I've come to the crossroads. Need opinions.

I have recently come to a crossroads in my life. I have my AA degree and am currently taking classes towards a BA in computer engineering. Although I need money and a better paying job to do so. I have alot of knowledge of computers but no certificates to prove it to anyone.
I am planning on taking a hiatus on the engineering so I can get my certificates and thus a better paying job.

My question, What certificates should I get?

I want to get into an IT/sysadmin position with a company.

There are so many that I have heard of and now I'm confused to which is the current route that is preferred by most corps.

Any help and or insight from you guys/girls would be greatly appriciated.

thanks

x

Get CISCO certified dude, and I guess MCSE certified as well. Those look good.

hey man i am a sys admin. you will need a+ mcse and cisco . i currently am workin on a+ and mcse but i was able to prove my skill with the boss
where do u live maybe i can give you a hand
later dude
mmoehring

First off. What do you want to do?

I can breeze thru an a+ and mcse, cisco i might need to study up on.

I live in Ft. Lauderdale, FL.

I also have been studing certs and tests on cramsession.com. Are those worth reading and studing?

thanks

x

I'm not really sure. I have a passion for working with computers, thats why I want to get my comp engineering degree. But I'm at least 3 years away from getting that. In the mean time I figured I would get certs and get a job a a network sysadmin somewhere. Although I'm going to continue with my education. I'm good with win based OS's. I havn't used *nix based os/progs yet, but I'm planing to very soon. I realize I'm very limited until i learn it Any suggestions?.

My advice would be to do what I am doing...there is a way to take your MCSE courses and get done with having the MCSE certification and having MCDBA (data base administrator) certification, taking the required number of courses to get the MCSE. Does that make any sense? Try going to www.scdinc.com. That's where I'm going to school. But that's just my opinion, and there are a lot of people on here who a lot more experience than I do, too. :D

Buy some books and go for the easy stuff first like A+ and CCNA. Assuming you want a system admin type job.

Yes, MCSE, and A+ ... and recognize that these certs won't give you the job.

First:
http://www.icrontic.com/index.php?pa...&articleId=170
Then:
http://www.certcities.com/

Thanks for al your help.. i have an idea of what i'm going to do now.

x

If you want a sys admin position, Cisco certs are always good like jehnx said. You might also want to take some classes on M$ Exchange.

I'd look at it from this point of view - what OS's and what company's software does most businesses use today - Microsoft, of course. You'd definitely want to pursue becoming MCSE certified, not because Microsoft is great or anything, but your chances of finding jobs are improved if you have knowledge of the systems that most companies are using. Need alone may get you in the door at a lot of places with an MCSE. I'd also pursue becoming Cisco certified if you'd like to be more involved in the networking side of things - for general IT work, these would be very good to have and obviously, companies desire someone with certifications over someone without certifications.

Hope this helps...