IT career advice for possible network engineer

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P1n3apqlExpr3ss

853 posts

Ultimate Geek

#138452 5-Jan-2014 00:21

So my current situation is that I have just completed the first year of a Bachelor of Information Science at Massey University with A+s in the CS/IT papers. However I am not sure what to do from here as I do not see myself as a programmer in 5 years time. Considering IT is so broad I've been looking around recently and network engineering seems enticing after reading up on it at the careers.govt site. I've signed up for a couple of network courses on Coursera and Stanford to get a proper taster which start next week

As it stands, Massey only has three network related papers across 2nd and 3rd years and I question if they would really be enough to land a job, especially considering I wouldn't have any industry certs from Cisco/MS

More to the point, should I stay with Massey and complete the degree, gaining skills over several IT areas before finding an entry level job and specializing further or jump across to somewhere like AMES and do some certifications and going straight into the workforce?

Other titles that look interesting are procurement manager and business analyst

If you have anything to add it would be greatly appreciated

Zeon

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#961346 5-Jan-2014 01:36

I did CCNA when I was at high school and while boring then, gave me a really good understanding of the basics of networking which has been so helpful now. THe rest of what I have learnt is through having to actually do it for real as part of my work. Experience is super useful but that CCNA was such a great grounding....

Speedtest 2019-10-14

insane

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#961347 5-Jan-2014 01:44

Well you have two options really, one is to go to AMES and get your CCNA etc at a high price, the other is to do self study which honestly isn't much harder. The $$ saved not going to AMES will get you a very nice lab to get practical experience on.

After that you're looking at getting a job on a 2nd level help desk for an ISP/Network provider and get real world exp. At Vocus our level 2 guys all have at least CCNA and level 3 have CCNP or higher plus one or two other minor certs. Other vendors are also getting used more and more these days so don't stop with Cisco, there are plenty of Brocade and Juniper devices in the wild, but the concepts remain the same.

If you can, try get an internship to learn some real world experience too as my BBS from Massey didn't equip me for the workforce by any means. I was looking to head into a career in Networking but luckily sold by Cisco books and went down the Systems path and haven't looked back.

Coil

6614 posts

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#961385 5-Jan-2014 09:29

Other vendors are also getting used more and more these days so don't stop with Cisco, there are plenty of Brocade and Juniper devices in the wild, but the concepts remain the same.

Come on @johnr lets go get ourselves some Huawei Certified Network Professional certs. :)

nate

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#961402 5-Jan-2014 10:31

Complete your degree, it will give you a good base to enter the workforce. You will however learn the most "on the tools"

(I also have a BIS but mine's from MIT)

P1n3apqlExpr3ss

853 posts

Ultimate Geek

#961604 5-Jan-2014 19:08

Cheers for all the advice guys. Looks like I'll stay with Massey and complete the degree, try to get some kind of hands-on experience, and possibly look at studying towards CCNA in my spare time

@Zeon, what education have you done since and what role are you in now?

resurrect

80 posts

Master Geek

#961752 6-Jan-2014 09:39

I would recommend looking into SDN (software defined networking) as that's highly likely to be the big thing in a few years time.