Advice

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Hello all,

Just signed up to the site as I feel you lovely people can help me! I have read a few threads and will be looking more into them. Just a quick question if anybody can help me. I have been in a IT network / support role for around 8 years now but have never been ‘bothered’ to gain certification, as I have dealt with people with qualifications but no experience before and found they have struggled when thrown in at the deep end. My dilemma now is that my current employer is going to sell up and for the last 4 years has promised me training which of course is not going to happen now. I am going to pay for examinations myself and as courses are very expensive will self teach. I feel my knowledge is at a good standard looking at test questions, but want to prepare myself correctly.

If anyone could help me with any suggestions on how I should go about gaining certification I would be grateful, and how do I go about booking tests? I live in Manchester so where would be the best location for me?

Cheers

Apologies if all my points are covered in other threads but this is my first post and I have looked around the site yet!

 

Oh man! Ad-blocking software has been detected! :'(

This website is run by the community, for the community... and it needs advertisements in order to keep running. Blocking our ads means your killing our stats!
Please disable your ad-block, or become a premium member to hide all advertisements and this notice.

Welcome to CF!

You have said that you already have experience, which is a really good starting point.

As you already do support work why not firstly look at the A+ from Comptia. This cert shouldn't take you that long to cover if you already have experience.

From there most people move onto the Network+, also from Comptia. This will probly take longer to prepare for than the A+, but it all depends on where your experience lies.

If your looking to do some Microsoft certs take a look at their requirements here

Alternatively if its Cisco products that you work with and want to get certified in look here.

Ultimately the route that you taketo get certified depends on your career aspirations, and only you can decide what to do.

As to how to go about getting certified - Buy books, build test labs, tear them apart, rebuild them. You will be able to find many good links to recommended training products, and ways to learn on these forums.

When it comes to test taking time you will need to register with either VUE or with Prometric when you register you will be able to select a testing centre local to you.

 

Hi and welcome! You have found just what you are looking for!

Sorry to hear about the job. As you have years of experience why don't you go straight for say MCSA?

There will be others to follow who will have advice for you.

Best of luck on the job and cert front

 

Thank you for the warm welcome!

I had never heard about the A+ Certification but I will have a look into it.

I am probably going to go down the Microsoft cert path as well. In the eyes of potential employers is there a massive difference between MCSA and MCSE certification?

On the hardware side I was going to look into HP accreditation as I have heard this is viewed upon highly from a friend who is a HP re-seller. Anybody ever heard of this?

Cheers

 

The A+ is a Vendor neutral cert that is 50% hardware, and is probably more recognised by employers than HP accredication, unless that is if the company is a HP reseller or has masses and masses of HP kit.

BTW: why not pop over to the new members forum and introduce your self properly.

 

Will do!

 

Hi

I came from the same sort of background. Been in IT for eons but no certs. In 2000 I decided to get certified and did the A+ N+ MCSE route. To start with I found them a struggle as you learn a lot of stuff in the feild but it may not be the way that is should be done!

HP do a number of certs. the one I know is for HPUX a flavour of UNIX and is useful IF you use that operating system.

Good Luck with your studies.

 

I think it would depend on whether the employer fully understood the differences. The MCSA is four exams and on the W2K track doesn't necessarily include 70-216 (the beast), so it is relatively easy to get in comparison to the MCSE. The MCSE is seven exams, and some of them, the design ones for example are as tough as nails to pass. I also did ISA as an elective and it took me a year just to get passed that hurdle.

I had seven years experience too and I thought I knew stuff as well but there is a minefield of stuff I didn't know. I now realise that IT knowledge is infinite, a veritable can of worms.

Be prepared for a hard slog, there is much studying to do, even for an experienced person. In fact the MCSE/MCSA certs are aimed at experienced people. The A+ and N+ are entry level and they are a really good place to start, to get you into the swing of things before you dive into a vendor specific cert. In retrospect I wish I had done them first, as it may have saved me a lot of head scratching over the three years it took me to finally get to hang my MCSE cert on the wall

 

Very informative post, Bluerinse!

 

Thanks Bluerinse

I have decided I am going to do my A+ and Network + before tackling the vendor cert.

I did a mock exam just to see how I stood and you are right, I might have experience when sat in front of a PC/Server problem but I still got quite a few questions wrong!

I am looking forward to being a student again, just wish I could get my old drama teacher Miss Murphy to teach me! Then I would listen.

Thanks for all your help