Certifications Help

[Wombat]

http://www.petri.co.il/index.htm

[dennyc10853]

I'm not going to say that certifications "don't mean jack" you do learn allot and with some hands on experience and some talent you can be great. All I want to say though, is that if you can get away from going to a formal school or boot camp , do it. I spent $12K in computer training at Executrain which went out of business and filed bankruptcy and took about $3K of my money in untaken classes with them. I am currently an MCSE, MCP, CIW and A+ Certified. I, through my experience have found out that without a computer science degree from a university or actually any degree from a university to go along with my certifications I can't find a job to save my life. To date I have submitted 5,134 computer or tech related resumes and haven't even gotten to an interview. I've gotten allot of rejection letters though. My whole point is that you can learn just as much with the course books you can buy at Borders as you can paying big bucks at some training company. The practice test sites mentioned here are fantastic and once you are ready, go take the exams and get certified. The most hurtful thing that anyone said to me was a lady at an employment service that I went to. She called me a "Paper MCSE" and said that at my age with no college degree to go with my certifications I stood a 0% chance of landing a job and then showed me a print out of a bunch of people with college degrees and MCSE's that she was trying to find entry leve jobs for. Again, I'm not complaining, just get certified the cheapest way you can find! I Can't Stress That Enough!

Originally Posted by GroundZero3

As suggested by KAknight certifications can be important for any computer related job. Many of the people who are here want to beef up the resume should look into getting certified in their area (remember this will not take place of actual hands on experience)

Anyways please post any sites you feel will be important to help people towards any type of computer certification

a road map to help people decide, a website with practice test, links to books you found really useful.

Please note this isn't a thread to crap about how certifications don't mean jack

Ill start off with something simple. Feel free to post !

Microsoft MCP

Cisco

[GroundZero3]

dennyc10853 your story isnt a new one sadly, sounds like you were part of the IT boom in the late 90s and got stuck with the popping of it.

I agree certifications alone wont land you a job, but will help on a resume with the experience to back it up. Alot of companies do searches on resume for the titles of certifcations and then look at the experience to see if you have ability to preform.

Thankfully i started in the IT field when i was 15 and have had on the job training since day one so i feel i have at least have a foot in the door. Today i still hear the radio commericals for MCSE commericals and how you can make 60K a year and i just shake my head because its not like that anymore. I hope for the best in your search for a job dennyc10853, its tough out there espically in the IT field. Take anything to get your foot into the door so you can at least start saying you have some in field experience.

[pee_soprano]

Originally Posted by GroundZero3

As suggested by KAknight certifications can be important for any computer related job. Many of the people who are here want to beef up the resume should look into getting certified in their area (remember this will not take place of actual hands on experience)

Anyways please post any sites you feel will be important to help people towards any type of computer certification

a road map to help people decide, a website with practice test, links to books you found really useful.

Please note this isn't a thread to crap about how certifications don't mean jack

Ill start off with something simple. Feel free to post !

Microsoft MCP

Cisco

[pee_soprano]

Originally Posted by GroundZero3

As suggested by KAknight certifications can be important for any computer related job. Many of the people who are here want to beef up the resume should look into getting certified in their area (remember this will not take place of actual hands on experience)

Anyways please post any sites you feel will be important to help people towards any type of computer certification

a road map to help people decide, a website with practice test, links to books you found really useful.

Please note this isn't a thread to crap about how certifications don't mean jack

Ill start off with something simple. Feel free to post !

Microsoft MCP


There is site http://www.gatesbootcamp.com
Which offers Training & Certification in MCSE,CCNA,CCSP, RHCE,CEH etc.

They have some new called as Bootcamp, Bootcamp is a fast track completely focussed on Certifications .

IT Training is pretty costly here in US. So I thought to give it a try, They are located in Mumbai,India Man It was a great exprince, a very nice vaction + I got my Certificate done for MCSE/CCNA in very much cheap price.

If any one is looking for fasttrack certification I will Suggest this site is Ideal.

Cisco

[pee_soprano]

Originally Posted by GroundZero3

As suggested by KAknight certifications can be important for any computer related job. Many of the people who are here want to beef up the resume should look into getting certified in their area (remember this will not take place of actual hands on experience)

Anyways please post any sites you feel will be important to help people towards any type of computer certification

a road map to help people decide, a website with practice test, links to books you found really useful.

Please note this isn't a thread to crap about how certifications don't mean jack

Ill start off with something simple. Feel free to post !

Microsoft MCP


Cisco

[pee_soprano]

There is site http://www.gatesbootcamp.com
Which offers Training & Certification in MCSE,CCNA,CCSP, RHCE,CEH etc.

They have some new called as Bootcamp, Bootcamp is a fast track completely focussed on Certifications .

IT Training is pretty costly here in US. So I thought to give it a try, They are located in Mumbai,India Man It was a great exprince, a very nice vaction + I got my Certificate done for MCSE/CCNA in very much cheap price.

If any one is looking for fasttrack certification I will Suggest this site is Ideal.

[famosbrown]

Firt and foremost, choose your niche (what in IT you want to do), then choose your certification track that way.

I suggest enrolling into a program with New Horizons...especially is your company is paying for it , or you want a career change. New Horizons is very expensive to many, but a very GOOD investment to others. They won't teach you the test, but they will teach you a lot, then studying the rest is up to you.

They offer both classroom and online training, and after that, they offer practice exams that guarantee that you will pass the certifications the first time you test if you get a 90% or above, or they will pay for you to take the test again. After you are done with the program, they offer you a GUARANTEED 3 month internship with their many partners making good money depending on your experiences and certifications you have one your done with your program (denpending on what cert track you chose), and of course the company you internship with will probably keep you if you perform well. They also act as a job finder, resume updater, etc. for you for 2 years.

No matter how experienced or knowledgeable you are, make sure you take the A+ exam first. It is fairly easy and common sense driven, but you will be surprised about how much you DO NOT know about hardware (usually older technology) and operating systems (usually older OS's or command line driven stuff). The test will cover a lot of stuff you will probably forget and NEVER use, but after taking the practice exams you won't see TOO many unfamiliar questions. The A+ will set the foundation for many of the other certifications you will pursue...

If you are into the networking, LAN support, or want to make a lot of money making things happen, take the Network+ class/test that will definitely be a building block and foundation to the Cisco certifications and Microsoft Systems Engineer tracks.

In my experiences, I've found that depending on the company, agency, service, industry, etc., will determine if certification outweighs the degree...in networking/hardware...it usually does in most cases, but programming (coding), a degree will land you entry-level immediately. A degree with certifications...a lot of money doing a lot of nothing ...except decision making.

Famos

[ciscoguy]

Originally Posted by GroundZero3

I agree certifications alone wont land you a job, but will help on a resume with the experience to back it up. Alot of companies do searches on resume for the titles of certifcations and then look at the experience to see if you have ability to preform.

You couldn't have said it better.

There is alot of paper CCNA's out there, people that have their CCNA and no experience. Experience is crucial and the cert's help round it off.

My advice for those pursueing Cisco Cert's is don't take the shortcuts (braindumps etc.) they only end up hurting yourself when it comes crunch time.

A site to get you started.
http://www.semsim.com/

Simulator's are available to help someone get started, take advantage of them if you don't have a home lab.

Good luck!

[SeanC]

www.comptia.org

www.cert21.com - they have a few free practice exams which are good for assessing your current knowledge level, IMO.