Hi Guys, I just got out of school and I am looking for some advices to start my career in the IT world, where did you guys start? What kind of job should I be looking for ? (I see some of my collegues ending in tech support on the phone, wich I don’t really want to do it seems boring) Is there any certifications I should start with? (if they worth anything) I am currently practicing alot at home with the vmware suite (esxi, vcenter, horizon, etc) and I like it alot. Maybe some vmware certifications could be a good start or that would be too hard? I know some peaple doing CCNA (cisco certifications) but to me it doesn’t seem that useful because companies will never hire a young it to configure their whole cisco network… or im I wrong ?

Just Looking for any advice’s, how did you guys start your career? (maybe I will remember you guys the good old days) haha

@VMware

35 Spice ups

I started as a IT assistant within a consulting engineering company. There was myself and my manager and we primarily delt with desktop and network issues (servers were a consultancy company)

I was made redundant due to the economy and got a job as a IT technician/consultant — Stayed there 5 years until I felt i had topped my limit and now work as a Infrastructure engineer.

One thing i would say is… Your going to have bad days, its what you take from them that helps. I’ve certainly had plenty and have my own procedures that people mock, but i don’t make the mistakes.

Also, find what you love and follow that. I’m very keen on Vmware - yet have only know really got into a position where i do 30-40% vmware administration. Which is in comparsion to about 5% in my previous job.

1 Spice up

It all depends what route you want to take…you’re mentioning VMWare (virtualization) and then shifting all the way across the world to CCNA (Networking).

What do you want to do? Systems Administration or Networking or both?

VMWare certifications are great as well as the CCNA it just depends on what interests you.

Unfortunately while home lab experience is great it doesn’t coorelate into professional experience which is what some people will want to see before they trust you with managing an ESXi hypervisor in a production environment. You could start off doing entry level helpdesk if grinding it out in a call center/phone support type setting isn’t something you want to do. I did phone support for Mac, Nuance, and a few other companies when I started out and to be honest its not THAT bad and you learn to troubleshoot in a completely different manner because you cannot physically show the individual what their supposed to be doing and I think it helps you learn to be patient and convey things better to the end user.

Getting into helpdesk gets you exposure to a lot of different technologies and its where I learned a ton and to be honest I.T. job titles are all over the darn place these days and you end up wearing multiple hats.

15 Spice ups

Best advice? Eat lots of bacon.

46 Spice ups

Generally this is where most people will doing phone or desktop support. If possible, start with desk support as you’ll get to meet a range of people and will be able to get second hand knowledge of other things in the environment.

You can get all the qualifications that you like but unless you have experience I wouldn’t let you touch anything on my network. Of course, the catch-22 here is how do you get experience? And thats were doing the boring phone or desktop support comes in. After a year of that you’ll have an understanding of how the workplace works, the types of people involved and you’ll have some experience of the sorts of panics that can occur in an IT dept.

9 Spice ups

So here’s a story.

I also just finished school and no clue what to do next. I had been an intern at the company I now work for during my entire senior year working at their IT help desk. Tech support sucks and customers are the worst. I did NOT want to do that. I wanted to do something with networking or programming (I know, two totally different beasts). So as I struggled finding a job, the company I interned with offered me a full time salaried position at the help desk. It sucks. But working at the help desk and talking with the guys in all the other groups that I am interested in has helped me figure out what I want to do (plus they pay for any certs which is awesome). Now I am starting a new position as a BI Programmer. Which is awesome.

Basically, even though it is the least desirable position, it is usually the best way to get your foot in the door. So get the experience and the rest will fall into place. Take it from someone who was in that same position just a few short months ago.

17 Spice ups

I agree with andrew, there are very few people that didn’t start in the IT basement and work their way up. You need the hands on experience dealing with people and the l337 troubleshooting foundation in order to properly deal with things to come. I too started on phones doing tech support but quickly outgrew it. Show your company that you’re capable of more and you very well may rise in the ranks.

2 Spice ups

In all honesty, getting your foot in the door is probably the most challenging part of the IT world these days. Not only is it a field that’s all about practical experience and hands-on knowledge in quite possibly the fastest changing field in the world, but in far too many of the cases you need to get your resume past the “HR” filter, who doesn’t know what any of these words mean and think that an entry level help desk position requires a 4 year degree in Computer Science and two years experience with their proprietary product that you couldn’t possibly have experience with unless you already worked for them.

Primarily, the absolute most important thing to get on your resume is practical experience in a real business environment. Be prepared to bite the bullet and work in a call center for a year or two if you can’t find someone willing to hire a newbie, as simply having a year or two of something will make your resume considerably more likely to be looked at instead of immediately thrown away.

Certs help as well, but you need to have an idea of what aspect of IT you want to go into. If you’re looking to be a sysadmin, the MCSA is a great starting point. It touches on a lot of concepts, namely the tangible end of networking (dhcp/dns/client configs), client/server architecture, Active Directory, user account management, powershell scripting, and Hyper-V virtualization. I’d stay away from the cisco certs unless you seriously intend to make a career out of strictly network engineering or want to move into high level security later. It’s not that they’re bad certs to have, but in network engineering experience is far more important than the cert and you could better spend your time getting more generalized certs to get your foot in the door somewhere. That being said, there’s two schools of thought on certs in the IT world. Some people think collecting letters is critical and are going to expect their employees to have and maintain a mountain of certs, others couldn’t care less about them and focus more on real-world experience and practical, demonstrable skills. Neither is right or wrong, but it’s important to keep in mind that anyone choosing who to hire is gonna swing one way or the other and it will impact your chances of being selected for the position.

Another great place to look these days is a position with a Managed Services Provider. These companies have been popping up like weeds in recent years, and are very willing to hire people right out of school. It’s also a great opportunity to get a taste of a little bit of everything before deciding what you want to ultimately specialize your career in.

11 Spice ups

I also highly recommend using dice.com to get your resume out there.

I started as the evening shift “support guy” in a call center. As many have said, it wasn’t glamorous, but it got my foot in the door. Take the crap jobs that nobody wants and do them as best you can, asking for advice and then make subtle improvements if you can. You were given two ears and one mouth for a reason. A good manager will recognize talent and should be able to reward you. My first standout issue came when I walked out of the server room on Christmas day and ran into the owner of the company. He wanted to know why I was there and I said I had to swap backup tapes (single DLT drive days). He was impressed and told my boss. Never toot your own horn, let your actions speak for you and own up to any mistakes.

9 Spice ups

My best advice is to work on your IT skills as well as your personal skills. I have watched many very smart and talented IT people go down in flames because they decided to tell a user how stupid they really were. Knowing how to deal with people who upset will help you all along in your IT career.

8 Spice ups

Don’t use Pedobear as your picture would be a good start.

17 Spice ups

Always stay passionate about the industry and love what you do.

That will drive you to become better every day and master your craft.

There are so many areas in the IT World - start off as a helpdesk person and find what / where you want your career to take you. Plan it and make it happen.

1 Spice up

Find a help desk job

3 Spice ups

First and foremost, cut the 4chan Pedobear crap. You’re not impressing anybody and it is seriously going to bite you on the ass later on.

Secondly, many universities and community colleges have student workers, that would have been the ideal place to begin. They accommodate your school schedule, often you’re allowed to work on progressively more complex tasks if you’re good, and letters of recommendation from a few VP’s, governing board members or even just professors never hurts.

Failing that, you’re looking at either getting really lucky or getting a lot of internships. Certifications and degrees mean nothing without experience to back them up, so focus on getting a job above all else; in support of the old joke, I actually know a guy with a BA in Art History who changes oil for a living.

  1. Get a job, whatever the pay grade;
  2. Internships are nice, you should have been doing them during school but it’s not too late;
  3. After trying different areas of IT for a couple years, pick one you really like and go for broke. Don’t get an MCSE and decide you want to be a system administrator. Figure out what you like and certify in that. If you really like networking, get your CCNA, equivalent Juniper cert, etc. and follow the path; don’t get a CCNA, decide you invested too much time and money into it to throw it away and hate what you do.
  4. Build a home lab. Progressively add to it, briefly describe it on your resume.
4 Spice ups

Your best bet is to get yourself into desktop support as a career beginner.

It may not sound like the most riveting job to have but it really does help to build the complete picture of how and where everything fits together. If you are ambitious and determined, you’ll move out of that pretty quickly into a junior sys admin position and can find out which path you’d like to take.

We had a guy just out of school who has recently joined the infrastructure team, a year in, after starting as desktop support. He’s the first to arrive and always stays late for anything and everything we are doing to learn and get involved with.

Good luck!

1 Spice up

Apprenticeships, its how I started, I even have awards from Microsoft UK (:

Avoid Call Centers

Study and learn as much as possible

Apply for everything

Good luck!

Step 1: Get your net+. It shows that you have a basic understand of how things communicate which is by far the most important thing in IT imo.

step 2: apply anywhere

step 3: profit

4 Spice ups

I forgot to mention that some of the most productive jobs I have ever had were the boring ones. Whether it was serving food in a dying restaurant with maybe half a dozen customers a day, or sitting on a helpdesk, they provided me with the opportunity to study for certification exams in an area I actually liked, schmooze with the more senior folks, etc.

I recently took a Level 1 technical support position after having spent approximately 8 months in a public school district doing damn near everything. My daily workload consisted of racking equipment, installing and configuring servers, (Windows Server 2008 R2, mostly, with most issues with DNS and Active Directory) building and deploying images using MDT/WDS, taking technical support requests as I had time, installing, configuring and troubleshooting networking equipment, (HP ProCurve, mostly, but a few Cisco devices here and there,) installing and configuring Ruckus WAP’s, configuring Ruckus ZoneDirector, break/fix desktop and laptop repair, all of it.

My current job has me on the phones three days a week, out in the field as a break/fix technician the remaining two. I’m making more money than I did at the school district and I have the time, when I’m on the phones, to study for my CCNA Security, learn more about various aspects of Windows Server 2012, read technical articles from SANS, US-CERT, etc.

The lesson to learn: Just because your current job is boring doesn’t mean you cannot be productive while doing it.

2 Spice ups