Hey Clint here and I want to welcome you to my world here online. I want to welcome you to the
Ace Networker series workshop on how to get a job or career in networking without having to
have a Bachelor's degree. Now first thing I want to talk about is this: There are ways to get into
the networking field there are ways to become a network admin a network engineer like I actually
am was able to manage to do a network technician. If you want to there are several networking
positions that you can get in the field of I/T networking. You can work your way up to these and
I'm going to go down in this workshop, we're going to go down, a kind of a plan of action for you.
You can try to follow the same path that I took or you can take a different path. I've seen probably
5 to 7 different paths you can take to actually get into a networking career that pays well,
but the main thing I wanted to talk about was a little bit of my back history, my back story. So
you'll get some of the pieces to this as we go. The first thing I wanted to tell you is that I
got started in the networking field about 18 years ago and I actually transitioned from being
a middle manager in the retail environment to moving into I/T. I actually ended up going back
to school, but i started out by getting my certifications (primarily I started out by
getting my A+ Certification and I studied for and passed the Network+ Certification). These are both
from CompTIA. They are recognized certifications in the industry. They are recognized standard
certifications that you can use to show that "Hey, I'm knowledgeable in these things." Now
it was a struggle for me and we're going to go over a little bit more of that tomorrow. I'm going
to talk about some of the obstacles. So I want you to be watching for the email that you're going
to sit down tomorrow and the video that comes out tomorrow that's going to have more information in
it but I wanted to just give you a little bit of a rundown of some of the difficulties that I had,
okay? I first started out and I was coming from an entirely different industry other than I/T
and I was wanting to get into the networking field. Now I/T existed then and I/T really is more
predominantly existing now but this is the gold nugget that I want to pass on in this first video
and I want you to pay attention to this because this is extremely important for you to understand
especially if you have any kind of inclination to go into the field of networking or getting a
career a good paying career in networking...the careers in networking pay substantial okay they
are higher-end paying careers and they're comparable to something like an attorney
or a doctor in some cases depending on your knowledge and your expertise
here's the gold nugget that I want to pass on to you the networking industry and
this is let me just stop for just a second before I give that away. The overall industry especially
as the economy booms if you live in the United States you're really seeing this
take effect but in most of the civilized countries where computer networking is used
when the economy is booming what you have especially in the united states right now
is you have a lot of companies with a lot of demands and a lot of growing networks or networks
that need to be designed and developed and built for them to use and they don't have enough
qualified people to choose from. So they will tell you that they require a Bachelor's degree.
The gold nugget that I want to pass on to you is that there is going to be a shortage of network
admins, network engineers, network designers, network technicians for some number of years
to come until that finally balances out and catches up. How is that going to catch up?
You're the solution to that because by getting into the I/T field and working your way up through
having networking experience and getting into designing networks or
engineering networks, troubleshooting networks or whatever it is you happen to do, being an admin,
being a technician on-site, whatever it is that you aspire to do in the field of networking,
keep that in mind. There are more and more positions opening up more and more companies
needing this expertise and not enough people to choose from the field of people to choose
from with the expertise it's minimal. So the biggest aspect to not necessarily needing a
Bachelor's degree for a high paying networking career is knowing that one aspect alone.
There are lots of positions opening up and fewer and fewer people to choose from in the field that
have the experience and the expertise so there is a way, there are multiple ways actually, but
there is a way for you to work your way up through experience, certifications and education at the
same time into a position that is high paying. And if you like what you're doing you can stay with
that company or you can move to other companies. Whatever you aspire to do. But your networking
career is more in your hands as an individual now than it ever has been and that's the good news. So
I started about 18 years ago and what I did was (and you're going to get a little bit of my path
here) I got my A+ Certification and I understood desktop support. I understood PCs and laptops
as much as I thoroughly could and then I got my Network+ exam out of the way (my certification)
and both of those from ComptTIA helped me to get a job in a call center. Now you're
saying,"That's not very high up the totem pole, Clint." It's not. However in point of fact I know
7 different people and each of them followed a slightly different path but they all 7 of them
ended up, beside myself, ended up in networking careers that paid highly and they did it without
Bachelor's degrees. Now 3 of them have gone on to get their Bachelor's degree. They've gone
back to school to get that, so I would highly recommend that if you ever have the opportunity
and you manage to land a job or work your way up to a position where you're on your way to
networking that yes you take the time to go back to school and try to get your Bachelor's degree
in this field. It's extremely important and it will back you up in a lot of different cases.
But the whole point of this workshop is to help you understand that you can work your way up to
that with expertise, a moderate level of education that you can show on a resume,
and the certifications that you want. To help that I want to help you pass by passing on the
knowledge of the basics of networking all the way up to the intricacies of networking
everything that i've learned and experience in my lifetime as well as input from several others.
So I want you to stay on this workshop. Tomorrow I'm going to go over some other things and I
want you to look forward to tomorrow's email and tomorrow's video because I've got a free little
something I'm going to give you. It's going to be a certification pathway that you can follow
depending on what field you want to go into to make that happen
so stay tuned and look forward to tomorrow's email and I will see you in tomorrow's video!