[c-nsp] Cisco Certifications

[Brian Feeny]

On Jan 22, 2005, at 6:23 AM, Kim Onnel wrote:

> Hi,
>
> I'm new to the ISP/networking business here, and there is this weird
> concept that i dont get around the scene here,
>
> Your resume will look ugly if it doesnt have any certs.
> But if it does, instantly the other party will think, well son, you
> seem to have certs and thats fine, but that is not counted compared to
> practical real experience boy,

There is some truth in all of that.  Experience is king, at least if 
the person doing the evaluation
has a clue.  If you have done impressive things in the past that show 
you have what it takes to
go to that next level, then that should be all you need.  However, when 
coming from another
company, or sometimes even within a single company, the documentation 
isn't there to check
this.  A good technical interview, asking fair questions can fish out a 
good bit too.

What a certification does, is push the job of figuring out a baseline 
level of knowledge to someone
else.  Its like a college degree in the sense it doesn't guarantee all 
that you know, however it should at least guarantee a certain minimum 
level of knowledge give or take.

>
> I'm sure y'all look at resumes alot, and do alot of hiring, i'd like
> to know how you guys weight Certs when they look at someones resumes,
> and how do they weight practical experience,...

When doing the initial screening process of a bunch of people chasing a 
job, things like college degrees and certifications help people narrow 
down the pack a bit.  Its a metric.  If you just look at say 10 
resumes, and they are Network Engineers, and they each have 5 years 
experience well here is the problem:

- Peoples opinion of what "Network Engineer" means differs greatly.

- Five years experience at one company may have been a totally 
different experience than someone, else's five years at another 
company.

- Some people seem to blow up there resumes a bit in IT, thinking they 
have to be an expert in everything, so they list every acronym known to 
mankind, you can do some fishing in the technical interview, but its 
hard to cover all the bases.

- With some jobs like VARs, the certs matter alot.  It makes there 
company look good to clients, and there are incentives to the company 
from the vendors, to have such people on staff.  With ISP's though this 
shouldn't matter.

- The people doing the hiring and making these decisions are the point 
haired bosses, and sometimes they really don't know the difference 
between a packet and frame, and so they rely more heavily on something 
tangible like a certification rather than what you say you have done 
but they can't prove.

>
> Specially these days, when its all about cheat sheets/testkings, and
> people going in there knowing the questions before-hand?
>

Good point.  Some companies, like Redhat, Juniper, and Cisco have some 
certifications that you couldn't cheat on if your life depended on it, 
because they are practical lab based.  I can only hope that those that 
would cheat, not just on a certification, but on the entire interview 
process, get discovered and quickly terminated.  I took a test in QoS 
recently, from Cisco, and I was pretty impressed.  I had to actually 
configure routers (virtual), use show commands to answer some 
questions, etc.  It was a mix, of multiple choice plus practical, and a 
step in the right direction.

In the end, if you feel you are getting a raw deal, you probably are.  
The ISP business is a tough one, especially if your not working at a 
very large provider.  IT in general, sometimes the only way to get 
those significant increases in roles or compensation is to leave and 
take a new job.

If you have no real operational experience, but you are certified, then 
you will not get alot of pay in the ISP arena because there is much to 
learn.  Your pay will be the experience you get.

Brian


> Regards
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Brian Feeny, CCIE #8036, CISSP
Network Engineer
ShreveNet Inc.