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Hi Guys,

i have finished my Level 3 apprenticeship and now have finished my Level 4 with my MCSA in Windows 2012. i want to be a network administrator some day. I was just wondering if you could give me some advice on where to go from here? i was thinking doing a few MCSE’s and taking some Cisco courses (And other Certifications i believe would benefit me) would this be enough or would i need to do some sort of bachelor degree?

Look forward to hearing from you all,

M

10 Spice ups
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I would strongly recommend Cisco courses if you think about network administration (you’ll also need good understanding of Linux based networking) - from the bottom up you’ll get a good grasp of the most popular networking technology & gear. I have a feeling that doing a lot of courses with M$, Cisco & other (Linux related) may be enough to not bother with computer science or engineering degree. Experience + loads of certificates in my opinion is better than academic qualification when you know exactly what you want to do and what direction your career is supposed to go. I did CS BSc and it helped me a lot with general IT knowledge but if you want to go in one definite direction Certs + professional qualifications with experience should be more than enough.

2 Spice ups
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How about getting your feet wet and join an organisation…then you can decide if that organisation fits you or if your certs will help in your skill sets or if you like being in those roles…

Having many Certs may not really help especially if you join a large organisation that may prefer to engage professional services. So you may be managing vendors than directly managing systems most of the time.

Degrees like BSc etc will help open certain doors much more then professional certs, which your organisation would be sending you for if you needed them. Some organisations may even get government or Vendor funding for such courses especially for Microsoft and VMware etc where they then to give larger customers some sort od educational vouchers etc.

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Hey,

Thanks for the reply and yeah i think that may be a good route to go down :slight_smile:

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currently working as a Helpdesk engineer 2nd line but will in the future be looking for maybe a junior Network Admin job or something along those lines!

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Focus your energies on gaining on the job experience, not loading up on every cert under the sun.

I would not hire a network administrator who has an MCSE and Cisco certs but has never actually racked a switch or solved any real-world problems.

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Time to get your hand dirty. You can keep studying but if you aren’t doing the work then the collection of certs becomes useless.

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what kind of job role could i take on which would allow me to do this? i only have a MCSA and 4 years experience on a helpdesk. could i get maybe a junior network admin position or something?

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Get your bachelors degree, unless you got the experience bro. Those app scanners look for the degree words and if they dont see it you get tossed out the pile. Damn hiring companies.