IT Certs, Any Suggestions?

[veredus]

So getting laid off much much sooner than what I was originally told. As such I don't have time to do the program at school I had planned on doing. So I started looking at some IT certifications since I'll have the time to study and take the tests here very shortly. Would something like getting my A+ and MCSA be a good start and enable me to get like a help desk job or something? I heard if I worked on it I could probably knock those both out in about a month. I am in the Tacoma/Seattle area if that helps. Any suggestions from all the IT people here would be appreciated.


edit: Spelling

[Ingmar]

Its a mixed bag. Some companies like certs, some don't care, at least a few actively think at least some of the lower end certs are a danger sign.

Last I heard the best money-in-the-bank certs were the higher end Cisco certs, but those aren't really a short time frame type of deal and they're pretty expensive.

[kidder]

Cisco are high on the getting paid list.

ITIL is something that seems like it could be valuable.

A really good one is vmware. 

[Numtini]

I'd advise against putting an A+ on your resume. The only reason I can think of having it is if you want a specific job that has a specific requirement for it. But for me that would be a warning sign against the job. When I worked in the real world and we were hiring people, we took it as a sign someone had low skills and prospects. It's like the GED of certs.

[Bunk]

Having an MCSE (NT4!) helped me get my foot in the door for my first IT job, but that's about it. Unless it has changed dramatically in 10 years, it's a cert you can get by buying $200 worth of study guides and then just writing the exams.

Numtini is right on the A+ thing - while it might actually be useful skills, it's the cert that everyone at the local "jobshop" gets in an effort to make them employable. If you can put it on your resume as "something you got 10 years ago" then its not a big deal.

[Brogarn]

Without experience, yes, those certs will help get you a Help Desk job. That's the thing to remember here, folks: He's not going for anything more than tier 1 support. Help Desk is far more about customer service and knowing who to send the ticket to than it is about in depth technical knowledge. You can't be a curmudgeon with computers, obviously. But knowing your way around your desktop, Word, Excel, and such along with having any kind of customer service experience will more than likely be enough. But those certs can't hurt and if the job you're going for has a lot of apps, will more than likely help your resume float to the top.

[Numtini]

Leaving the certification aside entirely, I got a lot out of reading through the MCSE books even though I never took the test. It's not so much that I learned any new real skills, but I knew where Microsoft had hidden all the stupid settings and which ones were available.

(For the record I went from a secretarial/DTP position to tech support.)

[Engels]

I took a 9 month A+ certification course that was run by a pretty cool dude. He made us actually build computers from scratch from ancient parts, build every OS known to man, have the internet on an old Windows 3.1 work, figure out fiile sharing between linux and windows, etc. I never took the A+ test, but depending on where you go to learn the stuff IN the test, it can be very useful info.

[Hawkbit]

If you can put it on your resume as "something you got 10 years ago" then its not a big deal.

Just don't BS it.  I've had two jobs in the past 10 years that actually asked for my Comptia ID# to verify I actually passed the test. 

[veredus]

Thanks for all the suggestions and advice so far. Not sure 100% what I am going to do yet but I have to do something here shortly. This gives me some more things to look up and mull over.

[Yegolev]

In that case, I'd suggest you choose a course of action before taking action, else you could end up wasting time and money.  I considered getting some certs myself due to what I expect is an inevitable layoff, however those pale in importance to my job experience since certs don't really mean anything except that you passed a multiple-choice test.

In the face of no experience, I have found that "eager and cheap" can be a good substitute.

[Soln]

what Yeg said +1

also, I've never ever heard of anyone with SAP training ever going hungry ever.  That stuff will be around forever!

[Yegolev]

The interesting thing about SAP contractors is that they can be completely ignorant of any important-yet-tangetal technologies, such as anything to do with the operating system or database.  Even better, they don't even have to know much about SAP, either, just be eager and cheap.

I'm not fucking kidding.

[veredus]

From just looking up stuff on SAP sounds like a bit of a longer process, which something like that may be the way to go for me next but I really need something faster to just get a job for now. Kind of why just want to get like a level 1 help desk job or something like that and then work on the next step. Something also to start getting some type of relevant experience. I don't mind cheap and eager right now as long as it's a steady paycheck.

[Yegolev]

Experience relevant to what?  If you're assuming a help desk job will get you real IT experience, it won't.  Well, you will learn how to work a modern(?) commercial desk phone and how to follow a script.  Also to loathe your "fellow" man.  You seem to be indicating that you want to get into IT (not the best time for that in my opinion), but I would like to point out that Help Desk is less IT and more Customer Service.

[Bunk]

Help Desk/Call center tech jobs can work as a good stepping stone - within the same company. If all you have on your resume is level phone support, that's the only thing the next company will hire you for.

I was fortunate enough to pick a good company, and was able to work my way up from tech support grunt to my current Supervisor/trainer role.

[veredus]

Well what I am looking for is to just get a job mostly and then work on a degree or more advanced certs. I do want to get into IT so wanted to try and get something relevant to that. I just kind of assumed the lower level certs were what you got before moving up and figured they'd help get my foot in the door to start somewhere. Also figured I could get them done quickly which right now is a big bonus.

Yegolev if you don't mind me asking what would you recommend as a starting point? For long term I want to stay away from programming since what little I have played around with I am bad at and didn't really enjoy it. The SAP stuff actually sounds interesting from the little I have just been reading on it but I need to look into that a lot more since there is quite a bit to it.

As far as loathing my fellow man I got that one down. I currently do risk management for a rental car company and part of that is collecting on damage claims.

[Engels]

I dunno if its possible to get a cert quickly. Even the disreputed A+ test is pretty intensive, and I suspect that even those of us in the field right now may not pass it, due to the persnickety questions it asks on all sorts of hardware fronts. I mean, if you are a very quick study, sure, go for it. The A+ book is only ~1200 pages. 

[Yegolev]

My suggestion for getting into IT is really just to get any job at all doing anything IT, with the note that help desk isn't IT. (Hey, sort of like getting into gaming)  I think that the days of transitioning from routing calls to servicing hardware/software is gone, especially with the relative surplus of IT people.

Applying for a job doing grunt work like staging servers or installing apps and saying "yea I can do that" a lot is the key.  You want to be doing actual support work, even if it is replacing mice on workstations, and you can possibly work your way up from there.

Read a lot of job postings and tailor yourself to get the job you are going for, not meaning certs so much as being able to pass the technical interview.  Certs listed on your resume are fine for getting past the HR guy but chances are you'll talk to the taskmaster soon enough and he will sniff out your skills.  Don't lie (a lot) to the guy, either.  We hate finding out after we bring someone in that they don't know anything because then we have to change all the passwords after we shitcan them.  Annoying!  I am pretty sure I failed hard on my tech interview to get in here but I was willing to work shit hours and had a can-do attitude.  My certs showed that I wasn't a complete clown, but then again I wasn't working on Windows.

[Engels]

My first real IT job was 12 bucks an hour for 25 hours a week. Barely scratched by, but it got me in the door.

[veredus]

Thanks again for the advice and replies from everyone.

[Murgos]

You don't need a cert to get an IT job, particularly not a tech support job.

Are you in school?  If so, or heck even if not, go to the different IT sections around campus and see if they need someone for cheap part time OJT work.  You'll probably get a much better IT education going that route than trying to get a cert first and then find a job.

[Lantyssa]

My personal feeling is that the low level certs are worthless.  Anyone using them as their primary resource is immediately suspect.  Having experience and then adding "oh, I also have this cert" isn't quite as bad, or even saying you wanted to learn some things while you were looking for work would be okay.  Now knowing what is in the books isn't bad, and might very well help you.  In many ways it's how you phrase why you have them.

Something like the Cisco certs are pretty impressive, but they're expensive and things you intensely study for six months prior.  Also something you make your company pay for.  (A good friend is with Cicsco, so I hear all about it.)

[Broughden]

Thanks again for the advice and replies from everyone.

As a non-IT guy, I do enough to ask this question: What about the IT field interests you? What exactly do you want to be doing when you say "IT job?"

For example, in many ways the corporate world considers much of my wife's work to be "IT." But she doesnt know shit about servers or programing languages (she studied JAVA at one point years ago). But she has a business degree with IT specialty. She was project lead on a lot of big projects, because she could talk to the CS guys to find out what they wanted on the front end and what the customers needed, talk to the business guys to help build the case for implementing the changes and what kind of cost benefits it would provide and finally interface with the IT (programmer) guys to get it built.

Which part do you want to be in?

Edit: For me it would be like you saying "I want to be in the military." Awesome, but be more specific because there are 4 different branches with hundreds of different jobs.

[veredus]

What part do I want in? That's kind of the problem not really sure since I don't really know exactly what people do when they say IT. It's such a broad and general term really and frankly where to start can be a little confusing at first. I have a lot of research I need to do right now but that is why I asked here, seems a good amount of knowledgeable folks here.

I like computers and networking, I'm pretty good at troubleshooting when things go wrong and I actually enjoy that. I like the hands on stuff, the building computers and wiring type stuff. Granted I've only handled personal stuff, my own networks/computers, stuff for friends and family etc. Even at work I get stuck troubleshooting computers for coworkers since it's faster and easier then calling help desk 99% of the time. Not that I mind that since I actually enjoy that kind of thing. I kind of like fixing things that are broken when it comes to computers. My priorities right now though are something fast and fulltime then focus on something for long term.

[Sheepherder]

My suggestion for getting into IT is really just to get any job at all doing anything IT, with the note that help desk isn't IT. (Hey, sort of like getting into gaming)  I think that the days of transitioning from routing calls to servicing hardware/software is gone, especially with the relative surplus of IT people.

My brother went from help desk for personal internet (I think he was working at Convergys, in Winnipeg) to corporate troubleshooting shit.  He's currently working on (or has finished) a Cisco cert of some sort.  Then again, he's kinda fucking good at networking and didn't keep a flask of whisky in his desk, so already he was a serious contender for worker of the year.

[Viin]

I still think the helpdesk job is a good way to get started. Here's what I did:

ISP helpdesk slave -> Lead ISP helpdesk slave -> customer integration/deployment support -> lead enterprise systems support -> product manager (of enterprise systems)

That trek has been about 10 years long. The first two were only for 1 to 1.5 years altogther, it sucked but it got experience on my resume with tech-ish + customer service.

But! I make about 3 times what I made when I started as helpdesk slave, so it's all good. Each one of those jumps increased my pay by at least 10k/year.

To get a helpdesk slave job you just need to type well, understand the OS (windows, unix, whatever you are supporting), and be a quick learner. With those 3 you will outshine everyone else and they will put you in charge or promoted to tier2/tier3 in months. And then other depts in the company want you, because they hear you are shit hot. (Almost got a job in the NOC, aka "real IT", after getting Lead, but opted to bail and go to much better company that I'm still at).

[Selby]

I started in IT by basically applying for a job that needed someone to set up Windows NT on lab computers.  I had toyed around with it at home and went to the interview and said "I can do it, what I don't know right now I guarantee I'll figure out in no time."  They asked for certs, I said I didn't have them but if they were willing to support me I would get them.  And then they sat me down in front of a broken machine and said "set up X & Y permissions and turn on Z" and I did.  I went from lab lackey to sole lab lackey to programmer over the course of 2 years.  When we were hiring people, we would look at the resumes they had and determine who was worth bringing in and who wasn't - and certifications were never a deal breaker or deal sealer.  We always sat someone down who claimed to know things and made them demonstrate it.  More people crashed and burned in this phase (making a bootable floppy?  Create a new account?) than I cared to admit.

Know what you want to do and go for it.  If you like monkeying around with cabling and machines, a local university department or ISP could be a good place to start.  Helpdesk is not something I'd recommend, especially if the place you are working is ONLY help desk, as the chances of moving up in that building are slim and none.

[Fabricated]

Cisco (CCNA, CCIE) - Good, but very hard. CCIE means you're a network god.

MCP - Unless they totally changed it, these are the certs for individual products. Useful, but not a dealbreaker for a lot of people I've talked to. Mine are all old and crusty now (Win2k Client, Win2k Advanced Datacenter, etc)

MCSA/MCSE/whatever they're calling it now - This is the one where you need like 7 MCPs I think. Again, unless they changed it. Nice to have.

A+ - Not worth the effort, no one gives a shit about it. Basically it proves you are 20% less likely to accidentally set yourself on fire opening a computer up.

Security+ - Even more worthless.

CompTIA certs in general - Useless.