IT Certifications and Careers (Official Discussion Thread)

FatherSimp

FatherSimp

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Rhyme n Tekniq said:
Sounds to me like you already have your 1st IT job since "Tech Support" and "Helpdesk have some overlap" and are used interchangeable sometimes to describe the same duties.
You probably need to redo your whole resume and tailor it to reflect the job you want.

What do you do on a day-2-day basis? Where Are you Located?

Also, dont be scared to take the leap breh. This shyt has given me financial freedom, and I still got alot of room to grow. You need to get yourself in order before Summer because that's when the companies expand their budgets for recruting new employees, and you dont wanna miss out.

Far as Certs go

A+ is a solid cert, some people further in their careers will shyt on it but it's not meant for them anyways.
I've been steadily contacted for Desktop Support gigs offering on average in the range of $24-30$ an hour just off the strength of my A+ But I'm also in a good IT market (Texas), So if that's something you want to do go for the A+. If you have a college email ending with .edu you can get vouchers that make the exams cheaper, I

Also dont be too thirsty to just take any old helpdesk "Tech Support" or" IT Support" job. There are jobs that will give you you little to no valuable skillset.
stay away from these jobs that just want you to be on the phone and resetting passwords in active directory all day long. You follow this route, you're gonna be right back at the same place you started and pigeonholed to doing low hanging fruit jobs for wages that dont even crack the 40k a year mark.

How you do you avoid this? Apply to jobs where the list of duties are something you havent done and adds value to your resume. List of a few keywords you should be looking for because these are the most sought after skills in the current IT Market:

-Active Directory
-SCCM
-SQL
-Working on servers (Windows 2012/2016, ESXI, SQL Server)
-Migrations
-Imaging
-Troubleshooting network connectivity- Having the ability to fix network issues is extremely valuable
-Powershell Scripting
-Break/Fix
-VDI support
-Mobile Device Management (MDM) -
-Microsoft Azure / Azure AD
-Cloud Support
-AWS
-VMware

The best way to go about getting these skills in order:

1. Working for an MSP (managed services provider) OR a VAR (Value Added Reseller)

2. Take multiple short-term contracts through the course of a year; 3--6 month here and there and if you can fit it in, take some of these super short-term 2-4 week contracts for projects.This aint for the weak heart, you got be a hustler and visionary and not fixated on having the false sense of job security you think a direct hire/full-time job will offer you. No such thing as job security. we off that, you want skill security
The end goal is to acquire as many skills as you can so that you can move up fast and get to the real money. This approach has worked for me and a bunch of other people in this thread. Try it out.

going back to certs. A+ is good, but TBH, that shyt aint gonna give you the biggest return on the investment and can be an actual hindrance to your resume once you've reach a certain skill level and you're gonna have to omit it from your resume to be taken seriously. Go for certs offered by Microsoft, Cisco, Citrix, Palo-Alto etc

  1. CCNA
  2. Microsoft 365 Certified: Modern Desktop Administrator followed by ---->Enterprise Administrator OR just look to see which ones interest you most on This Page
  3. Network+
  4. Security+
  5. AWS
As far as how to study for these shyts, dont pay for some bootcamp or college course do the following:
  1. Get an account on any or all of these sites: Udemy, ITPROTV , Linux Academy CBT Nuggets, PLURALSIGHT, (some of these sites have courses with virtual labs, but dont rely on tthis being standard, set up your own home lab)
  2. Set up home lab with virtual machines. You will need a PC (Laptop or Desktop) with a CPU that has 4 processors (2.5to 4 GHz) and at least 16 GB of RAM, I'd personally go for 32 GB.
  3. Once you've got the right hardware to have virtualization, download Oracle VirtualBox, VMware Workstation Pro ( cost money but there's sites selling full license keys for 1/8th of the full price), If you have a Windows 10 PC capable of virtualization, You can use the already built-in Hyper-V but you will have to enable it in the bios and through the start menu settings, you can google that shyt for your self.
Only thing left to do now is explore the buffet of knowledge I'm dropping and find out what your interest are , what area of IT do you want to focuse and pick the technologies and certs to match.
Click to expand...

Only do this if you about your shyt those contracts can and will expose you :wow:
 
Snoopy Loops

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Silkk said:
New Contract on Deck :lawd:


Been living off my Amazon money and wasn’t planning on working this year but the bag got thrown so now its time to triple up on the investments and try to hit 1k a day consistently :wow:
Click to expand...
Breh, what do you do
 
GollyImGully

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Silkk said:
With this new role i’ll be an IT Security Engineer (time flies :wow:)

But I invest my money and got 4-6 streams of income now so I really don’t need to work but this will allow me to pay off debts and invest even harder this year.
Click to expand...
This is the real wave breh :wow:

Tryna get like you
 
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Silkk

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thaKEAF said:
Congrats breh. Did you ever get anything after the security+?
Click to expand...
Ehhhh, I got an Associates in Cyber Security at the end of 2018 but I honestly only went back to school out of boredom (didn’t have a business then). By that point though I was already one year in as a security analyst so I think my experience played more into my progression than anything.
 
Snoopy Loops

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Silkk said:
With this new role i’ll be an IT Security Engineer (time flies :wow:)

But I invest my money and got 4-6 streams of income now so I really don’t need to work but this will allow me to pay off debts and invest even harder this year.
Click to expand...

So put me on game, is your IT security gig like penetration testing? On-prem or cloud? Linux or windows?
 
Germms

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Can't decide what to do.. I want to go to the infosec side real bad. Security analyst :hula: Security engineer.


tffffff
 
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