[ILUG] Re: [OT] Employment advice

[valen at tuatha.org]

On Sat, Aug 21, 1999 at 06:42:44PM +0100, John Healion mentioned:
>  My preference is for the Cisco certification's (ccna,ccnp,ccie) and these were
>  held in very high regard with comment's like "you will know your stuff when you
>  finish one of these". I know these courses are not cheap or easy , but seem to
>  be more interesting and I'm not afraid of a bit of hard work.
>  
>  So, my question is , given my backround (or lack of it) how employable would I
>  be if i did the CCNA. 

 I've been thinking something similar myself. I was talking to some of the
people in Cisco (in Ireland, they have only sales & presales people), about
what sort of courses/techies that Ireland has and needs.

 There are very few people that have the higher Cisco (CCIE) certifications
- about ten or so. There are close to a hundred or so CCNAs. The CCNA is
mainly a Cisco-centric thing (you can buy the CCNA Preparation Library from
Amazon, which as pretty much everything you need to know on it), while the
other certifications are more design, and TCP/IP knowledge than "how to do
it on a Cisco". Which is fair enough - anyone can read a manual, but you
have to be very clueful to layout a big network.

 The CCNA will not get you a job exclusively working with Cisco products.
It would be a bonus if the company you want full time work with had a cisco
or two. But, then you aren't going to use the CCNA much in that case.

 The other way you could use a CCNA is to go to some place like Kerna
Communications, and offer yourself as contractor material, saying that one
of the things you can do is Cisco. Contractors are next to useless if they
don't have a load if skills, I've noted, so you wouldn't be counting on the
CCNA as more than another notch in the belt.

>  Would this be enough to get a junior position to get more experience  and money
>  to get the next certification? Is this the way you would do it?

 Generally I've noticed that it's best to take a grunt job, and get the
certifications then, and use them as leverage - "I want to do more
networking stuff, now that I've a CCNA, or I'll leave"..

>  Are the Cisco certifications held in high regard in Ireland?

 Yeah, but a lot of companies will tell you "Cool. We have a cisco" - a few
have many (I put about 10 of the big 48 port jobs into new racks in Xerox),
and would be crying out for people with good networking knowledge, but
these types would prefer to spend £400/day on a contractor, than take on
someone with little experience, and train them up...

>  What about the Redhat certifications? Not a cheap or easy solution but
>  definatly more interesting. Has anyone done one.
>  With the future of Linux in little or no doubt and with major companys putting
>  Linux on the desktop and on servers,  are employers looking for the RHSE ?
>  If you could reply off list please as everyone on the list seems to be a
>  working perfessonal already.

 I dunno. I've two of the Sun Microsystems certifications, and I've never
had the opportunity of showing them off to an employer - they are as useful
as my college degree, to be honest. Very few companies are using a lot of
Linux machines, and those that are would be more likely to take on people
that had experience than those that are certified...

 Summary: Go for a job doing roughly what you know in a biggish company.
Either get them to pay for the courses (stuff like "Oracle DBA
fundementals" is an 8 day course, that costs ~£2800. Sterling. Ex VAT), and
do the certifications. They should just be part of the job.

 But don't shell out your own money on courses & certifications, unless you
are a contractor, can claim it on expenses, and know someone that can use
you.

Kate, the contractor that's ordered his Cisco CCNA prep library