IT careers and certification

[scouse1604]

Hi Jtrader,

I'm inclined to say that experience is the key.

I have been in IT for over 10 years now and hold the MCSE accreditation amongst others, but holding an accreditation is not enough to secure employment.

With the advent of cheap IT training from India and South Africa, there are a lot of "paper techies out there now.

You need to look into a course that will guarantee employment for you.

I can highly reccommend Cerco training based in Nantwich, Cheshire.

www.cercotraining.co.uk

I attended the course at the start of my IT career and I haven't looked back.

Good Luck

Paul

 

[dcraig1]

JTrader,

The first thing you need to decide is what aspect of IT are you aiming to get into - programming and software development, system admin, networking, DBA, sales etc ?

If you decide that software development is the area, you had better enjoy programming. In my experience, this is one of the most important attributes for the job, because otherwise a person won't have the commitment to put in the substantial time required to be good at it.

While I think there a lot of benefit to formal education (and I don't mean learning how to drag a few widgets onto a form using Visual Studio XYZ, but learning the principles of programming - data structures, algorithms, operating system system principles), these days there is a vast amount of material available for free on the web allowing a committed individual to teach themself the necessary skills. Not just educational material but also the necessary software tools are available for free.

There are any number of free software projects on the net that one can join and get help from other members. There is no reason that one couldn't combine formal courses with self education using web resources.

There is also no good reason to confine ones ambitions to Microsoft products. For example UNIX sysadmins are generally paid more than Microsoft sysadmins - probably because they know more. If you want to learn a programming language consider Java as well as Microsoft languages. Java is extensively used on the server side. It's my prediction that we'll see more of it for GUI's in the next few years - especially in finance. Everything you need to learn Java and program Java applications is available free on the net.

Also consider that salaries governed by supply and demand and that MCSEs are a dime a dozen. It doesn't necessarily pay to follow the herd.