, open computer - emphasizing not rote memory, but finding the solution.

Fred Wagner

 

[kjv1611]

So very true. I have gotten loads of books on various topics, and FINALLY woke-up to the reality that I've gotten VERY little help from them. I have found a solution or two in a few of the books dealing with software specific solutions such as code. But otherwise, I don't think I've gotten anything truly useful from the multiple books. Because of that, I've rarely picked one up anymore - technical books. Though I still have several that I've not yet convinced myself to part with.

 

[kjv1611]

Oh, I was once ready to go and take the initial Novel Netware cert test, though I forget what it was called at the moment. It was going to cost $100 to take the test, and I didn't really have the money to throw at it - I had just graduated college. So I just let that pass by. I could've had a curl in my tail, too.

 

[edfair]

I also have the same disdain for certs. I have one for Lantastic 4 and everybody should know how valuable that is.
I have the books, probably more than most of you, available for use in understanding what is going on with the related product but mostly unused after an initial screening. Hands on and support forums are the better choice.

Ed Fair
Give the wrong symptoms, get the wrong solutions.

 

[hairlessupportmonkey]

I get all sorts of people with all the certificates in the world. we employ some them, and shortly after they fail. this isnt due to lack of experience, but lack of common sense and foresight. perhaps some of this comes with experience but much of it is work ethic and inherent ability.

ACSS - SME
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