First one I'd get if I was new to IT Support would be ITIL Foundation, it's not a technical certification but rather is the entry level understanding of the ITIL framework that most large IT Support departments follow. Then I'd go onto something like MCSA Windows 7 as it's a good match to your skill level at present. If you're looking to move into Enterprise level support (large companies with big support departments) rather than SMB support I'd stick with 'Desktop' level certification until you've got more experience. Getting 'third-line' certifications (Server and Network) straight away is all well and good but unless you've got some experience to back them up all you've proved is you can study and pass an exam. No large employer will let you near their infrastructure or take you seriously for a third line job without experience and for that you need to work you way up in a business... show enthusiasm and try to take on more responsibility and build up your CV. Getting involved in project work is a great way of doing this. Worth reading through these two threads also http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=225178 http://forums.bit-tech.net/showthread.php?t=243020
Slightly different perspective: I work for a small business (Although my boss would say 'medium') officially as second line, but in reality we all do a bit of everything, so there's no real line drawn between director and first line, aside from the pay gap of course! Network install, server install, desktop install, etcetera. My qualifications are precisely nothing of value. I got the four parts of my CCNA but never got the final exam bit done (Seemed a waste of time). I did an NDITP, but frankly that was a waste of time as it's nothing I've not already done on my own. Work put me through courses like installing Server 2012 and so on, but they're not "qualifications" in the traditional sense. Personally, I wouldn't bother with CCNA unless you were going to try and get into Cisco. Pick up one of their routers off ebay and start dicking around with it, learn how to use it, interrogate it for settings/failures and so on, but as for the qualifications.. Eh. I think, as Zoon said, there are better ways to spend your time and money.
My first liners (& 2nd liners) at my company get access to infrastructure so server qualifications are a bonus. Currently my 1st line team consists of guys with MCITP, MCSA & CCNA qualifications but this is rare for a lot of MSP's My team is 100% Microsoft certified & 80% Cisco certified at the moment with the aim at getting everybody Certified in both within a couple of months
Perhaps another slant again... you had to have known when you asked for advice you were going to get dozens of different versions... Figure out what direction you really would like to head in before you spend any more money and time on formal training. There a great deal more roles and careers in IT than you realise, take some time scoping out what your options are - there's a lot more to IT than server and network support and if you get an idea of your goal earlier on it's often a lot easier to get there. Five years of hard work might get you to a third line role, but if you get there and figure out that you would rather be in, say, incident management, you'll have to take at least a few steps back before you can go forward again. You're in the door, make friends with anyone and everyone in the organisation that will talk to you and put yourself out there in terms volunteering for work shadowing and the like. Let your boss know your intentions and learn the lingo of as many different disciplines as you can to give you a bit of extra credibility. The experience you get from this is worth ten times any time you might spend on getting a few certs.
I started with a support company that provides IT support services (from full infrastructure to staffing agreements) about 7 years ago as a Global web services technician - uploading images and pushing stuff to production. That contract ended, and I got moved to 2nd line dispatch. A year later I got made Manager for that client contract and Technical interviewer for all Field Service new hires. Now my Service Delivery Manager is looking to branch me out into Service Delivery. I must be doing something right, but I'm not sure what. Qualifications? Zero apart from ITIL which they sent me on as it was a customer requirement. With that in mind, When interviewing candidates, I rely much much less on qualifications, and more on how they would troubleshoot hypothetical issues. Funny story - I had one guy whose troubleshooting steps were to check the cables on a PC and then hold down the power button until it switched off, then turn it back on and see if it was resolved. He didn't have an answer when I asked him what he would do next. Strangely, he was one of the few candidates who did have various qualifications listed on his CV.
After searching for jobs online, I found a link for IT learning for IT technician the rep recommended I do these. CCNA CompTIA Network+ 2012 MCSA: Windows 7 Cost special offer £1495 Could build a rocking system with that.
I have taken over a dozen Microsoft exams and gained several qualifications, and they honestly are trash. But HR gobbles up Microsoft qualifications, if you have one of those then your chances of landing a job go up by a fairly big percentage. If a company is looking for people with qualifications to maintain their partner status then even better. CCNA seems good and I am thinking about going for that as my network skills are pretty weak. There's a guy at my company who has cisco qualifications but his troubleshooting skills are non existant, he should have started at the bottom instead of going for qualifications and trying to jump into 2nd line
That's why I think it's better to get a lower level job, build up experience and get the courses paid for from the company training budget
Certs are a waste of money. Employers look to work experience more than certifications and pay much more for it. To get that experience requires starting at the bottom and building your domain and technical knowledge to the point where you can walk into many jobs.
We'll have to disagree on that. I earn double the salary of another engineer who started at the same time as me because of my certifications. In fact the certs I had when I started meant that I earned more in 2006 then he is earning now
It obviously depends on the employer as I've just accepted a job where my salary is 1.5x higher than the highest paid engineer in that domain purely down to my experience and domain knowledge. I've actually got a CCNA while working as a network engineer and no employer has shown interest or asked about any certifications, but then I've only ever had three interviews. If you know your stuff, experience and domain knowledge wins hands down IMO.
Depends on the type of job, where in the seniority ladder and the type of cert, probably more so than the employer. A service director with ITIL red is likely to be paid more than one without, contractors with vendor certs up their arms are far more likely to get the highest paid contracts and high level TOGAF certs are going to be a good idea for an enterprise architect... some of these are just as likely to be a prerequisite for some employers. At the same time (in my experience - YMMV) for permanent technical roles (e.g. infrastructure support, service delivery, field support), a whole bunch of vendor technical certifications (i.e. the ones we're talking about here) might help a little in getting an interview provided you have the experience to back them up but they do precisely squat in terms of getting you the job or determining how much you're paid. If the organisation is a partner/reseller that must keep a maintain a certain level of certification to keep their status with vendors then they will have already allocated budget to maintaining this and fund certification themselves. If they use having certs in their assessment criteria for hiring candidates (e.g. A is the more well rounded candidate, but we can save £4500 on training B because he has some certs) then they're a rubbish company that you don't want to work for anyway. If you move past technical support/implementation/design roles (not saying that you need to, if you like it, stick with it, there's certainly scope for a full career without moving away from this), then the vendor certs lose value considerably and it's all about experience. I have basically nothing in terms of technical certs (and most of which are ancient and none of which I advertise apart from a couple recent ones funded by my employer), yet I get contacted by recruiters at least three times a week simply due to what I do and where I work and my previous roles. saspro - How do you know you earn double another engineer because of your certifications alone? Perhaps you just interviewed/negotiated better, and have performed better since your start to warrant better pay rises? Perhaps when you joined there was a greater budget for new hires (even though you said at the same time, you know how these things can swing just from day to day). Perhaps there was just something in you that the hiring manager saw and decided that he wanted to make sure you accepted. Unless your manager has confirmed that the only reason you get paid double is because of certs, in which case he's a terrible manager and an idiot to boot - so stick with it and keep milking him
That's a whole kettle of fish for another day. I've no doubt that there's more to it that just bits of paper but they certainly go a long way where I work
Actually I think the Comptia A+ is a good start and I now been looking at exam dates near me but is £240 really worth it for a piece of paper?
Bit late to the thread, but anyways: I'm currently doing a Lvl 3 extended BTEC in IT, as part of my BTEC I'm getting CCNA routing and switching. Its not particularly difficult. What I think will be the problem is getting a job. I think you'll find (since I have) that there's not really a entry-level CCNA based job out there. I'd only echo the more experienced in this thread by saying that experience looks to be where it's at.
lve been recruiting engineers for my transition team and although qualifications help get them in the door and they can be an indicator that the individual is interested in keeping their skills up to to date, they are no substitute for knowledge and experience. During an interview I will test their knowledge and that is the mosy key area for me. Perhaps look at one of the Microsoft server technology courses? You cant really go wrong with them and once you get one they become easier to update etc. Ive done my ITIL lifecycle badges but thats because I want it for personal development. Sent from my GT-I9505 using Tapatalk
Wrong. There're plenty of entry level jobs out there, but you would probably have to relocate/travel a significant distance to get it, unless you're lucky and find one nearby. You might also have to adjust your expectations (as I did) out of higher education as entry level jobs pay nothing great.
I managed to get my first job based solely on having a degree (in physics, so nothing relevant), and having some knowledge (mainly from mucking around with computers for my entire life). Through that job I got a few Microsoft certifications, which did teach me a few useful things, but I don't think they helped me get my current job at all. Experience is generally more important than certs, or at least it has been for me. Of course, you're currently stuck with no way to get a job because you don't have the experience, and you can't get relevant experience without a job... I'd suggest going for any job involving IT that you can find, even volunteering, and keeping your fingers crossed.
After school I took a City and Guilds Level 3 Computer Programming course, concentrating on C, yup not C++. Whilst working at my first job (non-IT) I saw an advert in the local newspapers job section for 1st line technical support at a start up business orientated ISP. As the role was managed by an agency little did I know when I applied where this would lead... I attended an interview with the agency, was able to pass the technical knowledge "test" not because of any courses that I had taken but because of years playing around with computers. Over the course of a few years I made myself the technical go to person on 1st line and after a stint on the 1st line desk for dedicated servers I landed myself a 2nd line role which involved a fair amount of unix admin work on the live servers supporting our shared hosting platform. Role forward a few years I found myself on 24/7 shifts working on the "Bridge" monitoring our local Data Centre. All this was still with the same agency and working for the same large plc and without formal IT certification. Nine years after starting I was very fortunate to be taken on as a full time employee, the interview was nerve wracking! Worked within the operational team looking after all hardware and cabling in the Data Centre. I the took the CCNA with Open University, using the Cisco Learning Centre as the material for the course. Passed the OU course but didn't go on to complete the final Cisco exam even though I was ready for it, stupid me. A year or so later I moved to Scotland as I was getting married to a Scottish lass... As we have Data Centres around the UK I was able to obtain a transfer to our DC in Scotland into the same job role. My employer put me through HP Accreditation and a BTEC Level 4 in Data Centre Services. Five years later I'm now the Data Centre Manager for the Tier 3 facility, hosting some very large and well known clients. We are now looking at the possibility of putting the Data Centre Managers around the UK through the CDCMP course. I believe it is down to experience, hard work, volunteering yourself for high level projects and sheer determination to get what you want. Anything is possible without certification, start on a 1st line service desk and who knows where it will take you...
Hi guys, So it's coming up to a year in my first I.T job (March 3rd to be exact). For various reasons, I want to leave the company (as does the rest of the support desk!) and move into a commercial I.T support role/environment. I'm currently working in a 1st line support role on the support desk and due to it being a small company, there's very little if no opportunity for promotion and advancement. My goal at the moment is to study for as many certifications as possible to bolster my C.V. I realise I'll need more hands-on or practical experience which I'd like to achieve by using a test machine at home. We support a Sharepoint based platform with Office 365 as well. It's a bit limited for me and I'd like to move into a more desktop support environment. I have been very tempted to go for the A+ exams as I've had the study book since before I started my job, it's more of a personal goal and I think it could be useful to plug some knowledge gaps I may have. I know some have said it's pointless and at £115 for each exam (there's two) I don't think it's worth it. I have been tempted with going for the ITIL Foundation exam which I've been told is a useful qualification/certification to have. I want to continue working in a support role, working with desktop/Windows applications and then perhaps move into a server environment after I've had the relevant experience. Any advice as to which certifications I should pursue? Work would like me to pass the 70-346 exam as I've passed the 074-325 exam. Seeing as I'm coming up to a year and I've only got the one exam behind me, I think it's time I start to acquire far more certifications. Thanks
