Why NOT to go straight for MCSE

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Good points and thanks for sharing

 

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An excellent thread! kevicho, dales, and fatp have given great advice and info.

I'm currently considering starting out in tech support, and am looking at self-studying for the CompTIA A+ certification. I'm waiting for the study guide from Amazon so I can check out the course content and make 100% sure it's what I want to do for a living (torn between this and web dev). I've built a few PCs and collected some knowledge here and there, so I thought it might be a good idea to get proper training.

Thanks again for the invaluable info!

 

This message kept being drilled into my head.. MCSE needs experience or its useless. Now im about to graduate and start looking at jobs what does everyone want an MCSE!!! I even went to a fair share of graduate fairs in the last 6 months.. again that 4 letter word comes up. Look at the MS site:

These are the pre-reqs from MS.. are they mad? Or is the world mad? Talk to graduates.. ask them why they were denied jobs, no MCSE or CCNA.. and no experience.. we get them and we still not experienced. So where does this leave the IT kiddies like myself coming through today? We becoming unemployable from the day some of us start out to learn in this profession. Dont believe me go to job sites like CWjobs.. atleast 100 jobs for 1st line and Helpdesk asking for MCSE or CCNA... not right but true.. so what does one do?

Edit: i think thats my 1st post in months! LOL

 

Kevicho is prompt on. All employers need to learn to distinguish between a person loaded with a MCSE paper tiger and CV against somebody who is a systems engineer, who may have the MSCE qualifications as an added advantage. Gochieng

 

ok, alot of people are saying if you get these certs you will be "overqualified" meaning that if you go
for a job with no experiance and a CCNA you probably wont get it, BUT what if you go for a entry level job
with an A+ N+ CCNA and MCSE? surely that shows alot more knowledge and interst than just the first 2?

Why am I learning all 4? because im with a TP and it just turned out rather randomly to be ALOT cheaper to do all 4 than to do 1 of them on their own - at this TP or any other (£700 plus exam fees if you were wondering)

Now, iv paid for all 4 so im goign to do all 4, even if the only benifit of teh last will be my own personal interest
but when I go for my first entry level job in a few months should I leave the CCNA/MCSE off my CV or not?

 

I would leave it off.

If i saw you had an MCSE and CCNA and you had not worked in IT before and were applying for an entry level job i would be very dismissive and it would work against you i'm afraid. If you were put in front of real problems on servers you will find that an MCSE does not always help to solve those. Also without daily exposure to networks and servers and the problems they create, you will find most of that "paper MCSE" slips out of your memory.

I would prefer someone come in with an entry level cert and work their way up as they work with the products. You will truly understand what you are doing as you learn and work. If you come in thinking about DNS suffixes when someone can't connect to the internet on the helpdesk you won't be much help. It will most likely be he has not plugged his cable in

I studied French for years but can only string a few sentences together now. Probably because the neural pathways in the brain like to keep busy If it aint used it aint needed says the noggin.

 

but surely in an entry level job i wouldnt be put infront of server porblems? Id still have the entry level certs
and would be applying for a job that those certs are relevant to, but id just have gone a little further with my study than the minimum required which I would have thought would reflect well on me, but then again maybe IT people think differntly than me :P

 

First off i would say that an MCSE and a CCNA are more than "a little bit more study" than entry level IT certs. I would say they are a major certification that is massively beyond something expected in an entry level role

With an MCSE and no experience of real servers you may over analyse lower end problems based purely on the fact that you have no experience whatsoever in a real world environment. I prefer to train my staff up and make sure they learn the right way at the level they work at and are aiming for. If i interview you for a helpdesk position i do not want you leaving 6 months later for another job because you have an MCSE and can see you might be able to get more money elsewhere. Being overqualified before you even enter the industry means to me you won't hang around long if you can help it.

It costs money to recruit and i would want some stability with my staff. There are not always opportunities to climb the ladder in small organisations and someone coming in to a job massively over qualified (or not because of no experience) would not bode well for them or my company.

Without any experience, an MCSE holder is pretty worthless in my personal opinion. Sorry if that sounds rude i do not intend to offend. That is my honest opinion. If you have an MCSE and you have no experience it would scream at me that the individual has not researched his chosen profession at all. Why else study for something you should not have even touched without 2 years + experience doing the job with all of its little intricacies.

That is why i would not brandish an MCSE if i were applying for my first IT job. It is not something i would want anyone to know.


Oh and i don't even have an MCSE yet but do have about 9 years of experience with networks and servers.

 

aaaa true.

Infact now i think about it i think im having that problem atm with my degree trying to get a minimum wage job just to tide me over - i would leave my BA off the CV but then id have to explain 3 years of nothingness :P

anyway back to IT - I guess ill leave them off the CV then

thanks for the info

 

hmm, Iv been thinking about this - I got a 6 month period of time for all 4 certs, i know alot of people will think thats stupid fast but im unemployed atm so im doing roughly 8 hours a day on it. I would idealy like to get all 4 done in that time because if i fail an exam my TP will pay for however many resits i need to pass which is a nice safety net considering they are like £100 each :P.

Im confident ill get the A+ N+ and CCNA done in the 6 months ok, but the MCSE might not be doable - ill just see how it goes. I dont really want a full time job untill after those 6 months are up or i will hardly get anythign done, so ill start looking around for a job once i got my N+ but ill have to decide at the time what i should do - might be the case that the company i find say that they will pay for exams once im at teh correct experiance level in which case id probably take it but...who knows.

 

All this said, I still say get the books for the ccna, the msce, A+ what ever takes your fancy, get on the websites keep up to date with what's going on- basically get as much knowledge as you want/can. For me that's the exciting bit about IT.

I don't understand why some of you say that you would dismiss a CV of someone that has studied for certification at ccna/msce looking for a entry level job. To me, this demonstrates a strong level of commitment. Surely if they have the interpersonal skills too, they could be a real asset to a company when they have got some real life experience.

Perhaps it's the fear factor for a manager/tech pride i.e the paper CCNA/MSCE tech might have more technical knowledge than me! I don't like this side of IT - it's really narrow minded. Surely in an IT dept you need a whole range of people with different skills/certs/levels.

 

Hi Adrian,

I see your point which is a valid one too, however the reason why people are against over certifying on a specific cert is because experience counts the most.

Secondly, it makes sense for one to certify in an area that currently pertains to their day to day duty at work. I however, do not dismiss those people who can study and gain a cert as long as it was gained in a legit way and method of studying.

If the above is not adhered to then the cert becomes worthless and hence those of us hard working gaffers would lose out. Cheerio and thanks for sharing your opinion on this subject matter.

 

Gotta say, I agree with Ken and Dalsoth. I would go for the A+, N+ and MCDST before getting a job only (obviously would be better to have one).

I got my first job in IT at the start of June '08 and I did not have any qualifications other than studying for the MCDST, I passed this and my Vista OS and was studying for the 70-290 and i was seconded to 2nd Line at the start of Septemer 2008.

I was then given the goal of obtaining my MCSA, which I did and got an OK pay rise. I have now been set the goal of getting my MCSE.

By the time I get my MCSE, I will have only been in IT for just over a year, however, I will have 'some' experience to go with this as well, and another pay rise.

Another thing you have to be wary about as well is your MS Learning Transcript, I know this is a strange thing to say but I know my Team Leaders look at them and if they see to many exams passed in a short space of time, they dismiss the candidate. I think they work on getting two or more server certs in a month, OS's are OK.

Anyways good luck with your objectives, start applying now saying something on the lines off

'studying towards MCDST' on your CV.

 

I would disagree with you on that one, I've been passed over on a few jobs due to my academic achievements. How do I know this? HR person telling me during the interview (non-IT related jobs).

 

Well regarding IT jobs, I remember one interview for a helpdesk position, inhuman-resources found I was a bit over qualified... saying "you know I see you have this linux certification. You do realize you won't be working with linux..." In the end, I did get the job.

But for IT jobs, academics regardless of what they are, is always good. Shows (usually) you know to read/write, and understand...

darn.. hope I'm making sense here... lol