Hey guys! Ace Networker! I want to welcome you to the third video in this series in this workshop
where we're learning how to get a networking career without having to have a bachelor's degree.
Now yesterday I went over some of the details about how I got my associate's degree but first
I got a job in a call center. I don't necessarily recommend that you have to take this path but this
is the way, one of the ways, you can do it is to follow the path that I took. I got a call center
job, got approved for that because the experience for that was really you're either working on your
A+ or you have an A+ certification, and that was all they really needed to do was desktop support,
laptop support. But I remember sitting in my cubicle kind of as a mid-level supervisor
at that point after I graduated and got my Associate's degree and I remember thinking,"Is
this as far as I'm ever going to go? I mean how do I get past this point?" So I began to creatively
come up with ideas on "What can I do to get more networking experience? What can I do to possibly
work toward getting a bachelor's degree? Or what can I do to to possibly get more certifications?"
And that's the key here! More certifications that are going to qualify me and leverage me
up even more! Leverage is the key when it comes to the I/T industry
and it's not all based on what certifications you have, it's not all based on your expertise,
and it's not all based on your college or higher level education. No one of those is
going to get you there in the I/T industry and especially in computer networking.
You have got to comprehend that it takes all 3 of those and you've got to start out on the low end
of the ladder, typically, as I'd say. 98 to 99 percent of the time you're going to start out
at a low level position somewhere that has very little to maybe nothing to do with networking
and that's alright. That's okay. That's where you begin. Now I had worked my way up to an
Associate's degree in networking after going to night classes for 2 years and having no life.
Getting my certifications for A+, Network+, ICND1 (which was half of the CCNA certification the
first half of it - you can take that in 2 tests ICND1 was the first half). And I'd passed that
so I began to sit there and think,"Okay what do I need to do next?"
So the epiphany that came to me was I had a co-worker of mine that actually got a job
in networking support for a bigger corporation, a bigger company and it was just phone support.
Again it was just a call center job but it was strictly in the realm of networking. Now you can
do this with some of the bigger companies like Dell, Microsoft you can there are
Micron, there's HP, there's a bunch of different companies that have locations all over the planet
and a lot of the civilized countries that you can do this with. But it doesn't have to be one of the
big boys like that. It can even be another company that deals with a certain type of support because
when it comes to networking you still have to have somebody that knows phone support. There's
still got to be some group that people can contact for remote support and the reason this
exists is because you have admins that are already hired and on site with these different companies
and even those admins don't know everything - and here's another little gold nugget for you,
you're never going to know everything about it. In fact as fast as I/T
advances you are not going to be able to keep up. So nobody knows everything about it.
That being the case, you're going to have network administrators network, engineers, network
technicians that are still going to need help. They're still going to need support, so they have
companies that support networks, they have network experienced people that are getting experience
in their support group that are supporting these local admins and engineers and techs.
Here's the next key: So from then I decided I'm going to get my CCNA certification and then I'm
going to study for CCIE and I may even study for MCSE or Microsoft certification like MCSA or MCSE
and then work up from there. At the same time I networked with this friend of mine that I had
known from the same call center that we worked at who got this job and I said, "Hey, are they
recommending or are they paying you any bonuses for recommending somebody with some experience to
come work with you?" In other words "If you submit my resume, do you get some bonuses for that?"
He said,"Yes we do. We get five hundred dollars" I said,"Here's my resume. Let me send it to you
right now." I had it professionally done by a company that does resumes for I/T people and I had
him submit that resume and I got the job in that same networking support group. Now that helped
me leverage up to become a Network Engineer and it was very fast (it was within 2 years of graduating
with my associate's degree and getting my CCNA certification). Within 2 years of that I was
able to leverage my way up and socially network my way up to getting qualified for that position.
So take what you will from this, but the the real epiphany that I had here is that
again you have those 3 things, and they all are kind of equal in the field of
networking. You have education, you have certifications that you need to be working on,
and then you have your own experience. And your own experience can be
added to/modified by finding some old switches some old routers some old networking components
taking them home and actually working on them or working on them in the lab if you have a hands-on
way of doing that. Anything to get yourself firmly based in the field of networking and completely
comprehensively understanding everything about it. Now if you get into buying some of my
courses like my major course we're going to start you out at the basic level to make sure
you understand all the basics of networking whether you know about them yet or not.
Maybe you're just getting started in networking. Most people that watch this series
are just getting started. That's where I'm going to take you from. We're going to start there
and we're going to go from the basics and we're going to work up a little more detail and more
detail until you have a thorough understanding of everything you need and then you can take that
template of understanding and put your expertise and your education, your higher education and
your certifications right into that template and it will make you a well-rounded network admin,
network engineer, network designer or even a network technician. If you decide that's all
you want to do so that's the epiphany I had. Now I want you to stay tuned for the next video because
I've got something really good for you! I'm going to show you how to get a baseline understanding
of networking and we're going to start from there and I will see you on that next video!