For the tier 1 helpdesk staff, FT employees are salary based, at $43-45k. PT employees are hourly, $16-18/hr.

I agree that certs don't mean much in terms of a person's tech knowledge. Work experience is worth a lot more. However when you have a long list of applicants, those who have certs will get an advantage. The advantage may be small, but it still affected me. Those who have certs AND a lot of work experience will be even more desirable.

Despite what the above people said "don't bother with certs", at least get the A+. If you truly are a techy, and have some work experience at a helpdesk job, you should not even need to study much (if at all) for it. The two A+ tests are $400 or less the last time I checked. It's a very minimal cost. When you apply to jobs, your resume will stand out just a little bit more.

Since the next exam isnt starting til mid March, I bought the Network+ book to study.. i thought instead to just sit around and wait for it, I would just study another one which I plan to take...

then I will consider CCNA.. then maybe thats it.. I dont mind its a temp cert, if I can land a good techy job within that time frame, then I considered that Im set... If I dont land a decent job within 3 years of the cert, I would prolly look else where...

No offense, but getting Ccna without actually having touched a cisco device is a joke.
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The general consensus of this thread is that all certifications are generally useless. I got my MCSE+, 10 years ago, and I don't think I worked in any NT Server environment during my study. It was just repetitive practice exams, and then acing the exam. The certification may have helped get my foot in the door of IT, but everything after that is pure experience.

also remember, for every cert you get "reading a book" some other unemployed IT guy is getting 5 at a time cheating, and there are HUGE numbers of unemlployed IT people out there, its rough,

honestly if I were you I would change career paths before you start this one

I'm especially apprehensive to the idea of some joker getting his CCNA by braindumping cert questions and passing the exam because I worked so hard for mine.

Please don't bring the CCNA down to the CompTIA A+ level of uselessness. Do it right and learn it. Router, switch, patch cord, serial cable, confrig registation settings and all.

edit: I paid $168 US for my A+, and it was only 1 test. 220-701.

I dont use brain dumps, as I want to learn this stuff... using brain dumps wont make you learn the stuff...

Ive built computers myself all the time.. most of the stuff in A+ are no problem... I know the basic stuff for networking coz ive done it myself setting up networks at home and sometimes at my work.. Just memorizing the terms is a bit harder for me

I'm the opposite... LoL... I've had the good fortune of learning stuff on the job, so while I have set up fully redundant Cisco network environments with ASA firewalls, Catalyst switches, and CSS load balancers, I'm not Cisco certified. I suck ass at interviews though because even though I have experience, I've never studied technical terms and stuff, so I couldn't even describe the difference between TCP and UDP packets. :pokerface:

tcp=reliable udp=unreliable :D and thats all i remember after 2 years of learning cisco stuff. I'm lacking my knowledge in cisco stuff now since i rarely touch the devices on a daily bases

currently taking my cisa course at bcit,
any tips for anyone who took the cisa/cist program before for landing a job straight outta school?

:fulloffuck:


TCP and UDP..

:rukidding:

Did you set them up via commad prompt? Or GUI?

Both. Used the GUI for most of the ASA configuration, but CLI for the load balancers and switches.