A new immigrant, any advice would be helpful.

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Hello,

My name is Omar and I am from Egypt. I was graduated from university with a bachelor's degree in Information Engineering & Technology (Network's concentration) about 18 months ago. During university I did two 6 weeks internships as a Field Network Engineer but the job duties were more like 1st and then 2nd line of network support.

Anyway, due to some problems, I couldn't leave the country after graduation and had to spend a year working at one of the country's major mobile phone operators, at that time I obtained my CCNA certification as well as learned some basic UNIX commands (servers were on UNIX), plus I was involved in some sort of 3rd line of support when it came to customer complaints and all that stuff.

Recently though, I decided to take my chances in looking for a job in the US. Since my uncle lives in Massachusetts, I thought it would be a good idea to live with him and save myself the hassle of looking for a place to stay in while looking for a job, in essence a money saving move but a month has past since I landed in the US and so far, there isn't any success when trying to search for a job. To make matters even worse, few people respond to my job applications (mostly recruiters), not a phone call or an e-mail explaining why I got snubbed for a job. I am thinking about studying for CCNP and trying to get more into Linux but it has been so frustrating so far failing to get a job and almost doing nothing in my life. I know that not having any North American experience can count against me but even then, my resume (which I have uploaded) isn't that bad to at least warrant a phone interview.

So I thought that maybe it is a good idea to turn into this forum to ask for help, if I am doing something wrong or if I needed to edit something on my resume to make it look better, I don't know.

Any advice would be helpful.

Thanks.

EDIT: Since I can't post my resume I will paste it here.

 

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One of the things I always try and tell people to do is when applying for a role don't just leave it as an email and hope you get past the screening process.
You need to speak to the agent about the role, ask questions about it and make sure that you stick in their heads, I know from previous experience that you can have hundreds of people going for the same role, unless you stand out from the crowd or are one of the first people in the queue for the role you're not going to get any further, to stick out from the crowd you need to speak to them so that they remember you and know that you're a good fit for the role.

As far as CCNP is concerned, you don't want to run before you can walk. The advanced level certs are just that, advanced, that means you're already supposed to have a decent exposure to the technologies and be able to pass the exams but with a years experience I would question your ability to do that.

Get a couple more years under your belt and then go for the advanced certifications.

Good luck