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Ask the Expert- Where do I start my IT career? Advice, Tips & Best Practices

Cisco Moderador
Community Manager
Community Manager

This topic is a chance to discuss more about all what is need and all what should be considered to start or boost a career on IT and networking. The session covers from basic queries such as how to gain knowledge and how to get experience, to how to choose the right IT path and how to network with other professionals.

The event seeks to clarify the different scenarios and situations that new professionals on IT and networking may encounter, such as:

  • The amount of resources to study a technology topic and the importance to determine if the information is good or bad
  • Education vs Certifications? Lack of experience can justify certifications and education in the wrong way
  • How to narrow the huge amount of specializations available for IT-professionals?
  • Where find and reach out experienced professionals? Learning from them is the key for success

To participate in this event, please use theJoin the Discussion : Cisco Ask the Expertbutton below to ask your questions

Ask questions from Monday 1st to Friday 12th of April, 2019

 

Featured Expert

Daniel_Profile.jpgDaniel Larsson is a Network Specialist, he works at Tele2 in Sweden with “B”B- Advanced Services”, he is part of a small group of professionals that provides network-consulting services for Business-customers. In addition, he provides traditional consulting services to solve network related problems of all kinds. His main area of expertise is “Network Architecture”, which includes different technologies and devices related to Switching and Data Center from different vendors. Nevertheless, he started his career on Routing & Switching. He has spent most of his career working with multiple employees as a consultant, which has given him a mix of experience working with both, startups and large global enterprises. Daniel holds a University Diploma with specialization on Information Technology engineering. He holds a CCNP RNS, CCDA Security, CCNA Wireless certifications, and an ITIL v3 Foundation and a Netscout nGeniousONE certification.

Daniel has been an active member of the Cisco Learning Network Community and earned the Cisco Designated VIP award for three years in a row (2017-2019).

Daniel might not be able to answer each question due to the volume expected during this event. Remember that you can continue the conversation on the Networking community.

Find other events https://community.cisco.com/t5/custom/page/page-id/Events?categoryId=technology-support  

 

**Helpful votes Encourage Participation! **
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21 Replies 21

Devansh
Level 1
Level 1

I don't want to work in night shift, please let us know which field would be good

 


@Devansh wrote:

I don't want to work in night shift, please let us know which field would be good

 


Hi Karanukar and thanks for asking your question!

 

I think that working with IT - and especially with networking - makes it very difficult to avoid the night shifts. At some point, regardless of your experience, most IT organizations requires specialists available during evenings, weekends and nights.

 

That is simply because most networks today run on a 365/24/7 environment so there is always going to be someone awake to monitor things. And if you are the specialist you are probably needed for more advanced troubleshooting and support in case things doesn't work out the way they should.

 

But I think you were referring to that you today have an operational role with constant night-shifts? And in that case I think you should analyze your current situation, skills, experience and then base don that figure out what you WOULD want to work with in the future to avoid having an operational role. Today's networks are becoming extremely complex so most teams have 365/24/7 monitoring over at least some different fields.

 

When you gain enough experience to advanced into 2nd and 3rd level expert roles there will be less and less "scheduled night jobs" but at the same time you are expected to be able to support your team with your expertise.

 

Moving away from an operational-role into an expert/specialist role is the key to avoid late-nights. In my experience most staff that are working around-the-clock are there to help customers identify and address less advanced problems and then escalate the advanced problems to experts/specialists to be solved during the day.

 

Working as a specialist/expert myself I can tell you that it also involves working late and during nights - just not frequently. I also want to highlight that once you reach this point in your career it's likely that you will also start being "on-call" during evenings, nights and weekends to be there for your team and clients.

 

....so please don't shoot the messenger...if working as a technical engineer and specialist is what you want to do for your career - then I'm afraid to say that it comes with the working hours as a bonus.

 

That said, you also asked what fields you should look into to get away from working night-shifts. IT is just a huge, huge business with so many fields to choose from. I'll address your question from a networking perspective and then I think your best bet is to work towards getting a 3rd-level engineer role.

 

Which field you pick should not matter so much, at least from my experience most technical specialists are only reachable during sane business hours :)! Management is also the second field which should bring you away from the night-shifts but then you would do less technical work and more administrative work. Just keep that in mind!

 

I personally work mostly with Network Design, 3rd-level support and sometimes I get involved in daily operation-tasks. Most of my work is day-work, but I do a lot of migration-work during nights/evenings/weekends even at that level. I work very closely with Managers, Executives, Other specialist, Operation Teams and I try to help out where I can....even if it involves nights.

 

So a question back to you!

 

Have you thought anything about where you are today and where you want to be tomorrow? Thinking about that should give you some insights about how to reach your goal to work less night-shifts!

 

-HTH

Daniel

 

 

NetworkNick
Level 1
Level 1

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?


@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

ciscokid111
Level 1
Level 1

Hello, I have been working with Cisco Routing and Switching for several years, but was wondering which specialization has the best future over the next 25 years?


@ciscokid111 wrote:

Hello, I have been working with Cisco Routing and Switching for several years, but was wondering which specialization has the best future over the next 25 years?


Hi ciscokid,

 

25 years is a very long time so I wouldn't be able to anything but an educated guess about what's going to happen in the future.

 

I suspect that you meant which specialization will be in most demand for the next 25 years?

So my answer is going to be based around that.

 

For the next 25 years or so I think that we are going to see a change towards "SDN". SDN is the future wheather we like it or not. As far as specialization that is very difficult to predict. I think that solutions for example SD-WAN, ACI, SD-Access and similar technologies will be the way we build and manage networks over the next decade or so.

 

We are already seeing a huge increase in networks that needs those technologies. Networks become more and more complex every day and it's getting extremely difficult to understand how they communicate with each other. In cisco-terminology - we are looking into building intent based networks in the future. Where we "just" define policies and push them to the infrastructure. Whether it's LAN, WAN, DC or Voice is not going to matter so much as long as you understand how to automate your intent that you want your network to do.

 

If you look past "SDN" and look at what we have today and our traditional specializations (Routing/Switching, Securiy, Voice, Wireless, Design etc)....then It's without any doubt that Security-professionals will be in extremely high demand for a very long time. Like i said above, networks become more and more complex every day with more and more hosts that requires a very strong security mindset to implement safely.

 

Even with SDN in mind the whole Security-field is going to be there with microsegmentation everywhere.

Legacy networks will continue to exists for a very long time so all the traditional specializations will probably still be there but with decreasing demand over the 15-20 years.

 

So if you tie everything together automation and SDN-type of networks is going to be the future if you ask me. But you will still need highly skilled professionals to build your intent-based policies and out of those specialists I believe Security-engineers along with Network Architects/Designers will be in extremely high demand to build your intents.

 

-HTH

Daniel

 

 

Hi there
I’m preparing for the icnd1 100-105 exam, once I pass this one I’m looking to present the icnd2. I’m familiar with the study material, but I’m unsure if “icnd1” has a troubleshooting part? And if that is the case, I would like to know if I’ve to prepare config problems or if it’s totally practice mode. Thanks for your guidance expert


@Francisco Macias wrote:

Hi there
I’m preparing for the icnd1 100-105 exam, once I pass this one I’m looking to present the icnd2. I’m familiar with the study material, but I’m unsure if “icnd1” has a troubleshooting part? And if that is the case, I would like to know if I’ve to prepare config problems or if it’s totally practice mode. Thanks for your guidance expert


Hi Francisco,

 

Talking about certifications and the contents of them means we are a not allowed to talk about any NDA-classified information. Giving you specific advice about specific tasks within the certification is NDA-Classified. However you can always take a look at the ICND1 Exam topics following this link:

 

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/community/certifications/ccna/icnd1/exam-topics

 

Looking at those exam objectives you can see that there are "plenty" of Configure, Verify and Troubleshoot sections. Topics listed with that are what you can expect to be tested on during the exam. So ICND1 expects you to be able to troubleshoot some basic configuration errors.

 

And to answer your question.

 


@Francisco Macias wrote:

 I’m familiar with the study material, but I’m unsure if “icnd1” has a troubleshooting part?


 

No there is no specific part that they call "troubleshooting" but you can expect the entire exam to ask you questions about troubleshooting. Doing a Cisco exam involves getting used to a lot of different question. If this is the first time doing a cisco-exam i strongly encourage you to take the initial 15 minutes tutorial and go through the exam-environment fully! The tutorial includes all the types of questions you will be asked during the exam. Some of them can involve having access to a CLII where you are asked to do something to get the answer to the question.

 


@Francisco Macias wrote:

 And if that is the case, I would like to know if I’ve to prepare config problems or if it’s totally practice mode. Thanks for your guidance expert


 

Again talking about the specifics of any exam is against the NDA. But if you follow the link below and watch the videos you will have a good understanding of the different types of questions that you will receive during your exam!

 

https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/docs/DOC-34312

 

Finally - I wish you luck with your exam!

 

-HTH

Daniel

Shivu b
Level 1
Level 1

Hi Daniel,

I have 6+ Years experience on Networking R &S and wireless

Currently, I working in manfacture bases company From past two and half years. My responsibility mainly Switching and wireless part. WAN handle by other vendor

Now I am in dilema whether to switch job to other company gain experience on Routing part too

This company has work n life balance compared others

I learning Meraki and DNA sd-wan

What s your suggestion ? How cisco network trend in future?

 


@Shivu b wrote:

Hi Daniel,

I have 6+ Years experience on Networking R &S and wireless

Currently, I working in manfacture bases company From past two and half years. My responsibility mainly Switching and wireless part. WAN handle by other vendor

Now I am in dilema whether to switch job to other company gain experience on Routing part too

This company has work n life balance compared others

I learning Meraki and DNA sd-wan

What s your suggestion ? How cisco network trend in future?

 


Hi Shivu,

 

I think i gave a little hint in the previous question of where I believe the networking field in general is going and where Cisco is taking it. The future spells "SDN" & "Automation". I personally have very little experience with SD-WAN but If you look at it from a Global scale it has a ton of potential and we are currently seeing double-digit growth in Business for SD-WAN.

 

I personally believe that over time having a life/work balance is very important to feel happy and be able to deal with general life supporting tasks (friends, family, hobbies). Having had a pretty rough time myself lately I cannot express how important I think it is to have a good balance between your personal life and your work. A lot of network-engineers and technicians are very proud of what they do (for a good reason) and don't want to leave a client/customer before a problem is solved - especially if it's a network outage. Sometimes this just comes at the expense of their own lives and health - that's when you know you need to do something about your situation.

 

So in my most humble opinion I think that no job is of higher priority than friends, family and hobbies. If i would pick between two jobs I would personally value work/life-balance a lot. I would also give that advice to other people to at least consider it a factor when deciding what to do. On the other hand if you are young and you want to get experience, have no family to consider and you feel like it's a hobby you get paid to do - then you should consider that as well!

 

Everybody is different and you need to consider the options not only for now - but for your future as well. For example, do you plan to start a family? Then it might make more sense to reduce the stress and possible also your salary and re-position yourself so that you are in a better shape to deal with that in the future.

 

As far as getting experience with Routing also...I always encourage engineers to work with a lot of different technologies to get an overall experience that is very difficult to compete with. Not only will it make you a better engineers if you understand a lot of basic concepts from different technology-fields...it will also make you better suited for market-trends and more attracted since you can perform more job-roles!

 

In my experience I think having a deep understanding of Routing & Switching is the key to understand how networks work regardless of which other field you work with. Everything runs Routing & Switching at some point in the network. Most problems I get involved with is complex Routing&Switching scenarios even if it's "routed" via Load-Balancers or Firewalls.

 

Is it worth it to change your current job to get experience in routing? I don't think that should be the only reason. At the end of the day it's always best to do what you have passion for. If it's SD-WAN, Load-Balancers, Firewalls, Routing or Switching - that's what you should stick with. Otherwise you may risk having a job where you end up doing things you don't really like doing...and that's just not worth it - even to gain experience.

 

My personal vendetta is that i stay away from Voice and Collaboration because I simply don't think it's fun and I'm probably not the best expert to deal with it because of that.

 

So to round this off....consider your current situation, analyze what's important for you in life and at work.

Then go with the option that matches your goals!

The future is SDN and Automation (you seem to be working with that already).

You have vast experience in Wireless and Switching.

You want to get more experience with Routing.

And you gave some hints that you wanted more balance in life.

 

To me it looks like you should at least consider the other position because it matches your needs and it would increase your overall experience with networking technologies. Just beware that your current job might offer a change if you address this to your manager? It's very difficult to find skilled engineers and the most expensive thing any company can do is to hire new staff and educate them. Maybe that's also something you can investigate to see if you can work with your current employer to find a solution?

 

-HTH

Daniel

Rudysting
Level 1
Level 1

I am currently in core finance - business development but have Cisco Associate certification as well as CISSP. I'm looking to get into the IT field and kickstart my career there and I've been taking courses in Linux and AWS but I don't know whether that is the right path. My goal is to get to the top level in Information Security but the experience thingy is stalling my progress in that field. What's your advice? Thanks.


@Rudysting wrote:

I am currently in core finance - business development but have Cisco Associate certification as well as CISSP. I'm looking to get into the IT field and kickstart my career there and I've been taking courses in Linux and AWS but I don't know whether that is the right path. My goal is to get to the top level in Information Security but the experience thingy is stalling my progress in that field. What's your advice? Thanks.


Hi Rudy,

 

I think you are on the right track with Linux and AWS. Those are highly respected skills to have today. Since you are into business, I should tell you a secret .... AWS-Consultants are very rare and go for a very high price...supply and demand ;-). It's also very complex and complicated technologies to deal with.

 

The current trend is that a lot of organizations are going to not only "one cloud" but to a "multi-cloud" environment. The trend is also to build on-premise clouds and combine it with off-premise clouds. So AWS is in very high demand (as well as Azure) because of this.

 

But you have to also ask yourself....is this the right thing for you to do?

You mentioned that you want to be at the top level of information-security? I take it that you don't want to be a technician then?

 

I ask since there is a difference between a Security Engineer (that is involved with troubleshooting and implementing security policies within the infrastructure) and an Information Security Specialist (that is involved with the management team to CREATE and DEFINE the security policies).

 

A lot of people think they are the same. However from a business perspective the Information Security specialist will be less of a technician and more of a politician!

 

Getting experience with Information Security usually means that you need a Bachelors Degree within Information Technology (or similar). On top of that you are good with a CISSP and some technical certification. From a business perspective your Bachelors and CISSP will be of more value than most technical implementation certifications - because you will be working with Information Security and not Network Security.

 

The difference is pretty vague but from your perspective as the Information Security staff you are tasked with defining WHO may access WHICH data from WHERE under WHICH circumstances and what happens if policies are breached.

 

The Security Engineer will be tasked with implementing your way of defining the policy.

 

It was difficult for me to tell if you were asking about the "Network Security Engineer" or the "Information Security Specialist".

You are either way on the right track with your Linux skills - as that is the most important skill to have as any security specialist.

To gain experience you have to demonstrate your skills and make people understand that you know how to do information security right.

 

Since you work in "core finance - business development" that should set you up with some good contacts in the rest of the business. Let people know your career goals! Let them know that you have security skills! Talk about that with management-staff and ask around to see where they need help. Let them know that you are interested in that - and if you do it good enough someone will hear it and pay attention to it.

 

And don't let no for an answer disappoint you enough to not keep trying. Usually  dedication shows that you are motivated and in the end it will pay off! If you can't get any experience with your current role/job then It's time to look outside your current safety-zone.

 

In my opinion it's usually easier to get to the interviews and get offers from smaller companies without experience. The larger the organization the higher the requirements are in general (although this doesn't mean the job is more difficult to do!). I think this has to do with that a large company knows what they want and they are very good at defining that. They are more recognized on the market and they know that they can be more picky with their staff since people in general wants to work for them.

 

Smaller companies don't have that luxury and if you are lucky - they might end up being exactly what you are looking for! I will say.....don't be afraid to look at small-sized companies and even start-ups to gain your experience! Then build your reputation up and start climbing the ladder slowly. Eventually you'll reach that top-level role within Information Security!

 

Also don't forget to look into public organizations that may need your help "for free" (free still means you will gain experience!) because they can't afford to pay you market-salaries. But they are still an excellent way to gain that first experience that will land you the first job!

 

-HTH

Daniel

 

P.s - feel free to clarify your question if i misread it!

 

 

Hi Daniel,

 

I am glad i can ask this question to someone because this has been haunting me for way too long - what do i do next to keep up with the pace of changing IT world and where do I start?

 

My name is Jayant Anand and i have 9 years of experience in troubleshooting Cisco Collaboration Product Suite. I did my CCNA R&S and CCNA Voice (it was Voice in 2010) and then i learned alot on-job roles. I started as an implementation engineer but then i was always involved in long cutovers and issues that sucked the life out of me. I moved to the support role and quite liked it because i had fixed shifts and the work was good. 

In my last role I was a Problem Management Expert in which i was mostly handling problem tickets, high impacting incidents, migrations. I also learned python only to solve my day-to-day tasks like monitoring systems and taking health checks. I also have little knowledge on VMware. 

This year i moved from India to Canada and i got a job here in the same field though i am working here as a Voice Engineer who manages all types of cases (L1,L2 or L3) but i think its not a bad start when i migrated.

 

Here i do not see many Voice related jobs in the market and i wish to understand what could be good for me - choosing cloud computing, doing data science or do my CCIE in collaboration. I don't understand how the future is for these technologies and certainly alot of the new technologies are picking up. Once i decide to which field i have to move, there are questions like where to start and if i could be that good in that field and should i give up on Cisco Collaboration altogether?

 

I will be really happy to hear from you.

 

Regards

Jayant Anand

Hi Daniel,

 

Thanks for this opportunity to get counselled. 

 

I would really appreciate if you could guide me through the maze of career options I can't decide to select from.

 

I am from Mumbai, India and I have 6.5 years of experience in Routing and Switching domain that's mostly concentrated in the Internet Service Provider industry. I have done CCNA R&S(expired) and JNCIA certifications. My current role does not demands shift work as I am working here in the capacity of a Network Planning Engineer. I strongly dislike working in night and to my good luck I have never worked in night in my entire tenure :). My job gives me a good work/life balance and a lot of free time for myself. But, before any one reading this becomes envious ;), all of these comes with a trade-off with a lower salary. 

 

I get lucrative job offers from other cities, but I am adamant not to shift base from my home town, as I have several personal responsibilities that I can't carry out from other locations. 

 


I have given several interviews for data center jobs in enterprise industry but I never crack the technical round. I find them reluctant to hire me due to my inexperience of a data center job. Even If they offer me a job, they won't give me a hike in pay. I am also considering exploring Network Security as a Career given the great demand for experienced security professionals. But again my inexperience here plays the spoil sport.

 

I am quite fascinated with the solutions that Artificial Intelligence have to real world problems and even attended an online course on it. But that diminished the enthusiasm I had for AI as a novice due to the technicality involved in AI. 

 

I am also keen to learn python language, as I have seen my colleagues using it to automate Network monitoring jobs and I believe it has many unimagined potential applications. And the best part till now is that I find learning python quite pleasing.

 

To sum up, please suggest what career should I pursue that's a perfect match for me in terms of:
night shifts
work/life balance
lucrativeness

 

Thanks again.

 

 

 

 

 

 

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