new career CCNA

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Hello everone. My name is Ziyad. Im from Crawley. I have been unemployed for 1 year and 2 month. currently studying CCNA. Reason for that is looking for new career. I have 1 son. he is 1 year old. and 2nd one on the way too. Hopefully i will pass exam on 15th of December. Im using testout, cisco networking academy. and it was very hard. but now i can do basic. like configuring, vlans, routers, switches, and i learned alo about ospf, rip, and all.
But issue is even if i get certificate everyone asking for experience. alot of jobs here but none of them looking for people like me. i have what it takes. even i was looking for companies who would offer me a job, which i will work free for 6 month. and by that time i can have my ccnp certificate. so then they can start paying me, or i can put on my cv saying i had a experience.
If anyone got any ideas or help or advice please do not hesitate to contact me. I really had enough of claiming benefits, it very embarrasing.
Thank you for attention.

 

Thank you very much mate. Im reaaly hoping so we will see. first thing i have to pass my ccna test. Then I will push very hard to get something. thanks again

 

Sorry to say this but don't go for your CCNP with only 6 months between your CCNA and CCNP because I can tell you that you will forget more than you will remember during the time it takes you to get a role that actually requires you to have the CCNP. The CCNP is not for the faint hearted, infact I would say it's for the top end of the network engineering side of things, definitely not for someone with perhaps 6 months worth of experience.

Infact I can say hand on heart you would do your career more harm than good if you did continue on to your CCNP with only 6 months worth of experience.

Please understand that the certification is there to show your experience in that field, it's not the way into a role, the way into a role is your CV if you're already in IT and it's persistence if you're looking to start in IT.

I would also hesitate about putting your CCNA onto your CV at this stage, I personally think you would be better off getting the N+ and using that as the way into a role (no one in their right mind gives over control to their core network switches\routers to someone with little to no experience).

 

Thank you very much for advice. but i looked at jobs like 1st line support and entry levels jobs. but none of them helps you to get job with ccna certificate. what i mean is its not point to write i had a experience at pcworld working as a 1st line support technician if you applying for a network administrator or network technician. But anyway, i looked online and 99.99% of jobs want experienced people.
Thanks again, i will consider that and look for basic IT jobs too.

 

Again please understand that I am talking from experience here (I have been in IT for slightly longer than you have and do understand the nature of the industry just a little better).

You need to work yourself upto a career in network support, you don't simply walk into it. You have to start at the first\second line jobs where you may work in conjunction with the network engineers, you gain the experience that way and then you move upwards, instead of assigning the calls to the network engineers the engineers start to trust you a little bit and you get assigned the work instead.

You can't by pass experience with certifications, it just doesn't work and anyone willing to take on someone with just the certification and no experience is just asking for trouble.

Again to reitirate my previous posts, certifications ARE NOT there to get people into work, they are there to show people that you actually have the experience to do the job and actually know what you're talking about, unfortunately a lot of people mistake certifications are a right to do a particular job... but I have a CCNA and therefore that makes me a Network Engineer, no, I don't know what Conf T does, no I don't know how to tell the version of the IOS but I do have this nice little certificate here.

Please learn to walk before learning to run, you have to follow the same path all of us did when we started out in IT, start small, learn from the mistakes and move upwards. If you don't do that then I can tell you that your career in IT isn't going to be a good one because you won't last long in positions.

 

WOW. Thank you very much. I will do.
Thanks again

 

As said by Simon no one walks into a networking job with no experience regardless of the certs they have, unless they are very very lucky.

Also as said you need to work your way to that job role and you should also get yourself some entry level certifications which the CCNA is not. Entry level certs are: A+, Network+ and MCDST.

 

good going there ziyad. inshallah you will succeed this time around.i am have just graduated this year and have had no luck as of yet.

 

what are other entry level certs i can do ?

 

The A+, Network+, and MCDST will keep you busy for quite a while. You could also do the MCITP client administrator certifications for Vista and Windows 7. But as far as entry-level certifications go, that's about it.

 

Yes. I did some research. and i can see that Network + is very basic version of CCNA. and A+ is our day to day pc troubleshooting. I think this certificates very basic. after my ccna, i will get this certificates too just to fill my cv.
thank you

 

Honestly I wouldn't put the CCNA on your CV at this time, as I have already mentioned you would be doing your career more harm than good by doing so. Go for the low level certs and work your way up to the jobs that require the CCNA and then if it's still current you can put it on there.

You have to understand that just by having the cert doesn't mean you can do the job, it just means you can pass an exam. Get the experience under your belt and take the time to get the experience and everything will work out for you, rush into it now with no experience and just a CCNA and you will have a really tough time of it.

 

Thanks everyone for help and advice. Basically what happened is i bought 2x 2600 series router, 1x 2500 series router, 1x 2900xl switch and connected to my computers, worked around, i did study from Cisco Network Academy and Trainsignal courses at home. its been a tough and i did study around 12 to 15 hours a day for few weeks. i did go to exam on 29th of November but failed with 783 point. to be honest it was my mistake on labs, as in i didnt read instruction carefully. my first advice to everyone who wants to take exam, when you go there first 15minute they give you instruction. read that carefully. i did get pissed off. but it was good i guess. Because as soon as im back, i did book another one for 15th of december. and i did repaet everthing, and whent to forums, and checked what problems people getting and i did try to fix. but anyway, i passed my exam on 15th of december with 910 point. which max point is 1000. I was really happy. i did relax for few days. but then i was looking for jobs but only having ccna is not good enough. Reason for this is every corporate or small, medium size business have a servers. as we know without servers there is not file sharing and dns servers, dhcp and so on...
So i decided to study to gain Microsoft certificate before getting CVoice, CCNP or so.
Now i decided to get MCITP. But start with im getting ready for 70-640 exam. hopefully i will pass next week.
Now i need some help from you guys. I got server 2008 from microsoft whih is trial. im good with this, using xp and windows 7 hosts to play with them. but i dont have any Vista OS. I need Vista OS for working at home with my servers. I have one Vista machine but i dont want to mess with this. but cant get any Vista OS from internet. Could some one help me with this please. thank you for attention.

 

Thanks for your reply. but i checked this website allready and microsoft dont do any vista trial. they do only windows 7 i think. So far i have no luck finding this. thanks

 

OOOOOO. Mate i want for free. i have xp, server 2008, windows 7 and i got them for free.
But cant get a vista for free. i want to know if anyone know where to get free Vista OS?
thanks