A Straightforward Guide to Getting your First Job in IT
It really is that simple
Like some of you, it wasn’t too long ago when I was looking for something to really sink my teeth into.
I’m not going to try to sell you on IT or any career here, this is not a guide for those who wish to get familiar with what IT is, or if it would interest them, please look somewhere else and if it interests you and you want to get a job as quickly as possible, come back to this guide.
Please note this guide is SPECIFICALLY for IT primarily networking staff. If you’re interested in software engineering / developer roles, look elsewhere.
Why you should listen to me:
I work as a systems administrator professionally for a small company.
It took me about 1.5 years from knowing nothing but a little software troubleshooting to full time job.
I would not have gotten called for an interview or hired without certifications (network+ helped me the most), but college also helped me personally.
College is not required but may help because it will teach you the basics in a structured way. It can also add credibility to your resume for the right company. It’s possible some companies ignore some candidates who went to college for IT and instead look for self-taught people as they are more passionate but they are certainly the minority and most companies will look for college degrees.
For the committed individual knowing nothing to full time, it could take less time to get your first job but for some it might take more time. If you are willing to start in the data center or help desk it can be shorter.
There are only a few things you really need to do to get your first job in IT, here’s what we will cover:
These things really come down to 1. Becoming really good at networking / troubleshooting, and 2. Proving it.
Your knowledge of vendor neutral protocols and troubleshooting is really what helps at the end of the day too when it comes to getting things done.
Note: I recommend reading this entire guide instead of what you’re already interested in so you get a balanced look at getting into IT.
TODO
If you can, consider going to college.
Build a home lab or do a side project.
Apply for as many positions as you can.
Get certified and learn hard skills
Certifications worth getting to get a job
For whatever cert you do, learn the hard skills. Please. It will take longer and requires hands-on experience but it is worth it. You can pass by focusing only on theory and doing no or little hands on labs but you will mess yourself up when you get a job as you don’t have the skills they are hiring you for and you risk being fired or laid off.
Learning the hard skills means you can actually configure the settings you are learning about and know a little bit to know when. You should also know how to troubleshoot.
CCNA
This is probably the best certification for junior IT professionals to get their foot in the door with A+ and Network+ being second. Which will be first is ultimately dependent on what kinds of jobs are available in your area. CCNA by itself with hard skills a home lab, and optionally, college is probably enough for most people in most markets.
Note: I recommend against doing CCNP and other advanced certs right away for juniors, as employers will probably view you as less of a junior and might give you less mentoring and more responsibility too fast.
A+, Network+, Possibly Security+
A+ can qualify you for the bottom rung of IT jobs, like hardware technician, data center, maybe help desk support at the right company. I think getting A+ then Network+ and applying for networking jobs is a decent idea for basic networking jobs if you don’t want to do the CCNA for some reason or your area doesn’t have many junior Cisco roles for whatever reason.
Security+ by itself won’t really get you a job in my city anymore, but this might not be true for all markets. It could be a great add on to A+ and Network+ for the right person in the right market. Security+ is important for defense, government, and cyber jobs.
For information about cloud certs or a cloud path, please see this video. I did not do this, and I don’t know anyone who has but I think it could be a straightforward path to a cloud job. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L4hiEVS9TLk&pp=ygUWaG93IHRvIGdldCBhIGNsb3VkIGpvYg%3D%3D
I think this is a higher risk path than a networking path, as there are a lot fewer junior cloud roles than junior IT roles. Simply getting a cloud certification is not enough.
Juniper Certs
Juniper has way less jobs than Cisco but if you have the opportunity to take a juniper cert for free it might be worth it if there’s jobs for it in your area. It could easily be a waste of time. Juniper exams are more focused on Juniper way of doing things than vendor neutral protocols compared with Cisco, making CCNA a better exam. However, if there’s junior juniper jobs in your area you’re interested in it could be worth it. Juniper discount codes are available if you do the voucher assessment in the course on their open learning website and pass.
Juniper is mostly on acceptable because it is free or close to it if you pass the voucher test. I would almost always look to CompTIA or Cisco first.
Juniper’s fate and their certification program is also semi uncertain as they were bought out by HPE.
I do not recommend Palo Alto Networks certs as there are almost 0 jobs for it in my area.
More certifications are usually a good thing but they can be a waste of money depending on your market and which one you do.
Always search the name of the certification you plan on doing in indeed or a job board and see if there’s roles you’d like to work in for your skill level, available in the place you want to live.
For software engineers, there are specific certs that are decent for them, but if you want to stay completely away from certs and just do projects that is perfectly fine and might be recommended for most people.
Also, maintain your certifications. Most companies value expired certifications far less than current ones or many won’t even take expired certifications at all.
If you want a hack for renewing certs, at least for CompTIA you can renew with other certs. CompTIA Security+ and CompTIA Linux+/Cloud+ can be renewed with Palo Alto Networks Certified Network Security Administrator (PCNSA) however you must pay for renewal and pass the Palo Alto cert after you earn the CompTIA certs. There may be other restrictions too. Other vendors may have similar arrangements so do your research!
It’s also possible to renew certs with conference attendance or other CEU activities for some vendors.
College
College for IT was pretty good in my experience. It taught me the basics in a structured way as I said previously, and I had the opportunity to ask questions of the professors.
However, it is often expensive and may not be worth it.
4-year traditional college is way more expensive than going to a community college than continuing if you need to. If you have a decent community college that has an IT program or some other technology program near you, consider it.
The person who knows nothing or knows some random stuff will benefit the most, however, this is somewhat more risky if you decide you don’t actually like IT or stop without graduating.
WGU may be good value for the right person as they will get you certified and it’s affordable. Spoiler: I attended this college.
Whatever you do, go above and beyond. Don’t just go to college, participate in the technology clubs they have or even run for officer. Talk to other students and learn from and teach them and do projects with them if you can. Spend time outside of regular class doing personal projects, reading textbooks, learning to code, doing certifications, etc. Especially, do the grind for internships.
Build a home lab or do a side project
A home lab is a uniquely good side project for IT. When I was interviewing, they asked about my home network I think twice and I was able to give them a satisfactory answer.
Actually configuring the things you are learning about yourself will help you on the job. You don’t need to spend a lot of money unless you want to. Don’t spend $1000 on a NAS, you can literally do it with a single SSD ($40 for 1 TB and an old computer or perhaps a raspberry pi.) You could even use a 250 gb free micro center SSD with a external case ($12)
Many of the things you build for your home lab will be useful to you for your own purposes but the real purpose is to get hands on experience.
Learning to configure virtual machines is fun and free for the most part too.
There are a lot more blogs on how to build a home lab, so I will leave it there.
Make sure to write your home lab or side project on your resume as a project.
Apply for as many jobs as you can:
If you only get called back for 1-5% of jobs you apply for, it makes sense to apply for as many jobs as you can to get the most callbacks and offers.
IT job titles that often hire new to IT
You can add jr, junior, associate and entry level, to all of these jobs if they don’t already have it
Help Desk Support, Help Desk Associate, Computer Helpdesk
Data center tech(do research first and try not to do night shift if you can, this is not super technical work but pay is pretty good)(there are also a lot of other random job titles for similar roles in the data center which you could consider)
SOC analyst / other SOC jobs
Network technician, network administrator(possibly, might be more mid level), I’m sure there are roles that function the same as this role under a different name.
Hardware technician
IT Technician, IT specialist
Jr/Junior systems administrator / IT Administrator
Network administrator
Jr/Junior Security analyst
Entry level technician
Support engineer (may be more mid level)
There are others so keep your eyes open!
Try also searching Information Technology Junior