IT Certifications and Careers (Official Discussion Thread)

[Blackking]

be able to interview and know your sh%t thats all that matters in the end

real world experience is great, but if i have you in an interview and you cant answer my basic questions, what good is your real world experience? it isnt worth a damn

(being blunt/ brutally honest, probably because its 4am.. heh)

yeah but for most good opportunities and great paying projects/jobs.. you need real world experience.

There are going to be a million people who say they've worked with c#, java, whatever... In the interview only the person who has actually been there and actually worked with the full lifecycle of a project will be hired.

Also the person with the great resume and great communication skills will have the advantages over a person who simply knows the technology.

 

[Blackking]

Here's the thing though, a lot of the time you won't even get an interview without A+, Net+, etc. Even if the certs are lame it the only way to not get your resume tossed. Not everybody knows somebody that can get them a hook up. Your company might be different, but at a lot of companies HR people read the resumes and will toss it out if you don't have an A+, especially for helpdesk/desktop-type jobs.

If you have higher level certs than that but no experience, you still don't have too much chance of being hired. You kind of have to start from the bottom unless you get a hookup, which, like I said, isn't an option for everybody.

True.. you may have knowledge well in advance of those certs, but the IT recruiters or talent acquisition specialist (or even worse non-tech companies that have regular HR people looking!) are doing Boolean searches. They want your high level skills, but also want you to know that basic sh1t too. How do they know what you know if you don't list it? Some people won’t accept.." well, umm that's easy technology for me to pick up if I need to use it."

same with software developers... What if you have c#, SQI server 20__, the latest .Net experience... but missing something basic (or specific), or don't have experience in some language you chose not to explore simply because you don't respect it?

 

[TLR Is Mental Poison]

Exactly... knowledge can't hurt...

 

[Regular Developer]

If you don't know something in an interview, 100% find out later, cause that question is probably going to pop up in other interviews. Might even pop up again if you get a second interview for the same people.
Definitely study up on whatever language the job is going to need, because they will ask questions such as "What are the 4 pillars of software development". For design questions, dont be afraid to write a solution that works and then figure out a more optimized way to do it.

You might ask "Why am i getting asked these questions, is it a trick?". Believe me, there are some frauds out there.

For consulting, not only is the communication part needed as Blackking mentioned, a greater advantage would be understanding the industry that your potential job's client works in.

 

[Arrogance.]

Soaking in the knowledge in this thread.

 

[tofuspeedstar]

I've gotta say, going into IT, i've found the most respectful share of people to work with. I can honestly say I haven't met or heard any stories of racism amongst IT folks.

But there's a couple different branches of IT you can get into. There's tech support, security, straight up programmers, and consulting, all of which are different, even though they deal with computers. I'm currently doing regular programming work, but I definitely feel like a consultant. (This is all just stuff i formulated from job experience, so chime in if you know better.) I admire the first three because they can do some amazing work. But as far as consulting, the technology part is only a portion of it. You also have to actually be able to communicate with non-tech people and translate their issue and processes into algorithms to allow their businesses to excel. Me, personally, I enjoy that part. And the thing about it is, if you can learn the shyt out of an industry (such as healthcare, law, financial, etc.), the list of jobs you'll be doing is endless, as long as your willing to work using different technologies.

</pointless rant>

Just wanna big up all my fellow minority IT professionals. and well my ninjas

Consulting is where the money is. Until I learn and master our Sharepoint Server we call in a guy who charges like $90-100/hr for his services.

Dude's in the IT department for the Houston Texans, he good.

 

[FreshFromATL]

Just enrolled into Georgia States's CIS program for this Fall. I already have a business degree and experience but all of the Business Analyst jobs require a good amount of tech-know-how. Man I can't believe 4 more years of this shyt The things nikkas do for a fat paycheck

 

[((ReFleXioN)) EteRNaL]

everytime I look at help desk jobs I see "A+ required"....I have no experience at all in IT and pretty much don't know jack shyt. i've been working warehouse my whole life. now im 25 and i'm lookin to move on. i'm studyin for my A+ now and I hope to be able to take the test in july. but im seeing people in here saying A+ is useless. what about a dude like me who has no experience and pretty much no knowledge at all?....I get a higher cert what good is it if I don't know shyt. I thought it would be better for me to start from the bottom. gettin my A+, workin help desk and studying, then hopefully movin up over time.

 

[No Homo]

Consulting is where the money is.

Thats my end goal.

 

[tofuspeedstar]

everytime I look at help desk jobs I see "A+ required"....I have no experience at all in IT and pretty much don't know jack shyt. i've been working warehouse my whole life. now im 25 and i'm lookin to move on. i'm studyin for my A+ now and I hope to be able to take the test in july. but im seeing people in here saying A+ is useless. what about a dude like me who has no experience and pretty much no knowledge at all?....I get a higher cert what good is it if I don't know shyt. I thought it would be better for me to start from the bottom. gettin my A+, workin help desk and studying, then hopefully movin up over time.

Get it. your resume will be tossed w/o that. Guaranteed.

Sent from my SGH-T989 using Tapatalk

 

[Blackking]

everytime I look at help desk jobs I see "A+ required"....I have no experience at all in IT and pretty much don't know jack shyt. i've been working warehouse my whole life. now im 25 and i'm lookin to move on. i'm studyin for my A+ now and I hope to be able to take the test in july. but im seeing people in here saying A+ is useless. what about a dude like me who has no experience and pretty much no knowledge at all?....I get a higher cert what good is it if I don't know shyt. I thought it would be better for me to start from the bottom. gettin my A+, workin help desk and studying, then hopefully movin up over time.

understand everything in the book... then go get ur network + instead if that's the route and type of IT you're trying to do... then while at you're first job earn some real certs in the meantime.

 

[Regular Developer]

Consulting is where the money is. Until I learn and master our Sharepoint Server we call in a guy who charges like $90-100/hr for his services.

Dude's in the IT department for the Houston Texans, he good.

Man, i love the whole idea around consulting. nikkas pay you, and then they fly you up and pay for airfare, hotel, and food, while they still payin you. On top of that, they'll pay for laptops, software, and whatever else needed to get the job done.

And in some cases, its like fly up, work on site 4 days a week, then work weekends.

I can't stress enough how helpful it is to have a mentor in the consulting field. And the good thing is, racism isn't that big an issue with IT folks (unless you straight off the plane from India), so a more experience consultant can lace you up in the game. That means knowledge, job hookups, recommendations, pay for your golf outings, etc. Make a name for yourself and you can leave a legacy with ninjas talkin about how awesome you are years after you're gone.

I'm here as a resource if you guys need it. I'm not that far, but i am pretty good at noticing thing, so whatever I figure out, I got allyuh

 

[acri1]

Man, i love the whole idea around consulting. nikkas pay you, and then they fly you up and pay for airfare, hotel, and food, while they still payin you. On top of that, they'll pay for laptops, software, and whatever else needed to get the job done.

And in some cases, its like fly up, work on site 4 days a week, then work weekends.

I can't stress enough how helpful it is to have a mentor in the consulting field. And the good thing is, racism isn't that big an issue with IT folks (unless you straight off the plane from India), so a more experience consultant can lace you up in the game. That means knowledge, job hookups, recommendations, pay for your golf outings, etc. Make a name for yourself and you can leave a legacy with ninjas talkin about how awesome you are years after you're gone.

I'm here as a resource if you guys need it. I'm not that far, but i am pretty good at noticing thing, so whatever I figure out, I got allyuh

How do you really get into consulting though?

It seems like you already need years of experience as a consultant to be a consultant. The usual "Can't get the job without experience, can get experience without the job" type of thing. Seems difficult to break into the field...either you know the right person or just keep getting certs and hope somebody takes a chance on you.

 

[JT-Money]

How do you really get into consulting though?

It seems like you already need years of experience as a consultant to be a consultant. The usual "Can't get the job without experience, can get experience without the job" type of thing. Seems difficult to break into the field...either you know the right person or just keep getting certs and hope somebody takes a chance on you.

Most guys I know in consulting got experience on the latest technology just before it reached critical mass and got so many offers it made more sense to go into business for themselves. It's more about having experience with an hard to find skill-set more than anything else. The problem is that's completely dependent on your employer because if there not using the latest and greatest your pretty much stuck where your at.

 

[Regular Developer]

How do you really get into consulting though?

It seems like you already need years of experience as a consultant to be a consultant. The usual "Can't get the job without experience, can get experience without the job" type of thing. Seems difficult to break into the field...either you know the right person or just keep getting certs and hope somebody takes a chance on you.

You can always just ball out in school and then apply to one of those big firms.

Me, I got kind of lucky, cause I had no idea what consulting was, and I just applied for a random job pofsting on my school's website. Once i got the job, I found out what consulting was.

You don't necessarily have to work with the latest and greatest since you're just starting out, but it can make it a bit more challenging. The main thing about a consultant, though, is that he's willing to learn any language or tool to get the job done. This is why I say its more important for a consultant to know an industry vs a technology. Technology is popular one day, then the next its something else. And you'll hear older developers complain about how its hard to find a job and their ageism. No, thats not the case, its just that they got comfortable doing their Cobol or C programming, and development has evolved passed that (for the most part).

The main thing you'll have to do is go somewhere and program like a boss, get your reputation up so you can get some recommendations and network until you find some people in the field. This part, though, I'm not sure how to help, cause I was brought directly into a consulting company, so I know people already.

From what i was told by a bit of a mentor that worked at IBM, your way in is to become a great developer with a certain technology so that you are a bit of an expert, or at least an intermediate. Then apply to places such as IBM or Accenture and whatnot and go from there.

Also, learn SQL and database design. That shyt is easy, yet so many people don't know about it. You might be able to download a free version of Oracle or Sql Server.

Check out Teradata. They bring in classes twice a year i think and train them to become teradata consultants.

let me know if that helps.