Certification Magazine - November 2007 - (Page 17)

their relevance will fade as you spend more time in IT. Experience will be low or nil at first, so of course you can’t rely on it. But over time, you’ll gain more, and it will become more and more relevant. Eventually, the certs will be the ‘nice to haves,’ like the icing on top of a resume of solid experience. “One other interesting thing about certs is their value can depend on where you work and what you do. For example, if you were a high-end network consultant, it would be good for business if you could flash your CCIE badge to customers, whereas if you worked at Cisco, it would barely raise an eyebrow.” Elsewhere in our CertMag.com forum discussion boards, a posting by a junior member asking about telecommuting drew a range of responses. In a thread titled “How could I work from home?” teemhill wrote: “I’m in the process of pursuing my A+ and Net+ certs, and my primary goal is to work from home full time as a network engineer. Because I’m in the beginning stages of my IT career, my question to you all is, am I pursuing the right certs? Should I pursue other certs if I would like to work from home? “I really enjoy working with computers and would definitely like to begin a career in the IT field from home (if it’s not a farfetched endeavor).” The first response came from cpattersonv1: “You might want to pick up some program development skills. From what I’ve been reading and experiencing myself, to keep up with the botnets and automated hacking attempts now, you’ll have to get some skills until the newer firewalls that screen traffic on port 80 become more cost-effective. At least this way, you could be a white hat from home, or anywhere else for that matter. Might help with the aspirations.” Wayne Anderson expressed his skepticism that this endeavor could or would succeed: “The idea that you will somehow get some magical certifications that will allow you an entry-level job working from home is, at least in the U.S., pretty unrealistic. I was going to say preposterous, but I guess technically you could start your own PC-repair business or do consulting for people on their PCs. But realistically, even doing that without much experience in IT would be bad because you would quickly degrade any reputation you had in the business running into situations that you are not prepared for. You need to get experience in the office world before you can look at positions that have a high rate of telecommuting. “As far as specific certifications for network engineering, work on your CCNA and CCNP. You will need to get to the CCNP level to really show a level of competency to go after more-advanced positions. Network engineering tends to be a very office-oriented career path because of the potential for downtime, security restrictions on switch configurations, etc. Again, I really do think that you need to examine whether your expectations of a full-time, work-from-home engineering job with just a college degree and a few certs is an expectation in line with reality.” New member kieranm agreed: “I would second Wayne’s comments — there are jobs that are at least part-time, work-from-home ones, but in almost all cases, you will need to get some industry experience first. Based on the certs you are going for, you’re probably lining up for entry-level positions, which is just fine, but in the majority of cases, these jobs will be in-person-type jobs, providing in-office support for users or the network. There is also the ‘newbie’ and company culture to consider. As a new employee in an entry-level position, many companies won’t want you working from home anyway (at least until they know you are reliable, capable, etc.).” If you’re interested in jumping in to any of these discussions, please visit our forums at www.certmag.com/forums.8 – Daniel Margolis, dmargolis@certmag.com November 2007 CERTIFICATION MAGAZINE 17 http://CertMag.com http://www.certmag.com/forums

Table of Contents Feed for the Digital Edition of Certification Magazine - November 2007

Certification Magazine - November 2007 Contents Editor's Letter Data Stream Tech Careers Academic Connection Dear Techie Virtual Village Certification Outside Technology Inside Certification The Webmaster: Online Everyman Interface Time Tips: How to Fit Certification into Your Schedule Ad Index Endtag

Certification Magazine - November 2007

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