Finding a IT Job

[azurepancake]

I was wondering if anyone could perhaps give me some advice on finding a IT position. I am 19 years old, graduated from high school and have earned both the CompTIA A+ and Network+ certifications.

I find that my biggest problem is that I lack the professional or "corporate" experience. I feel like I have the book smarts, but lack the hands-on. When I search websites such as Dice, Monster, Career Builder or Craig's List, I start to feel overwhelmed with all the requirements needed to earn these positions. I just don't know where to start!

If anyone has any recommendations or tips of what I should do and where I should look, I will be very grateful.

Thanks!

[FFighter]

I don't really have any recommendations for you because I'm also kinda of in the beginning of my career and our social context are probably very different (different countries).

One thing that I can say for sure is: degrees don't matter so much per se for IT jobs. Of course, the knowledge you get from them is valuable, but certifications won't fulfill your professional life.

However, there is no knowledge that is not power :)

Pick what you love, work on it consistently, your work is your portfolio, your portfolio is what really matters.

Sorry if my post is kinda vague, if your looking for more concrete directions such as what company to look for ro something like that, I'm sure someone else could help you.

just my 2c.

[azurepancake]

Sorry if my post is kinda vague, if your looking for more concrete directions such as what company to look for ro something like that, I'm sure someone else could help you.

just my 2c.

Thanks a lot. Your two cents are much appreciated and helpful!

Keep em' coming!

[rickyjones]

I was wondering if anyone could perhaps give me some advice on finding a IT position. I am 19 years old, graduated from high school and have earned both the CompTIA A+ and Network+ certifications.

I find that my biggest problem is that I lack the professional or "corporate" experience. I feel like I have the book smarts, but lack the hands-on. When I search websites such as Dice, Monster, Career Builder or Craig's List, I start to feel overwhelmed with all the requirements needed to earn these positions. I just don't know where to start!

If anyone has any recommendations or tips of what I should do and where I should look, I will be very grateful.

Thanks!

I'm 21 and I'm also still beginning my career in the IT field. Here is my story/experience - take from it what you will.

When I was 16/17 I got my A+ and also my MCP in Windows 2000. I started working at a local church as their intern for IT, the IT manager was pretty nice. He ran his own consulting practice on the side which he hired me into. When I graduated high school I worked for him and then started community college in the fall (focus on networking). The next summer I applied for a few internships and began an internship at a local multi-national company. I've been interning at this company for the last few summers now. In the fall, when I go back to school, I find a part time job doing IT work somewhere. Last year I worked tier 1 technical support over the phone. This past year I worked at a company as their sole IT Administrator.

What you need to do is get your foot in the door someplace. I recommend going basic - start at tier 1 technical support. If you are in the USA then it might be worth your while to go to the closest ISPs call center and apply. High turn around rate there.

Once you have a year of true "real world experience" you'll find it becomes much easier to secure the interview, especially if you know your stuff.

Finally, take the time to network with other people in your area. Most cities have some sort of organization that gets together to do social networking. In my area this one group meets every friday at 7am for a few hours for a meet and greet breakfast. Best way to meet new people in your field (usually the people that will hire you), get your name out there, and create a list of contacts who you can call on some day.

Hope this helps!

Sincerely,
Richard

[azurepancake]

Yeah, I agree that starting small is the best thing I can do, but I seem to having a hard time finding these entry level jobs. All the mediums in which I have been using (mostly the internet I admit) appears to offering mostly jobs that require 3-5 years of experience in the field.

So yeah, getting out there and finding some kind of social networking organization might be my best bet in finding entry into the field.

Thanks for the words of wisdom.. keep em' coming!

[azurepancake]

I thought I'd update that I think I've finally found the job that I've been looking for!

I got hired and just started working last Monday at 'Verio' web hosting. Verio is.. you guessed it - a web host. My position is labeled "Technical Support" which is basically helping out clients over the phone or E-mail who are having issues with their hosting or domain services.

Currently they are training a few other new recruits and my self for the rest of this month before we 'get out on the floor'. Its a classroom atmosphere and I really like the instructors. We are currently diving into the depths of DNS and the tools used to troubleshoot DNS issues.

I'm so excited about this job that I find my self constantly studying, in the classroom and out. My interest in DNS has been sparked and I am trying to learn as much about it as possible. Even the 'unnecessary' stuff.

I've recently picked up the book 'Pro DNS & BIND' and hope to get a hands on experience with BIND. My dream is to eventually move up in the company and earn a UNIX / DNS Administrator position.

Well thats basically my little update. I'd love to hear other peoples stories and if anyone has any experience working at a web hosting company, I'd greatly appreciate if you could offer me some wise words.

Thanks for all the advice!

[grossaffe]

I guess I got lucky. My piano teacher had an adult student who's husband owns a local IT business. she heard they were looking for a another tech and knew I was going into the field, so she set me up with them. now I have real tech experience under my belt which will make finding another job easier.

[azurepancake]

I guess I got lucky. My piano teacher had an adult student who's husband owns a local IT business. she heard they were looking for a another tech and knew I was going into the field, so she set me up with them. now I have real tech experience under my belt which will make finding another job easier.

Awesome Grossaffe! What type of technical work are you doing exactly?

[Dr Small]

I myself am 17 and need to be finding me a job sometime soon too. I work with almost anything technical and computer related. Over the last several years, I have been expirimenting with everything from software, OSes to hardware.

[AnLGP]

A lot of you guys have a jump on me. I'm reading the A+ material now.

[azurepancake]

A lot of you guys have a jump on me. I'm reading the A+ material now.

Good luck to you! I'm sure you'll do great when the time comes to take the test. I used Mike Meyers A+ All-in-One book, which is thought by many as the 'de facto' guide for studying for the A+ certification. Also the author of the book, Mike Meyers, posts every day on his forums. He is a very nice person who will take as much time as possible helping you with understanding concepts.

I highly recommend checking out http://www.mcmcse.com/ for their free study guides, very accurate tests and highly supportive forums.

[fatality_uk]

With over 20 years commercial experience in IT, can I suggest a less stressful career. Hostage negotiator, Spy, bomb disposal!! :D

As someone who has recruited 30+ IT professionals, in the last few years, can I suggest that you keep on with specializing in networking. Project managers, programmers and dare I say dept. heads come and go, but, usually, network admins are retained due to the intimate knowledge they have about a companies infrastructure.

I would suggest to offer your services to a local charity, or youth group for instance. Showing that you have got your hands "dirty" always helps.

[stmiller]

I thought I'd update that I think I've finally found the job that I've been looking for!

I got hired and just started working last Monday at 'Verio' web hosting. Verio is.. you guessed it - a web host. My position is labeled "Technical Support" which is basically helping out clients over the phone or E-mail who are having issues with their hosting or domain services.


Congrats on the gig! Tech support is often *the* way into a long tech career and looks very good on your resume.

[Daveski]

I'm so excited about this job that I find my self constantly studying, in the classroom and out. My interest in DNS has been sparked and I am trying to learn as much about it as possible. Even the 'unnecessary' stuff.

That, I think, is the key. So long as you always have that enthusiasm to learn in more depth for existing areas of your knowledge, and that of new ones, then I think you will go far with a career in IT. This is such a fast moving industry, you will always have something new to learn.

It won't be long before you have some of that experience that you need for other positions. Well done, and good luck.

[Mateo]

Good for you, glad you got the job. Also for others, don't worry so much about requirements. Most companies overstate requirements to weed out people with little knowledge. If you have familiarity in the requirements that is probably good enough to at least get you in for an interview. From there it's all about selling yourself.

[grossaffe]

Awesome Grossaffe! What type of technical work are you doing exactly?

well nothing right now as I'm enjoying a care-free summer, but when I was working I would go to customer sites and set up computers or I would go and pick up problematic computers and bring them back to work on them (and if we couldn't figure out a fix, we'd save all the data we could) or if there were no customers that needed to be tended to, I would build computers from scratch to be ready for a customer who needs a new computer. That was the basics of what I did, but it was good experience and will no doubt work well with the education I'm receiving in Computer Engineering for when I'm searching for a job.

[grossaffe]

With over 20 years commercial experience in IT, can I suggest a less stressful career. Hostage negotiator, Spy, bomb disposal!! :D

As someone who has recruited 30+ IT professionals, in the last few years, can I suggest that you keep on with specializing in networking. Project managers, programmers and dare I say dept. heads come and go, but, usually, network admins are retained due to the intimate knowledge they have about a companies infrastructure.

I would suggest to offer your services to a local charity, or youth group for instance. Showing that you have got your hands "dirty" always helps.

I've heard that as a programmer, if you make your coding real confusing to look at with no knowledge of it, its hard for them to replace you. who else will be able to maintain the code if they can't understand it?

[NetworkGuy]

With over 20 years commercial experience in IT, can I suggest a less stressful career. Hostage negotiator, Spy, bomb disposal!! :D

As someone who has recruited 30+ IT professionals, in the last few years, can I suggest that you keep on with specializing in networking. Project managers, programmers and dare I say dept. heads come and go, but, usually, network admins are retained due to the intimate knowledge they have about a companies infrastructure.

I would suggest to offer your services to a local charity, or youth group for instance. Showing that you have got your hands "dirty" always helps.

+1

I agree completely with this post. I also have over 20 years in the field. Started as a Unisys (Burroughs at the time) computer operator, graduated to consulting for several years and am now a (cough) department supervisor for system services for a private company.

Get your hands "dirty", and maybe perform some long term charity IT work that you may be able to add to a resume.

Also congrats on your position. You can't go wrong learning DNS/BIND. It is the glue that holds the Internet together.

[Dr Small]

Also congrats on your position. You can't go wrong learning DNS/BIND. It is the glue that holds the Internet together.

Not really. That's called TCP/IP. :D
DNS was invented for the non-geeks who didn't want to have to memorize IP Addresses to reach their destination ;)

[fatality_uk]

I've heard that as a programmer, if you make your coding real confusing to look at with no knowledge of it, its hard for them to replace you. who else will be able to maintain the code if they can't understand it?

That's why whenever I hire a programmer, first thing I do is have them read my coding standards document for each specific lanuage! It defines code head blocks so that each function is commented correctly and that all dependencies are noted in a commented header block in each file.

Inline comments are to be used throughout the code and an additional code block at the end of the file should describe the effective output, if any, of the file.

It also goes as far as defining tab spacing and using of function brackets e.g.


function myFunc(myVar)
{
Place some code here; //This is a comment
}

That way, if programmer A leaves my dept. I can hire someone quickly and once they have read my doc, they should be able to examine and edit the code very quickly. Nice thought though, wont work :)

Now a network engineer. Dark magic indeed!!! All those cables, just scary!!

[MrGrim]

Congratulations on the job. It sounds you're getting some good training as well.

I find over here (Scotland) that CompTia qualifications only take you so far.

Most jobs on decent salaries are looking for mainly CCNA as a minimum or MCSA/MCSE for the sys admin side. The CompTia is looked at as a basic level of knowledge and understanding.

[NetworkGuy]

DNS was invented for the non-geeks who didn't want to have to memorize IP Addresses to reach their destination ;)

Well, then call me a non-geek for all the places I have to visit it's much easier to remember a name than 4 sets of nunmbers :D :lolflag:

[jonabyte]

for those still wanting advice, try volunteering for non-profits, charities in between looking for jobs, it helps them and it can't hurt you since you will get some real world experience.

[Changturkey]

So someone with a Bsc in CompSci, what field would that be?

[Daveski]

I've heard that as a programmer, if you make your coding real confusing to look at with no knowledge of it, its hard for them to replace you. who else will be able to maintain the code if they can't understand it?

I would hope that a stop would pretty swiftly be put to this kind of practise in any decent environment. Beside the fact that even if you are a whizz programmer, reading your own code is difficult if it is a mess.