Well, it appears that things aren’t working out with my current job and I might need to consider a career change pretty soon. I don’t have a college degree, so I was thinking of using a tech job as a stepping stone to university.
I’m interested in either hardware support or web design. Because of last decade’s tech boom, IT certification types and schools are more numerous than empty seats at the last Chumbawumba concert. I was interested in the A+/NET+ and CIW (Certified Internet Webmaster) certifications, but now I have no idea what looks good to an employer anymore.
My searches on the Internet found no less than six billion online and bricks-and-mortar institutions offering courses for A+/NET+ and CIW. I suppose my question is: Are A+/NET+ and CIW certifications still desired by employers (I know A+/NET+ was; not sure about CIW), and which schools are legitimate institutions for these types of certifications and which ones will get me nowhere (at little less than the cost of a new Geo)?
I’m not sure I can phrase this question any better, but I know there are IT dopers out there. Please help me sort through the quagmire of useless schools and certifications to find the legitimate ones.
The ‘legitimate’ tech diplomas are 2-year programs at junior colleges. Computer Engineering Technology, Information Systems, Business Analyst, etc.
In my company we have grads of such programs start as web designers, Quality Assurance specialists, database developers, or even junior software developers. And once you’re in the door, we no longer care about your education - it’s performance that counts. We have people with 2 year diplomas as team leads with people who have Masters degrees in computing science working under them.
If you can afford the time and money, I highly recommend a solid tech diploma route like Computer Engineering Technology. It’ll help you stand out from the huge glut of people with MCSE certificates and the like, and if you choose the right program you’ll get university transfer credit as well, which will keep your doors open if you want to pursue an advanced education later.
This depend a lot on where you are located, but as I have seen it (in the midwest), there are none. And the minimum degree now seems to be a bachelor’s. And the minimum experience seems to be several years in everything the company already uses. It’s a bad time to be trying to get started in IT, I have an associate’s but am no longer actively looking for an IT job, because the only entry jobs seem to be help-desk positions (often part-time only) that pay less than the full-time job at a grocery store I am working at now.
…
What I plan to do is pursue the casual Linux environment in my spare time; learn a bit about rolling programs on it with GTK and such, to gain some level of familiarity with it. Most schools in my area do not have anything in the way of Linux programming but they all offer courses in Microsoft programming software.
St. Pete College seems to have their act together for offering certificates. I don’t see where they have online courses, but at least you can get a feel for what it’s all about. I was going to persue one of these certifications, until I found out the lab fees per semester are over $500 per class for most classes.
This fall I’m planning to start my Bachelor of New Media, however, my family insists that I get Microsoft certified as well. This is confusing me, because I will be working with computers, but nothing near computer repair or IT. My brother claims that most companies force their employees to fix their own computers and it’s a plus if they can, which seems absolutely preposterous to me. A bit of clarification, please?
—kushiel said—
This fall I’m planning to start my Bachelor of New Media, however, my family insists that I get Microsoft certified as well. This is confusing me, because I will be working with computers, but nothing near computer repair or IT. My brother claims that most companies force their employees to fix their own computers and it’s a plus if they can, which seems absolutely preposterous to me. A bit of clarification, please?
—end what kushiel said—
At most of my past employers, your brother is dead wrong. At some employers, probably rare ones, he’d be right.
I do computer tech support on customer systems for a living. But when my own PC at work breaks, I call the in-house help desk and they send a guy out to fix it, the way my employer wants it fixed.
BTW, this whole thread is more of an invitation for a GD, but my feeling is that MCSE certification is close to worthless unless you happen to know that a PARTICULAR employer you want to work for cares about it. And anymore, I think that’s rare.
A+ is useful, but not terribly so. I’ve met managers who told me that most people they see who come in the door with A+ certs tend to be less qualified than those without.
Finally, neither an MCSE nor an A+ will get you your first job in IT. MCSE job candidates are expected to have 3-5 ore more years of experience. A+ candidates are supposed to have 6-12 months industry experience, minimum. As far as “Network Plus” I really don’t know from experience, but would be highly surprised if the minimum experience needed for most associated positions was less than that for MCSE-type jobs.
I wholly endorse studying for an MCSE, A+, Network+, whatever, if the associated knowledge lines up with the job you want. I learned a lot from my first reading of an MCSE study box set, and associated exercises. But once I found out how the industry works, I never felt compelled to pay for testing.
Not only do most companies not force their employees to fix their own computers, they’d probably be pretty annoyed if you tried. I run a company full of extremely tech-savvy people, but we don’t expect our guys to fix their own gear. It’s not a good way for them to spend their time. If there’s a problem, they move to a new workstation and we get someone else to fix it or handle it in spare time. We don’t expect our non-tech employees to even configure their own systems, much less pop the case and do real work.
Most certifications, Microsoft certifications in particular, are a mixed bag. Most of them allow you to get certified by taking one or more tests, but this may only indicate that the certified person studied hard (had a lot of time on their hands) and takes tests well. I know several MCSE (Microsoft certified systems engineers) who have never admin’d a real-world production server and because they’ve never applied their book learning, they’re pretty useless in general. I know other admins who aren’t certified but are worth their weight in gold. It’s kind of a truism that the people who are most qualified have neither the time nor the necessity to get certified.
From my own hiring, I view certifications as a bonus. I certainly don’t discount them because I know they’re not easy to get. But they’re only one factor. Given a choice between a certified candidate and a candidate with a verifiable work history, I’d take the work history.