anyone studying for any qualies? i've been getting away with not having them up to point, but i want to stop working with numpties and do proper big boy work, so i think its time i got a few certs to prove im as good as youd expect for the money im trying to charge ;)
anyone else studying? how you going about it?
I did MCITP: SA and Exchange 2010 over the last few years - they've been auto upgraded to the new MCSA (or one has anyway).
I did the courses down at Global Knowledge in Wokingham, but MS Press books are good. I personally think CBT Nuggets or Trainsignal are a great way these days - really cost effective too.
Main thing for me though was labs - lab everything in VM's even if it looks like a simple process. The familiarity with things you don't necessarily get involved with day to day is priceless in the exams.
thanks. ive got an old dell 2750 thats going to get esxi on it or maybe hyperv and then i can build vms on it
been reading through the 410 questions ive got from examking, its pretty simple with a few updates from previous knowledge. think the next exams will be trickier though.
i think i used the mspress questions book to pass the exchange 2003 exam but thats a long time ago. i dont know if mcp's expire at all.
Depends what/where your doing now.
ITIL could be worth doing if your still young & finding it hard to break into day to day it roles at large corporates/public sector. Im getting bored in my role, but get so much spare time that im being tempted by either vmware or a ccna cert just so i got a piece of paper saying i can do what ive done for years.
Asterisk is my long term plan - but onlynif i can find a way to create a market for it as its such a nieche market.
Luckily where i am atm dont have a voip solution and my idea is around what could work with it
ive done an itil course or two. actually, i once failed an itil exam. true story.
itil is useful to talk about the job, but everyone i've ever talked to has appreciated that you borrow from it rather than wholeheartedly implement it.
im really just trying to not get stuck at the level that im currently at.
Mcps are only valid for the OS you did them on, only real point in doing them is to collect a bunch to qualify for the MCSE/A/etc... If you just do them and don't collect them for a purpose it's pretty pointless.
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yeah, i found that out as i delved through. looks like im starting from scratch, not that i didnt already know that.
I got a whole list of MS Certs a few years ago and I got a huge bump in pay but I had to jump companies to get it. Moral is pay for your own certs so you're not tied to a company if you can. I put my CV up on a job site last week and the phone was off the hook, had a choice of 4 jobs to go for.
If you really want to get anywhere look at higher-end certs; SAN stuff, security, SQL, Citrix, VMWare, etc. Those will get you good pay packets and open lots of doors but you need to stay focused once you start down the cert path cos a MCSE or whatever isn't a ticket you can ride for more than a few years.
Moral should be "be a better negotiator in the interview". Get your current company to pay for the training. If they make you sign something to tie you in, sign it.
Apply for another job and state your predicament and that you will require your new employer to buy you out of your training agreement. Bosh done. Happens all the time.
Normally it saves them money as
1 you've already done the training so can work for them earning money instead of being expensive, eating into training overheads.
2 normally it's staircased so they may only have to pay a % back depending on when you leave so cheaper than the full course.
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hadnt thought of it that way.
current situ: 3 months done at employer who are frankly a joke. is manager needs sidelining and i should be put in hi place to turn things around.
and thats the gist of what im gonna say to his boss in the next few days. assuming that goes the way i think it will, i'll be looking for a job, not that i havent been.
im on an agreement that means i'll pay back a %age of training monies spent on me if i leave before the end of the year long contract, which is next march.
so im just working out what i need to do to make sure im not out of work too long. the obvious one is to keep my mouth shut in the next week, but im not gonna do that. there is a job needs doing by someone who isn't trying to be everyones best friend.