Beyond A+

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Just a quick question....

I feel almost ready to take my A+ exams. I've nearly finished the Myers book and feel confident from practice tests etc. I'm actively putting my cv out at the moment to try and get a head start on the first rungs of the career ladder (any roles, search engines, key words to look for would be appreciated too) but I'm aware that this may take some time. I dont want to think too far ahead but I want to get it clear in my mind what my next step will be when I pass the A+. Does anybody have any suggestions? To be clear, im not asking for career advice like what exam to take next, just some suggestions as to what to do in the interim after passing the exam and finding myself some work. i.e do some volunteer work for experience.

Thanks guys.

 

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Volunteer work is always good. I don't know how much that helped me getting an interview (it couldn't have hurt at any rate), but the sys admin gave me a glowing reference, which couldn't have hurt either.

I searched for words like trainee, junior and first line, but eventually found it was just better to narrow all the IT jobs down geographically, filter the wage requirements as much as I could (using 12K to 20K) and use any other useful filters, then look at what was left job by job. Different techniques are required to get the best out of each site because they have very different search engine options sometimes so you still might end up with a good few pages of dross to look through.
I also set up different email alerts (don't rely on these, you still need to do the legwork by searching each site every few days) so I could get geographically near jobs and nationwide opportunities in different emails.

Take a good look at your CV, research the subject and keep improving it. I've not had to do a CV in about 20 years and it took me months to get something I'm happy with. I was happy with it at several points along the way but I can't believe how bad it was looking back.

In a junior/first-line role communication skills are valued. Perhaps more than tech skills. You can teach tech skills quite easily but teaching people skills is pretty difficult. Make sure you include relevant soft skills in your previous job descriptions.

 

Hello,
You may need to do some home lab on computer hardware. It would help understand the hardware and associated software. For example, installing processor, assembling a pc, or loading Windows OS etc. At the same time you may try for some volunteer work in universities etc.