@NetworkNick wrote:
Hey,
I'm asking more for a friend than myself. I've currently already got my foot into the door as a network engineer, but I've more fallen into the industry than anything.
My friend on the other hand is currently working as an English teacher and looking to make a career switch. She has some experience with minor tech things - she's also technology coordinator for the school she teaches for (Makes tech purchasing recommendations for the school, helps with local computer and application support), and she's just gotten her CCNA R&S.
What are some first good steps she can take to start putting it to use?
Hi NetworkNick,
This is a great question to ask. It's the number one question I get when I'm asked to give advice to students or other professionals that are looking into becoming a networking engineer. As a matter of fact I'm going to be honest and say that there is no easy answer to this question.
First let me say congratulations to you for already having your foot in the field - that's a very big step! She already have a friend working in the field that she can ask for advice. Not only can she ask you for advice, you are most likely already starting to build your contact network within the IT-industry that you eventually will be able to use to help her out. That is a great asset for her to have access to!
Secondly she is already starting to build her experience within the field by taking responsibility at her current job to reflect her future career interest. That is also a very good move!
Now to try and give some advice about your question and her situation.
@NetworkNick wrote:
What are some first good steps she can take to start putting it to use?
As i've mentioned above she is already starting to Do something about her situation. The first thing about getting into this field is to learn how to do the job. I will say that CCNA R&S is almost a minimum mandatory to get into this field and it should open up some doors for her. It's definitely a good step in the right direction.
The second step is to get experience to be able to validate the skills you are supposed to know when you have your CCNA R&S Certification. This is the number one reason many people don't make it past interviews. CCNA will get you to the interviews...but it's your experience that will get you the job.
Noticed that I said experience and not necessarily Networking Experience. During an interview you always need to work with what you have and be very open with what you don't have. Having worked as a teacher she should use that experience and try to use that to her advantage in the future. A lot of us (engineers, technicians, managers etc) eventually end up being mentors, team leaders or at least in some way become responsible for a group of people that need to be able to do their job effectively.
A very big part of my day-to-day tasks consists of actually teaching other engineers (not only network engineers) about networks and technology in general. What I mean with all this is that experience matters. All of it! You always learn something useful from your current profession that you will be able to use in other professions!
Many people struggle with being confident enough to bring up experience from other fields and turn that into something good that can be used within IT.
The number one advice i usually give in these situation is to gain experience in the field no matter what it is. I think she is at a very good spot to actually get that first very important experience. It may not be exactly what she wants to do in the future - but I can almost guarantee you that she can use it in the future.
A question she should ask herself is: What am I willing to do to gain experience?
If you think about it from an employers perspective - you take a big risk hiring someone without experience. For the more advanced positions you really need experienced people! So nobody is willing to risk their money on someone to do that type of job without the experience that proves he/she is capable of it.
I think a lot of people new to this field do the mistake of thinking that they can land the more advanced positions directly. That's not going to happen. Which brings me to my next question.
Another question she should ask herself: What kind of job can I consider as my starting job?
She is already working with applications, technology recommendations but probably not enough networking tasks. But in my opinion this is a good starting position because she will gain experience within "consulting" (technology advising) and also with applications. Every single application runs over a network in one way or another. They will fail (or nobody would need support), and that's when she should be there and use her skills with networking and help with the troubleshooting.
A lot of tickets many organizations receive is going to be about application performance. And almost every single one of them will blame the network. There is a constant battle between application-engineers and network-engineers...network engineers are always blamed ;-). So we are often involved in actually troubleshooting applications but from a networking perspective!
Maybe her current position is not as bad as she thinks for gaining experience? I think she can use it to her advantage and use the knowledge from CCNA R&S and apply that to her normal application support. She can use her eyes and ears and let other teams/staff know that she might have an idea of what's going on if she can just take a look at it.
This can be a very long answer so I'll try to round this up with a final advice...there is a shortcut that will open up a lot of doors. But it's a very tough one!
She can aim for CCNP R&S to open a lot of more doors longterm.
I know this is a very tough objective to achieve and even a CCNP R&S without any experience is difficult to work with. But a CCNP R&S with experience is going to land you a lot of offers for sure!
I've met many engineers over the years that have experienced the huge difference between holding a CCNA vs a CCNP of any choice.
To round this off...she should use her current situation to her advantage (gain experience in network troubleshooting) and then consider what kind of future role she is looking into. Then search for those jobs and then during the interviews make sure to point out what problems she solved at her previous jobs and how.
-HTH
Daniel
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