OK so its not in the right thread, but at least its not in the CPU thread.
Anywho, I imagine a lot of you posters here have an A+ and/or Network+ certifications and many more. I am an avid computer enthusiast and builder like many of you, but I went to college for Music Industry. I wanted computers/networks to be my backup plan.
So when it comes time for me to say "OK I want to start an IT career." I have no credentials besides a year I worked at the College Helpdesk. So, I'm seriously looking into starting by taking a week training/exam of A+ and Network+ certifications. Is this a worth-it experience? Whether its worth it or not, I feel like if I want to get anyone to look at my resume for more than 1 second I need some certifications on there...Then maybe over time I'd get an MSCE2003 here, and Security+ there. Any comments or stories to tell? Any advice? Thanks!

A certificate will open you door from to the market. However in the real world, working experience is what matter in the IT world.

I graduated as a CS major and i'm working as Network admin. I started without any experience and through 7 months I did network planning, server maintenance, went through several raid failure servers, etc. I feel like a handy man though.

What is good about my job is you get to play with best stuff. ie: expensive hardware and actually installing them and make it work. Migrating Raids, servers, etc.

Now, I need to get my MSCEs. When I started working as IT, all the books I bought for MSCE doesn't make sense to me but now it does.

sorry to ask this, you can PM me if u want, but a degree in CS, is what i want to get, how much do u make a year, your job sounds like something i want to do, no joke.

i was seriously considering joing the air force as a computer communications expert and go for like 8 years and come out with degrees and licenses and go and work for a big company with education and experiance under my belt, doing what i love, what yeah think?

Yes, they're worth getting.

However real-world experience matters more.

A certification will get you entry-level jobs.

Of course, the best combination is to have certifications *and* real-world experience, but...

Yeah get them they dont really mean much since its just a paper saying hi i went to school. In my exp no one really cared i had the papers they wanted to know if i was able to do the job and have done it before. most people never asked and i normaly had to point it out. Thier responces were ahh cool and yeah. But hell im not saying to not get them its something nice to have. You never know when youll run into someone who wants to see them. Real world Experiance is what gets the job. All my friends went the school route and still cant get a job in thier fields i never went to school for any of it and get the jobs. Someday ill test out of some courses and get the papers i dont care about but yeaaaaaaah ill stop now.

I have an A+ cert, but I got it as more of a review of info I already knew. If you just take the course/test for the sake of taking them, you may not retain all or any of the info, especially if JOB X doesn't involve any of it. My next certification I'm pursuing is of the Cisco line. I have a new VoIP system in place and now I want to get certified in it. Its a long road though. First I have to get my CCNA, then go take about 5 courses, each with their own tests to get the voice cert.

You should check our www.certmag.com. Many subscribe to that magazine, and its free.

Thanks for all your opinions guys. Yeah I figured that was the case...Real world experience is always what they want. But like I said, I don't have too much so I've gotta start from the ground up. I didn't even goto school for Computer Science or Engineering so, I believe the certs. DEF are needed for anyone to even consider me for an entry lvl job. I just hope its enough. :-)

I've had my A+ Since 1999, and my Net+ Since 2001, I cant really see where either one got my any jobs that i couldnt have gotten without them. I didnt spend the money on the course, Just went down and Tested out of it only paying for the tests.

A+ is a joke, if your building your own pc's then you know more then the teacher. A+ is like trivial pursuit for pc's. The certs that you want to get you in the door is Cisco & MCSE, the last chapter in Cisco covers the Network+. I really liked my Cisco course it was well worth the money.

my 2 cents.

Go into the Air Force, and have them pay for your training. That what I did excpet I went into the Marine Corps right outta high school. I worked with ground commuications mostly when I got out I started working for a small telephone company in the outside plant. I had a friend who did networking and the Marine Corps paid for his certs.

I own a PC repair store and I call tell you that you need several things before an employer will take your resume seriously.

1.) A+ cert. This really doesn’t mean much to me or another store owner, but its a start and usually a minimum. Having your A+ means you are willing to invest time and effort expanding your computer career.

2.) Network+ cert. This is just an added bonus and it does get attention.

3.) EXPERIENCE EXPERIENCE EXPERIENCE. All Best Buy Geek Squad employees must be A+ (net+ ?) certified and they aren’t worth a damn. I realize you must start somewhere, but experience is worth more then the basic certifications.

This rule of thumb really just applies to local repair shops and large company ITs. If you start working for major companies, such as Best Buy, Circuit City, CompUSA, all you really need is a good attidude and your cirtifications.

I have said a few times, that reguardless of my name, I do not currently hold any computer Certifications, except Norton Ghost's IT Cert. I do however, have much experience, which has lead me to where I am at now.

Certs can help get you hired.
Certs won't help you do your job :>

1) Get your MCSE - Required

Differentiate yourself.

2) Get a CCNA - Easy and this will get you noticed.
3) Get LPI - An entry level Linux Cert.

My Degree is in Philosophy.
However, no person in the Philosophical field knows my name.
In the IT field, folks have asked me if I am the "insert my name".
So in the long run it is what you do.

If you want to differentiate yourself on the job, learn VBS or some other form of scripting. I am always amazed at how few admins, many companies have none, that can do any type of scripting.

DOS Scripting all the way baby.

BTW, its more helpfull to get certs related to the job you are looking for.

You need certs for entry-lvl jobs. You need entry-lvl jobs for expereience. So, yeah, go for it.

~Ibrahim~

I have to agree with Comptia_Rep on point 1 at least. It gives you a starting point. It isn't hard, but there ARE people who fail those tests. It also demonstrates a bit of dedication on your part. If you are serious about getting into the industry, it's not a bad place to start.

I'm glad at least one canned bird agrees with me. Now where is that jarred Parret?

Anyway, wolfman140, What is your current experience with computers? I might be able to help you out with what you should be expecting.

Well when it comes to repair shops i dont see the certs meaning anything. In fact a few i have worked at saw the A+ and sent them out the door. Not sure about everywhere else but people get handed A+ anymore with out doing anything. The people who worked on comcast support through a company here called stream international all got A+ for finishing thier rep training. Seriously if you showed me a A+ i would simply dissmiss it. Those bestbuy compusa ext techs were some of hte biggest retards when it came to computers. They requiered you to have a A+ but apperantly not to know jack about computers. We use to build computers for compUSA and the techs there screwed up alot of them and sent them back saying they went out the door broken. I was the manager of the tech department where we built those comps i never let any computer go out un tested and burned in. Funny thing is they would come back changed and i would simply change them back to how i built them and they worked just fine. Get the certs im by no means saying not to. Just learn what your doing by doing it not by reading a book.

I'm also one of those people who likes the tech department jobs its fun and i get to play with all kinds of hardware. Doesnt pay alot but o well my bills get paid and i have fun i get to do a job i love doing. I do plan on getting net+ but not really sure what else would be benafitial for me. All depends on where you want to go get what suits your field or field you want to be in. And whatever yo do dont trust those companys with your computer!

My experience thus far is as follows:

1) I know desktop hardware like its my job. Of course, we all, do since most of us built our own computers to every spec and do research on new technologies, timings, etc.

2) I read these forums dailey, so I am aware of and see the solutions of so many computer problems. PSU failures, video cards, RAM instability...All that stuff. So I believe I'm just as good as the next guy for diagnosing what is wrong, and what you need to do to pinpoint it, and replace.

3) I got a lot of virus/spyware experience working at my college as a Desktop Tech. Students/faculty called in a with a problem, most often it was spyware/trojans/viruses, and we went to their rooms and cleaned them. 90% of the time the anti-virus program didn't work so we used other utilites, registtry edits, etc. to get rid of them.

4) Of course there's a lot of other little things/problems that myself, or my friends.family have come across that they call me to fix, etc.

This course I'm going to take is 7 days of training, then we take the A+ exam and the Network+ exam. The A+ I'm not worried about. Network+, is another story. I know how networks work. I read about them a lot, I know how they're setup, the different functions of the different hardware, etc. But I never have had physical, hands on experience with them. So....
In a nutshell that's my experience.

So I'm hoping that with these certfs...I can at least get a simple Desktop Tech job at a company, then learn more about the network and maintenance, and move onto that after a couple years. Then finally, I want to take the experience I've gotten here in NYC, and move back to Upstate NY and be a server admin for a college or high school (cuz my gf's a teacher hehe)

You need to learn networking.
Setup one in your house.
Reading will not do squat beyond letting you pass tests.

Most tests have little to do with reality.
Example - On a MS Exam, What is a printer?
Hint: Neither HP nor Lexmark Sell them!!


A product like VMWare can let you setup multiple "Virtual Computers" on a single computer. If you have 2-4gb of memory on a system, you can create an entire virtual network on 1 PC.

Many vendors do this to demo their products.

Just "Hang Out" in some of the Microsoft Support Forums.
Read all the posts.
See if you can understand what problems people are having.
See if you can understand the solution.

w/o Experience (even all the self-training will not create much w/o a foundation) this is the best way to start to understand the challenges that network admins face and the tools they have to solve them.

First off, I disagree with EnFoRceR22. Having A+ cert is good advertising for a store, so its not meaningless.

As for 1.) You dont know desktop hardware untill you work daily at a repair shop. The comptuers on these forums are FAR FAR from typical. You will learn how to reinstall an old compaq OS, something you most likely dont know how yet. And the cases... oh the computer cases are evil.

2.) As for using these forums to fix issues, such as dead PSU, bad ram... thats somewhat ok. As a desktop tech, you will (or should) have access to the tools that WILL tell you what wrong, such as a PSU tester, a PCI diagnostics card, phyical ram testers.... These things are what you will learn to use... not advice over a forum. However, these forums are a good judge of what to expect, and what to look for when a problem arises.

3.) I wont even go into virus/spyware issues. You have not scratched the surface of what a spyware infection is. This is to be expected as you dont get 50k different spyware programs on your computer every day. As people bring in their computers, you will become familer with many forms of spyware and in many combinations. Viruses are not much of an issue these days (for the public non-networked comptuers).

And in your case, Network+ will be very helpfull. Good luck and keep us updated.