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Permalink Reply by Ken Wagner on August 25, 2008 at 1:53pm

Hi,

I'll try to answer your questions to the best of my abilities :)

1. No idea, every country has their own views. I can say that from a general perspective from an IT manager point of view who also sits on interview panels, what I look for in a candidate is a good base of education (academic, vocational &/or professional), experience and personality.

2. I have to say that those are 3 different fields in IT, I would recommend concentrating on one field, otherwise you may spread yourself too thinnly, ie a jack of all trades, master of none. Apart from that an entry level certificate for the Security field would be the Comptia Security+ (please be aware that even though it's an entry level cert for that field, it isn't an entry level cert for the IT industry). An entry level cert for project management would be the Comptia Project+ and take a look at CIW's certs, the foundation cert in particular. You may also want to check out w3school's for basic tutorials and cert.

3. Certification will improve your prospective however they will not guarantee a job and either are they a substitute for experience. Remember professional certifications should reflect your job roles and responsibilities.

Pick a field in IT that you want to go down and then shape your career from there. It's great that you already have 1 year experience, but please take note that 2 months of hearing nothing is really nothing. It took me 5 years to get into IT, just be patient the right job will come along...

Hope this helps :)

-ken

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Permalink Reply by Sam on September 8, 2008 at 10:38am

Thanks a lot ken...I have decided on the concentrating on the IT security path...I have been advised to first get the A+ and Network+ certificates before going for the Security+ cert. I am hoping that getting the A+ certificate will improve my chances of maybe getting into an IT support role and I can continue to go towards the others while gaining some sort of techy experience..

Thank you again for the support... :)

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Permalink Reply by Sam on September 8, 2008 at 11:43am

Actually I have a further question...

Security+ is a non-vendor cert...and is the first step in the security certifications..what are the next steps? Just to plan ahead...I have heard of vendor specific certs for example the Cisco and Microsoft ones...Is there anyway to remain neutral? or does the industry / trends (maybe the Cisco products are used widely etc) dictate that we in a sense take sides..

feedback would be most helpful..
-Sam

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Permalink Reply by Ken Wagner on September 29, 2008 at 3:51pm

Until you get experience, I would advise against going for the vendor specific security certs (MCSE: Security, for example), simply because, those professional certification actually should reflect a person's responsibilities as well as his/her job role working with the technology and not to be used as a short-cut.

Alot of IT managers (including myself) are disregarding these higher level certs if the candiates experience does not reflect the cert.

However there are other options:

There are companies like Sec-1 that offer security certifications, I'm not sure of their entry requirements and it may vary country to country.

There is also the GIAC Information Security Fundamentals cert, see here offered by the SAN Institute. They also have higher level certs.

Hope this helps

-ken

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