[c-nsp] Cisco Certifications
Brian Feeny
signal at shreve.net
Sat Jan 22 11:05:42 EST 2005
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.
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