[nylug-talk] career advice

[VaibhaV Sharma]

There is another aspect to this.

In the current market situation, the easiest way to get work is to go
through a consulting firm which would put you up with tons of interviews
for contract based work.

The process, in most cases, involves a mid client which is the actual
consulting firm responsible for fetching manpower for a company and
probably your consulting firm which would have some kinda alliance with
these kinda firms.

One needs to pass through two tests. One is of the mid client, which is
in 99% of the cases a dumb marketing person with a set of questions of
the types "have you worked with buzzz, do you know buzzz, have you
worked with byzzz". Mid clients are dumb! Period. They would look at
your profile and hunt for keywords that their clients are looking for.
This includes certification, blah.

The actual test is when the mid client puts you onto the real company,
from which someone takes an interview. 50% of the time, this person
would be a developer taking an interview for the post of an admin guy
they need in their team. Not that hard to pass, but still a task.

Considering this kinda situation, you can very well understand where
certification and those kind of things fit in.

If you are appearing for a real admin kinda post, then its a different
case alltogether. All that counts then is what you actually know about
the topics.

My $0.02.

VaibhaV
http://vsharma.net


On Fri, 2003-05-09 at 11:08, Peter C. Norton wrote:
> Pete,
> 
> Its hard to give advice on certs in the linux world.  While in more
> closed vendor environments they definetely give you credability (cisco
> and juniper certs guarantee you know something about their respective
> equipment) I've rarely met unix admins with certs of any kind.  There
> was a move towards people getting redhat certs when they were the only
> linux certs, and some jobs I've seen do ask for them.  Its an open
> question, however, what cert will be useful in a few years.
> 
> That may sound strange, but there is an effort to make a
> vendor-neutral cert (which I think is doomed to obscurity due to lack
> of marketing).  
> 
> For the sake of managing and doing things in the future, my personal
> opinion is that you should run all of the applications you can, run
> all of the servers you can, and test for production those that you may
> want to use, and deploy those that test out OK.  You'll find that most
> of the other people you meet using the same don't have certificates,
> but that they're smart and lots of 'em have jobs or otherwise make
> ends meet.
> 
> In the long run you may find that a certification becomes dominant and
> is sought after and is good for the long haul, but I don't think
> that's the case now.
> 
> -Peter