Sunday, January 17, 2010

Cisco Training In Your Own Home Compared

By Jason Kendall

If Cisco training is your aspiration, and you've not yet worked with routers or network switches, you should first attempt CCNA certification. This will provide you with knowledge and skills to work with routers. The internet is made up of hundreds of thousands of routers, and large commercial ventures with many locations also need routers to allow their networks to keep in touch.

It's very probable you'll get a job with an internet service provider or a big organisation which is located on multiple sites but still wants secure internal data communication. These jobs are well paid and in demand.

Getting your Cisco CCNA is perfectly sufficient to start with; don't be cajoled into attempting your CCNP. Once you've got a few years experience behind you, you will have a feel for whether you need to train up to this level. If so, your experience will serve as the background you require to take on your CCNP - which is quite a hard qualification to acquire - and mustn't be entered into casually.

A lot of training companies only provide basic 9am till 6pm support (maybe a little earlier or later on certain days); very few go late in the evening or at weekends.

Never buy certification programs which can only support trainees through a message system after 6-9pm in the evening and during weekends. Trainers will give you every excuse in the book why you don't need this. The bottom line is - support is required when it's required - not when it's convenient for them.

We recommend that you search for training programs that have multiple support offices across multiple time-zones. Each one should be integrated to give a single entry point together with access round-the-clock, when you want it, with no fuss.

Never make the mistake of compromise when it comes to your support. The majority of would-be IT professionals that can't get going properly, would have had a different experience if they'd got the right support package in the first place.

The market provides an excess of work available in IT. Picking the right one in this uncertainty is a mammoth decision.

Perusing a list of odd-sounding and meaningless job titles is no use whatsoever. The vast majority of us have no concept what our own family members do for a living - let alone understand the subtleties of any specific IT role.

Arriving at a well-informed resolution really only appears from a methodical analysis of several shifting key points:

* Personalities play an important part - what things get your juices flowing, and what are the areas that put a frown on your face.

* Do you want to get certified due to a specific motive - for instance, is it your goal to work at home (maybe self-employment?)?

* What priority do you place on salary vs the travel required?

* Understanding what the main IT roles and markets are - and what makes them different.

* The level of commitment and effort you'll commit getting qualified.

For the average person, getting to the bottom of these areas requires a good chat with someone that knows what they're talking about. And we don't just mean the certifications - you also need to understand the commercial needs and expectations besides.

Commercial certification is now, undoubtedly, beginning to replace the traditional academic paths into IT - but why is this?

As we require increasingly more effective technological know-how, the IT sector has moved to the specialised core-skills learning only available through the vendors themselves - in other words companies such as Microsoft, CISCO, Adobe and CompTIA. This frequently provides reductions in both cost and time.

Essentially, only required knowledge is taught. It's not quite as straightforward as that, but principally the objective has to be to focus on the exact skills required (along with a certain amount of crucial background) - without trying to cram in every other area - in the way that academic establishments often do.

What if you were an employer - and you required somebody who had very specific skills. What is easier: Trawl through loads of academic qualifications from several applicants, trying to establish what they know and which vocational skills they've acquired, or choose particular accreditations that specifically match what you're looking for, and make your short-list from that. Your interviews are then about personal suitability - rather than on the depth of their technical knowledge.

Be alert that all exams you're studying for are recognised by industry and are up-to-date. Training companies own certificates are not normally useful in gaining employment.

If your certification doesn't come from a big-hitter like Microsoft, CompTIA, Adobe or Cisco, then it's likely it won't be commercially viable - as no-one will have heard of it.

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