Finding that next role in your career

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I am looking for advice from my fellow cert forum members with regards to career progression

I seem to be stuck in a place where by to advance my career, would mean finding a role and employer where by you can grow into a role

From my current job searching, I can only find roles requiring lots of certifications and experience I just don't have, sure i can get quite a few from home study and a VM lab, but its not real world and one area that seems to be hard to get experience is storage

Certs I now see required as standard are

MCSA/MCSE / Server/Desktop/Private Cloud
ITIL V3
CCNA / CCDA as a minimum
VMware VCP
Citrix
Storage, Netapp, EMC etc..

the IT generalist is a cursed role and I can't seem to move on from it

Any suggestions or perhaps roles I should be looking for?

Thanks
Andy

 

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First question would be, what area of IT do you want to progress in to?

 

Hi Rob,

That's a good question, as these days, roles have so many different titles these days, but ultimately are the same thing

I think I would like to move into the virtualization space, VMware/Hyper-V, storage etc.. either support or perhaps designing solutions

It would seem that junior anything does not exist these days, you either have everything and more (even for IT admin jobs now in the 25-30k grade) or your an apprentice starting early and developing in companies such as Microsoft or VMware

While I have worked in IT for 15 years, without all of those certifications, I have no way of qualifying my day to day working and experience.

Open to suggestions

Andy

 

What do you currently do in your role?

 

Everything....

initially, part of a team of 4, supporting EMEA and APAC, both end user and infrastructure, the company has been through several integrations and now we are going through a merger

now there are 3 of us in the UK responsible for 5 sites plus EMEA which has another two people as well and also worldwide support to Canada, America and APAC (total of 9 of us for worldwide end user support, 1000+ users)

Infrastructure support - Servers, from NT4 to 2012 R2, Networking, mainly Cisco hardware such as switches, routers, firewalls, wireless, VLANS, IPSEC connectivity, MPLS and EIGRP
we also manage/maintain the telephony of three sites using a Mitel based solution
provide support to R&D, which in my current location is 250+ servers plus we have provided IT support to our clients too.
IT purchasing and recommendations for R&D, IT and end users for EMEA & APAC
Active Directory, Group Policy etc....
some virtualization, setup of either vSphere hosts or Hyper-V hosts, backup
Software auditing and asset management
Various projects, site consolidations, relocating infrastructure to new locations and end user
Part of a new Exchange migration project, from both O365 and Domino
redesign of network wan links, retiring IPSEC tunnels and migrating to MPLS connectivity on a global scale

plus other things i've probably forgotten right now.....

Andy

 

So my move from IT Generalist to VMware Specialist was taken just by taking a risk. I was employed by my current company as a Senior Windows Engineer (specialising in SCCM), I managed to get attached to a virtualisation project team and now just about 4 years later and I run a Cloud Operations Team.

It's all about taking a risk, sure you may have to take a slight drop in salary (or not) but you have to be prepared to work outside your comfort zone and take on a role that you're not used to.

 

Hi Simon,

Thanks for the feedback, As the sole income to the house, I could not afford a decrease in salary

What roles would you suggest, I am all up for learning/moving into new roles, however I don't seem to be able to even find junior roles

Thanks

Andy

 

I would suggest finding a role in a larger enterprise with opportunities to move to different teams, getting the VCP5 is a good move tho, the VCA really aren't worth the paper they are printed on.

It's difficult because looking for decent sysadmin type guys to move in to a virtualisation\cloud role has been in my experience quite challanging (which is why I have a team of contractors working for me instead of FTE's).

I would also suggest getting some linux experience underway as well, always a good idea (something I haven't really done previously).

 

Thanks,

I have to say, it's hard to retain knowledge if you are not using it every day, with all of the changes in the organisation, I am starting to use less and less of what I know, which is frustrating, such as when I passed the Hyper-V/System Center exam, i was really happy I passed and learn't the material well, however it soon fades away over time.

I would love to get the VCP5, however the challenging part to getting that is the mandatory training course at £3500 is not something i could personally afford, so I could take the exam, but its not official without the course.

Is it still worth taking the VCP 5.5 exam without having been on the course?

Andy

 

I would suggest having a look for an academy (google for 360GSP who I did my VCP4 and 5 training with) for discounted VCP course.

You can't take the VCP5 exam without sitting the training from an approved training provider.

 

Thanks Simon, I have had a look at their site (are they still in business as the links for the courses don't load)

The only issue i could see is they are based in London and I am a few hours away

I found another company, Global Knowledge, they seem to offer a virtual training package, not sure how that works out again classroom based training though

QA is close to me in Hinckley, however they don't have any availability until the end of April and its £3400 for the course

Andy

 

360GSP used to offer weekend training and pricing was far cheaper than the £3400 price you have there, obviously their pricing could have changed in the mean time. I have had a look at their site and the vSphere 5.5 link is working - http://www.360gsp.com/it-training/t...0-vmware-vsphere-install-configure-manage-v50

 

Thanks Simon, seems your very well known at 360

Course booked for the 23rd Feb in Birmingham, I owe you a few beers if we ever cross paths in the future

Andy

 

I rate the guys at 360, the owners and chief VMware instructor are really nice people.

Good luck

 

it is good to be a generalise first before you specialise,

let me explain my experience

The first 3 years of my career I was a generalist,

last 2 years spelciased in the cloud space with 0365 as a technical consultant. Although in my company I still did some of the generalist server/network/desktop work but more was on 0365. This was good cause I was able to specialise and still not loose my old skills.

however I left my last job and if there are no specialised roles in o365 and if your speclaisation is not in demand then you are doomed and will have to go back into a generalist role.

this is kind of the spot I am in, not many firms or organization is using the cloud much yet, oh well you live and learn.