I have a master's degree in something useless job wise and have had military experience.
The simplest certs are A+, Network+ and Security+. Those would probably help get you in an entry level position somewhere. What really sucks is that it helps to know someone who will refer you to a job. That's how I got into IT at first, that's how i got my friend a job where im at now, and my workplace seems to go pretty heavily off references.
An IT recruiter would be a great way to get into a job, although sometimes they will dick you around. They tend to desperately need to fill positions so its easier, but sometimes youll go in expecting a certain gig and when youre interviewing theyll say "oh that ones not available but this one is" because they are kinda scammers. Once you get like 1 to 2 years of work experience though i found it super easy to get offers. I got canned from my first IT job for pretty lame reasons(i guess i had a bad interaction with a client who wasnt even contracted but they were friends with the owner of my employer) but then when i went around looking i was getting a lot of interest. I do have a history degree though(lol) and am almost finished with an IT degree so that maybe helped, but if you can skip school and do certifications I would. If you get in with the right company they will pay for certs and probably have some good training resources.
I got a history degree, floated around for a while and went back to school. Being in school and knowing someone got me the first job but now i kinda wish id just stopped going to school because it's pretty fucking worthless. Most of the teachers arent very knowledgeable or current enough in the field.
I have friends in IT who are looking out for me but they don't have a spot open yet. Been looking at Government jobs too but as you know it's all precarious as you know.
government jobs will likely want a Security+ or Network+ more than A+.
In my experience they push for A+ for entry level, guys i know with no experience and dumber than I am got in... and that's what theyre doing atm.
But thats just my location, im sure a network or security is obviously better though
yea in my current job i have to get Security+ or Network+ to advance but i dont want to go in the field really. and the bar is pretty low for entry level, my employer took a reference and found out this guy apparently learned nothing in college, the same program im in. He didn't know what DHCP or DNS was, like even the basics.
my manager had a meeting and told the trainers that and we were like thats pretty fuckin bad. just tell me DHCP hands out IP addresses, you don't have to fix it. yeesh. so be better than that haha.
Well shit. That makes me feel worse for doing A+ and reading a text-book if someone that doesn't even self-study and just did a college course and cruised into a place gets a job in the industry over me. :(
i wish i knew how the fuck it happened. I was hired as a level 2 so I had a more thorough evaluation, but my friend who i referred didnt have the same complaints made about him. Yea it sucks that it is still about who you know cause im not very social. Im just lucky i went to high school with some good dudes. I didnt meet fuckin anybody at college though because my school was a 90% commuter school. Robert Half and places like them kinda suck but it's a means to an end. Maybe my area just really sucks for talent.
I've tried Robert Half and they're like "Honestly, you're probably better than most of the folks we refer to places!" which might be blowing smoke up my ass about their evaluation, but felt good. The issue was "but there's nothing your area for us to refer you to" which killed me.
I'm in a completely dead zone between two "hot" areas, and even those places won't even consider me even if I want to commute. It's frustrating. It's like this even outside of IT, so I don't blame the IT industry to the "entry level is fucking impossible to get into" situation, but damn: I've gotten certifications, I show willingness to learn (on the job and off the clock) and these places are like "nope, no experience. Let's hire this college kid that just coasted through classes! :)!" and it makes me want to firebomb.
they are out there, somewhere. Most of the guys i work with did not go to college, but we do more lower level stuff, not so much with servers and whatnot.
Well, I'm trying help-desk. Which is the "what the fuck," part. You'd think they'd need warm bodies to deal with people, but even law firms are like "nah, let's not hire them."
law firms probably don't have the ability to have a large IT team so they want one guy who can do it all. Try looking for an MSP(managed service provider.) I'd like to get to something corporate where i dont have to deal with clients anymore but its where i got started. A lot of them arent huge companies either so it's a bit more personal.
I've been trying dice and indeed, is there any other job boards I should be looking at?
It's the fucking devil but LinkedIn as well as what was suggested below.
My experience with LinkedIn has been mild. It's job board is pretty meh and being "Active to Recruitment" has given me zero (0) responses.
Even an entry level certificate in cloud computing would be really helpful:
https://acloudguru.com
Lots of online services are being migrated to AWS and Google Cloud these days
You can also get free tier with the major cloud providers with just a credit card. as long you stay below the limits you can play around for up to a year before they start charging you.
GCP at the very least will not let you do anything resulting in a credit card charge unless you explicitly allow them to, and give $300 in free credit for a trial account, which will last a while for messing around with dev environments and such.
Taking a class or two at a community college helps with in-person networking. A lot of the best tech gigs are word of mouth.
Linux and Cisco certifications are a step up above A+. Maybe 3-4 months of studying for lowest tier.
Decide if you want to work help desk or in datacenters. They are wildly different paths.
Would you elaborate on the differences between help desk and data centers? I am attempting to follow a similar path to op and as much information as possible is helpful.
Help desk requires mostly desktop and software troubleshooting skills.
Datacenter gigs concentrate on servers and networking.
If you are good at working with people help desk can be the way to go. Datacenter gigs can be completely solo graveyard shift type work.
What is the Linux certification like? I've used Linux full-time for about five years, so I think it might be relatively easy for me to get.
Never took any linux certs. Only hired for the positions. I started on SVR4 and IRIX back in the late 1980's.
Linux+ is common. RH certs will open a lot more doors on the datacenter side of things.
https://www.redhat.com/en/services/certifications
Right. I'm a freelance programmer and sort of studying CS, so I don't know how useful it'd be for me, but I want to explore dev ops a bit cause I've always enjoyed the ops side of stuff growing up.
You should look into one of the many good online python courses. A lot of them are based on a common program for introduction to CS.
If you are using linux/mac you're pretty much good. if you are using windows 10 then follow these steps here and you can do a lot of work with linux on windows. https://docs.microsoft.com/en-us/windows/wsl/install-win10
You don't need to focus on these things now, but if you try it out you can add some skills that will open a lot of doors.
I wanna help comrades learn this stuff. It's not for everyone, but I think it's fun.
Couple of things. Where are you (lol, don't answer that) and how good at computers are you right now?
My last gig I worked with a bunch of talented people, only one had a 4 year in computers. Boss was a music composition major, one was a former lawyer, one never went to college, I'm a drop out.
If you're in a big market (Boston, NYC, Austin, San Fran, Seattle, Portland OR), you should be able to land a low-level help desk/desktop support role by just showing competency at working on computers. Like, just go talk to a recruiter and they'll get you hired.
A+ is fine, but it's kinda bleh and no one in tech really takes it seriously. It's fine for helping you get your foot in the door, but once you have actual work experience, it 100% doesn't matter anymore.
Being a vet is good because a lot of people have respect for the troops and that'll help you as well.
I'm in Chicago (I don't care), I'm honestly not really good at computers, I just know a lot the basic end user shit. All I can say is that I can learn and can put up with stress decently.
Chicago isn't bad as well, I just never think about it.
I mean, honestly, being able to learn quickly and being able to deal with stress are key skills, especially once you start getting up the ladder.
Finishing the A+ will be good for getting your foot in the door to desktop support, and from that, you can springboard into servers and networking.
@anthropicprincipal is very right about figuring out where you want to go work-wise.
Personally, I've done the path of Help desk -> desktop support -> Systems Administration -> DevOps Engineer. Not everyone does that and it's very your milage may vary
I just want a stable schedule and enough money to support my S/O and hobbies. I don't think my feet are wet enough to know whats good for me yet.
Fair enough.
You can definitely get those things in tech. Definitely finish A+ and keep looking for desktop roles.
Put some time in to learn Powershell (critical for managing Windows these days) and Python (honestly, just a good tool to have in your toolbox) as well. Learning to code is dumb, but every level of tech is moving to being managed programmatically.
FWIW, recruiters I worked with have an office in Chicago. I was pretty happy working with them the last two times I was looking for work https://motionrecruitment.com/
Yeah, I guess I'm not really surprised. I kinda just tossed it out there in the off chance.
It's absolutely incredibly demoralizing to look for new work. I've got a friend that's been trying to get a data analyst job for a while now and it's been rough. I have another friend that was looking for an entry level front end dev job for a long time and got lucky because a company took a risk on him.
Another thing to do, is look at Meetup.com and see if there are any technical groups the pique your interest. Even if it's above your skill level, it would be good way to network and meet people.
A+ is fine, but it’s kinda bleh and no one in tech really takes it seriously.
I really wish I knew this before blowing money on it. I passed and got the 901/902 three years ago (so my cert is nearly out) and nobody wants to hire because "lack of professional experience," no matter what I apply for. Help Desk? "Oh you need experience!" SysAdmin/punching above my weight obviously, "Oh you need experience!"
Like, I've dabbled with C, Javascript, know HTML and CSS, can manage systems and troubleshoot most anything. I help people "how do I open .pdf" types at my current place but none of that shit apparently counts for entry-level help-desk and it's frustrating. I've finished the Network+ textbook but it's hard to be motivated to spend another $500-600 for the exam voucher and try to get Network+ if places won't even consider me in the first place if I get that one.
The only reason I'm considering it is because it'd renew my A+ and give me Network+ at the same time. But my worry is that even with Network+ a lot of places will balk.
Should I just apply to these places even though I don't have an A+ yet? The one government place I am applying for, I know for a fact will take me and train me, but that's a (again) precarious numbers game.
Where are you looking for those spots? Anything besides USAjobs?
jobs will actually end when your shift ends instead of being expected to be on call 24/7.
Or you can hop into a department that has loads of OT and actually fucking get OT because government jobs actually have to follow labour laws.
Had a coworker who turned a 60k job into 90k because he just took the OT as much as wanted. Then he switched to a chill team once he and his wife started having kids.
Another guy would just take oncall shifts all the time because he would get paid a bit for every hour spent oncall + regular wages for any pages (or OT maybe? can't remember).
This sort of thing also means they generally can't abuse OT to a crazy degree because it fucks up their budget.
Despite all these things another friend got a shitty manager who heaped bullshit onto him and overworked him to the point where his IBS was giving him problems and his coworker was falling asleep being the wheel and causing car wrecks. Then when he tried to bring it to HR the manager stabbed him in the back and the union did fucking nothing.
Thankfully he named and shamed on social media after quitting.
Something to consider: https://content.spiceworksstatic.com/service.community/p/post_images/0000206348/58015a90/attached_image/rVqaUFo.jpg
If you got a master's degree you can probably teach at a Community College. Play up the military background, a lot of fields prefer you to have non-academia experience.
Also networking certs are (or used to be) real good.
You can probably pirate a bunch of video and interactive course material for those.
