Four Steps to get your IT career started.

hello and welcome back to my basement hey this is jeremiah uh okay so i had someone reach out to me with a question today they were commenting on my i think it was today or yesterday uh commenting on my linux plus video from like six eight months ago and i thought it was a it was interesting conversation so i kind of wanted to share that with you guys give you my two cents on this and basically what it comes down to is there's a gentleman who is trying to get into i.t and he's been struggling and so let's let's take a look at what's going on with him and see if there's anything we can do to offer some advice so you know this is on the youtube so i don't feel bad about about showing this guy's information because it's a public comment anyway all right so derek says i have comptia a plus net plus security plus and ccna and still can't get a job i tried for network administrator positions and nothing and now can't even get an interview even for desktop support jobs i'm currently studying for cyber security is that what that is psi sa just like cyber security analyst or something i don't know and linux but this is making me think twice uh this i assume being my video where i kind of bash comptia a little bit uh okay so my response hey derek i don't recall if i discuss this in the video but i strongly recommend against too many entry-level ieg comptia certifications i would suggest modifying your resume to only list your ccna and maybe one other cert probably your a plus or your security plus depending on what you're applying for uh too many certifications unless you have years of experience just make it look like you're good at taking tests but probably won't excuse me perform well in the real world also if you've got the time and money for more certifications stop with the comptia search and start moving deeper into a field so derek wrote back that's a little bit more but derek wrote back and he says jeremiah thank you i really appreciate appreciate your direction i'm already deep into linux and comptia's cyber security whatever the cyber cyasa is uh if you were me would you stop going after those two certs from comptia and try a different similar cert like ceh i also saw linux system admin cert from the linux foundation that would probably be better than the comptia linux cert i'm tired of being overlooked from employers that i even enrolled in an actual state college to get a degree in cyber security uh that's him i mean uh all these steps i'm taking to get a job is expensive in the sense that it is taking away from all of my time and to even hang out with family all right well that's interesting so a couple things here about what he's saying first off i would never dissuade anyone from getting a college education i do not have a college education and right now my plan involves me going back to school i am 45 years old 40 45 40 something like i'm around there 44 45 i always forget and i'm planning on going back to school probably next year i'm working on my ccie once that's done the next step almost certainly is to go back to school it is one of those things that i have not been hurt in my career by skipping college i i attended for a couple semester for a year one for a year dropped out and i was kind of lucky i'm a real self-starter i i honestly just got lucky also like i'm not trying to give myself total credit because the simple truth is i got lucky um but i got some good positions i worked hard and i managed to build a very successful career even without college to the point where my friends who have advanced degrees usually made less money than i did [Music] so that was good for me but also it made things more difficult the last time i was really looking for a job the job market was tight and they didn't care so much about my certs well they did they wanted the certs but they also wanted the college degree and the fact that i didn't have it they didn't care what the degree was in but they they wanted it so for that reason i'm planning going back and a friend of mine who i graduated high school with and who also dropped out of college and who also coincidentally is extremely successful in her career makes a ton of money very successful similar thing though she's always kind of regretted not going to school or not finishing school so she actually went started just like two years ago i didn't know she was we talk all the time and i didn't know she was doing it because she was just doing it nights and weekends when she had time all 100 online and now she's almost done with her bachelor's like it's only been a few years like you know she so yeah she's really encouraged me to go back and so i'm gonna do it so look if it's coming to if you have the time and the money and you're still young um i i would probably recommend it i would probably recommend it now look if you got to get it out there into the the job uh uh field you know if you got to get out there into the job market going back to schools just not or going to school is not an option for you financially or for whatever reason then yes certifications are a great way to bypass you know three or four years and potentially tens of thousands of dollars and get right out there within a matter of sometimes months so you got to weigh that for yourself but i'm not going to dissuade derrick or anyone from getting a college education it's important so or it can be very important um now what else does derek have to say here so he's talking about maybe going back to school he's also talking about uh getting it looking at a different linux cert rather than comptia uh maybe getting his ceh which i believe is certified ethical hacker certification so let's let's go over my advice to derek and we're going to break this down into i think probably four steps where's my why is it not coming up that's weird there we go okay so uh step one this is my my this is my opinion and my advice i'm not telling anybody what to do this is my opinion and my advice so uh let's get a different color and a little thicker step one is to you gotta pick a discipline this is something that a lot of young people really struggle with you got to pick a discipline is that useful discipline uh pick a discipline with a little extra swivel at the end what do i mean by that well here's the thing you there is so much in i.t so eric for example or derek i'm sorry derek um so let's see here derek has his a plus network plus security plus ccna and now he's working on his linux plus and his psi essay i really should look up what that is uh it's like whoa whoa dude what do you want to do now from for a lot of people what they the thought process is and this is very understandable the thought process is well i'm just going to get a certification in everything and then somebody's got bound to give me a job in something because i have certs in everything now that makes sense when we just sit down and think about it but from a hiring manager's point of view that doesn't make sense because when they look at your resume they see someone who is completely unfocused who has all these entry-level certifications now listen i know that there are people out there who get a bunch of entry level certifications and they get a job but i will tell you as someone who has been many times a hiring manager that to me looks it looks weird it looks bad what is going on here why are you all over the place if i'm going to hire you i want you to be able to do something well i don't want you to know a little bit about everything i mean everybody knows a little bit about everything i need what do you do well so when i see a plus net plus security plus ccna i'm just thinking okay this person is just taking tests they have no idea how to actually do work and so i'm just gonna set them aside that doesn't interest me that's just me and i'm sorry i'm not trying to offend anybody i'm trying to help you guys out so my advice to derek again was to pick pick a discipline now he has a cca and his network plus so maybe he enjoys networking but he talks about here he wants to go into linux and certified ethical hacking which is probably more linux at least a lot of it is so maybe he wants to do linux and he says he's tried to get jobs as uh what does he say here [Music] desktop network admin okay so he's tried for network admin and desktop support so why would someone not hire you for desktop support well they see you taking all these tests and so they're thinking this guy's looking to get out he's not going to be here for a long time so if you were looking for desktop support you might want to list just your a plus list nothing else because if you start listing all these search the hiring manager says this guy's going to be here for three months and quit so you know now and if you're looking for a network position again you might want to list your ccna and i don't see even the net plus like again i have this really strong bias against comptia so i'm a little turned off by it but if you listed your network plus and ccna or your ccna and your security plus you know showing that you're trying to get abroad but only in a couple areas that that might look better for you so but here's the thing you need to pick a discipline so what is it that you want to do step one pick a discipline and i understand again it's hard to pick but let me let me just make you feel a little better here in my career i have worked with the ccie who started his career as a chemical engineer okay i worked with a guy in sales who was a an anthropologist with a master's degree okay i worked with a um what was the other thing i was going to say oh an electrical engineer who was doing telephone systems um my own wife her undergrad is in biology but she works in the unless and elect electricity industry so and you know and when i started my career i was a server guy microsoft and novell and then i eventually became there was no real linux i mean there was a little bit of linux back then but not much then i eventually became a cisco guy and then i learned some juniper and i learned some netware and i learned some f5 so so here's the thing your career is going to go in directions that you at this point in your life probably can't imagine things are going to happen opportunities are going to come your way and you're gonna your career is gonna shift and ebb and flow uh hopefully in directions that you want it to some of those ebbs and flows will be because you push it in that direction others will be by circumstance but don't worry too much about oh if i decide if i start doing cloud now what if i don't like cloud i'm always going to be stuck doing cloud like no no or what if i if what if i'm routing and switching and i hate routing and switching and now i've got to spend the next 30 years doing routing and switching it doesn't work that way it doesn't work that way you're going to start there you're going to get some experience you're going to look at other opportunities once you understand what you like and what opportunities exist you can get some training and then shift your career so pick something that you want to focus on now something you have some interest in you're going to be able to stick with and and just make the choice you got to make the choice you could spend years and thousands and thousands of dollars vacillating all over the place uh you know unsure of where where and what you wanted what you want to do and where you want to go like that's not going to help you so step one pick a discipline step two you got to do some research so in the discipline that you've picked who is the number one vendor in that industry if you're talking about cloud computing it's probably amazon if you're talking about networking it's probably cisco unless maybe you're interested in you know if you're specifically looking at service provider networking then it might be juniper or somebody else so you know who is the number one vendor in that industry who were their primary competitors so cisco it's going to be depending because there's lots of different ones actually juniper hp uh what is it uh arista i don't know um luckily right now cisco's still big enough that you can pretty much just focus on them so but you got to figure out okay so who is it so if it's cloud stuff you're looking at microsoft google and amazon now okay take that information and oh did i close the wrong one oh that's weird okay i somehow managed to close something that i was using as for notes and it's might be gone all right so so now that you have that information what are you going to do you're going to look into their certification programs so let's let's do just that now we're going to look at cisco so we come to cisco.com we go to support and learn we go to certifications we have entry associate professional experts so we're just going to look real quick at the professional ones i'm expecting you to do this on your own with amazon or google or whoever and see cisco has multiple mid-level certifications enterprise data center security service provider collaboration so you're going to see okay what was the discipline that i picked what are the potential certifications [Music] i'm an enterprise kind of guy so we're going to look at enterprise and here we have a court test and then we have lots of different potential specializations so look at the certifications what's involved in look at the whole path cisco is ccna then ccnp then ccie but as you can see just from that what i showed you there's there's lots of different ways to get there there's lots of different specializations so what interests you take a look write write it down take notes look at the path you know what is doable the ccna is what one test you look at the study material you could probably get the you know study material for a few hundred dollars so you know ccna you're looking at maybe five six hundred bucks for the test and study material pretty doable a couple of three months maybe to study depending on where you're at ccnp it's going to be a little bit more two tests minimum so you're looking at uh you know maybe it's going to be close to a thousand dollars and it's going to take maybe six or maybe even nine months kind of depending on you know where you're at ccie uh that's that's really probably unlikely because it takes just a lot of uh experience and thousands of dollars in training and study and labs so maybe that's not quite you're not there yet so you know but look at the different path what what are the options available how far can you go [Music] now with where you're at now where you know you start at the entry level work your way up what can you afford what can you do figure out that path write it down so you have that written down so what are we gonna do next well we need to do step three so here we're researching certs and now we're going to research jobs and it'd be help helpful if you could see that so we picked a discipline we researched the certs in that discipline now we're going to research jobs so what are we going to do well um we'll head over to indeed here we're going to look for as you can see i was already looking but let's come to ohio where i live let's look for ccna and we have 218 jobs okay not bad let's look for ccnp 86 jobs okay not bad ccie 21 jobs not too bad now let's just for uh sake of completeness let's look at juniper certification so cisco's one of cisco's top competitors is juniper they probably have one of the outside of cisco probably have one of the better training certification programs so let's look at jnc i a i believe it is all right so the entry level juniper 11 jobs jnc jcn ip their mid-level one job i.e it's that same one job for arista networks which is actually kind of funny because so there's not a lot of jobs there so where do you want to spend your time where do you want to spend your effort where do you want to spend your money studying well in this case it probably should be with cisco and that's what you're going to want to do for your whatever it is if you're looking at cloud if you're whatever you're looking for linux that's what you're gonna look look for the jobs that are listing the certifications that's what you're gonna know what to study so now that being said listen you're you're you're looking for a career in i.t i'm assuming you're an intelligent person so you need to slow down and use your head no one's going to hold your hand and tell you exactly what to do you got to think your way through this so if you're looking for ccna and you put that in the job search you got to read those job listings you know like what are they actually looking for maybe that'll give you some clues as to if there's something you need to specialize in or if there's a a another certification that could help help is going to help you get seen you know among all the other applicants so that's that's step three first you decide on a discipline then you're going to research the certifications then you're gonna research the jobs step four should be obvious you're going to get to work is study so get to work start studying get the certifications they're going to help you get the job it it kind of blows my mind because i see this all the time there my mom there's a reddit i.t jobs group that i'm on subreddit and i see this pretty frequently with people who have all these they have like all the comptia certs and they can't find a job and they can't understand why and i'm not criticizing derek because i understand why you would think that that's a good path but i'm telling you it's not a good path what you want to do is you gotta you gotta start specializing you gotta move up who who wants to hire they wanna hire someone who has skills someone with four five six different entry level certifications doesn't really have skills they have pieces of paper i want you to have skills so you get one or two entry level certifications and then you start going deeper into that specialization so you get your ccna then you start working towards your ccnp now let's say you're looking at all these jobs and so you get your ccnp enterprise routing and switching but there's a lot of demand for wireless okay then also you know once you finish with that you're still looking for a job you haven't had any offers yet okay well then do the next one get get get the cisco wireless specialization or whatever it is maybe there's a lot of aruba jobs there's a lot of cisco routing and switching but they also want you to know aruba um wireless okay we'll see if there's an aruba certification so that's that's pretty much my advice when it comes to this stuff is just what you see here pick a discipline i understand that can feel overwhelming but i promise you you're not going to be stuck research the certifications research the jobs apparently i wrote jobs i don't know what a job is that should be a b [Laughter] research the jobs you know good luck finding a job um oh dude i am tired jobs uh whatever i'm sitting here watching my baby on the monitor i know he's going to wake up any second if you can tell i'm [ __ ] tired it is life is not great right now it's a lot better than other people's i shouldn't be complaining but it's not great now there's one other thing that i want to be i want to address here with with derek and oops sorry come back over here here he says all these steps i'm taking to get a job is expensive in the sense that it is taking away all of my time to even hang out with family let me be real real real with you i'm gonna be real real with you about this i i'm getting the impression based on what this says that derek is a young man i'm assuming since he hasn't really gone to school yet uh you know university probably in his early 20s i'm guessing i don't know this is your time this is let me talk to all you gentlemen out there and this really is mostly for the men this is your time when you're a young man this is when you need to be working i you know going out with friends hanging out with family is wonderful it's beautiful and it should be something you set aside time to do once every couple of weeks because right now you are never going to be have this much energy your brain is never going to be working this good you're never going to be this like mentally flexible now is the time to work hard get in shape get your career in order get your education in order focus on all of these things if you do this now as a young man when you're 20 and 25 years old by the time you're 30 by time you're 28 29 30 years old you're gonna look good you're gonna be making good money you're gonna have time for friend friends family and you're going to be very attractive to the ladies out there who what do they want they want a good looking guy who has a good job and is making good money that's going to be you if you work hard now that's how it works work hard now sacrifice now a couple years ago i was driving with my brother we're on a bit of a road trip we're in the car for hours and hours together we're just talking about life my brother's life and my life are very different we had the same upbringing we went to the same church we ate the same food we had the same parents we had the same abusive parents we both got the the crap beat out of us by our father and at times our mother we had that life together the same life when i left home i sacrificed i worked hard i didn't party i didn't drink i didn't go to clubs i studied i worked hard by the time i was 23 years old i was a senior engineer making good money good money at 23 years old by the time i was 30 i was making very good money i had a i was in a happy relationship with a beautiful woman i drove a nice car i lived in a nice place because i had sacrificed when i was younger my brother when he was younger partied he drank he smoked weed he hung out with his friends he would you know get a job here get a job there so a couple years ago you know i'm already in my 40s he's getting pretty close to his 40s and his life is a struggle he's struggling he struggles with relationships he struggles with paying bills he struggles with keeping a roof over his head at times meanwhile i'm married i live in a great home i travel the world i don't worry why because i sacrificed when i was young so that i could enjoy decades decades of a good happy life do you really think when you're 40 years old you're going to look back and be like i really wish that i'd only partied a little bit more when i was 20. no you're going to be i wish i had sacrificed more when i was 20 so that i could have the toys now that i'm in my 40s so that i could travel the world so that i could have the nice car so that i could do things for my family gentlemen young men sacrifice hard work commitment now and you have years of good times ahead of you all right listen i hope that answers derek's question i hope maybe that gives you a little bit of something to think about maybe you disagree with everything i said that's great put it in the comments below hey i'll see you next time

Channel: Jeremiah Wolfe

Views: 679

Rating: 5 out of 5

Keywords: IT Career, Certification

Id: z4Xj2p8bg3E

Length: 30min 52sec (1852 seconds)

Published: Thu Apr 15 2021