Career advice please!

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.

Hi all

Looking for a little bit of career advice if anyone has a spare minute...

Currently I work for a tiny company, i've been here just under a year - it's just my boss and I and we provide IT support to about 25 small-ish companies.
It's my first IT role and it's pretty good experience, I get to do a bit of everything but am not sure how valuable the experience i'm getting is. It doesn't feel like i'm getting to learn anything in depth and i'm always left to my own devices meaning i'm not learning much from other people.

Ideally i'd like to avoid working on a help desk for a large company but am wondering if that's possible? Do you think that's what I should do next or should I try to get something more specialised - i'd really like to move into virtualisation and I have some experience with Citrix.

Combined with this, what certification do you think I should do next - i've completed the A+, Network+ and MCDST. I'd like to do the Citrix cert. but it's too expensive. Is it worth doing the MCITP? Seems like a lot of study when I don't particularly want to be doing desktop support, wondering if my efforts would be better spent elsewhere…..


Thanks a lot for your help!

Carl

 

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.

Absolutley look into the MCITP:SA & EA certifications. The titles are hint as to the level of IT they cover so i wouldnt associate them with just 'desktop support'. Understanding Microsoft's server OS products would be fundemental to anyone wanting a job in virtualisation or Citrix.

 

Hi mcbro, thanks for your reply.

Ah I hadn't realised there were different types of MCITP
I will certainly look into those.

Cheers

 

No worries. Get a good understanding of Windows server OS get some certs and then if your current role doesnt suit look for a job with a larger managed IT company whos clients use, Citrix, Xenserver, Hyper-V, VMware etc.
While some times being left on your own can feel like your not learning off anyone your also getting alot of experience that someone else might not.
Experience * Certification = winning

 

Because you work for a small company, doesn't that give you more freedom to test and implement new tech? Even if it's just to learn? You can perhaps build a test environment to improve your knowledge on Linux etc.

You can install play around with the free versions of VMWare and XenServer....

Sure you might have no one to learn from but in this day and age you have Google

 

Cheers!
Yes that's why I think i'm quite fortunate to be in this position rather than working on a help desk for a big company!
I've been tasked with setting up a XenDesktop test environment with provisioning services and XenApp before implementing it at one of the clients which is great.


MCITP:SA it is then!

 

If you're doing the MCITP:SA - I think you'll still end up with the MCITP: Desktop Support Technician (Windows 7) anyway because of the elective exams

 

I don't think you do Boffy. Need 70-680 & 685 for the MCITP desktop support technician & 70-640, 642 & 646 for the server admin.
MCITP (Microsoft Certified IT Professional) | Training Courses for IT Professionals

I could just do the 70-682 to upgrade my MCDST to MCITP desktop support, do you think I should do that before the server admin cert?

Cheers