Credit Crunch – What Credit Crunch?
Introduction
If I hear another news story about the credit crunch I swear I am going to blow.
If you are hoping to get a career break into IT or move into a networking role then I can tell you for sure that there are plenty of contracts and jobs out there. You are going to have to work to get them but the first step is to believe that you can get that dream job if you are persistent and willing to work hard to get it.
Global IT Infrastructure
Today is no different than six months ago before we never realised there was going to be massive changes in the market. Cisco are still the biggest internetworking company in the world and millions of companies all over the world are still using their equipment to managed the network infrastructure.
I was at a marketing conference last week in Boson and in my room was a small DSL cable modem which had a Cisco log on. They had over 500 rooms in that hotel and this hotel has over 50 locations in the USA. Somebody has to install and support them.
Just do a quick search today on www.jobserve.com for ‘CCNA’ and you should find a large number of jobs and contracts there. Here are a few of the results I saw when I looked a few minutes ago:
‘Cisco/CCNA Support Engineer
Wolverhampton, West Midlands
England
Salary/Rate: Market Rates Depending On Experience
Major UK IT Services company urgently requires a qualified (or equivalent) CCNA to join its busy and expanding Networks team. You will be troubleshooting Cisco and other network faults along with day to day outages both remotely and on-site. If you have Network/CCNA level experience, with a team player attitude and are available shortly, please submit your CV now to be considered for this great opportunity with long term potential.’
You don’t even need the CCNA for that. Just to be CCNA level. How about this one:
‘Network Operations Centre (NOC) Support – Cisco CCNA
Location: Sydney, New South Wales, Australia
Country:Australia
Do you have current or recent NOC experience and hold a CCNA? Would you like to contract with Australia’s leading Telco? This client, one of Candle’s Major Accounts have recently opened a new managed network operations centre to manage some 1100 corporate networks for their external customers. The new state-of- the-art NOC offers a range of network services such as monitoring and the management of around 37,000 devices. A brand new contract requirement has just been released which offers the..’
Network Operations work is ideal for the newly qualified CCNA. You may need to get a littile NOC experience first doing something low level like monitoring faults (very basic monkey level work) but after 2-3 months of doing that you could easily apply for the above role.
What to do Next?
I would honestly advise you stop watching the news, reading the papers and listening to the radio. Today it is the global credit crisis, before that it was the housing crisis before that it was the global pandemic where we were all going to die from bird flu, before that the terrorist threat, before that the war…and so on.
The news sells news which is of no use to any person who wants to go and find a Cisco job or contract. You won’t be asked to quote the Dow Jones for the share index for any companies during your technical interview. Trust me.
I would advise you to continue with your studies, apply for at least 2 roles per day and tailor your resume for each role you are applying for rather than sending out a standard ‘one size fits all’ application. Hunt for roles with local companies who have several routers and switches to support or draw up a list of ISPs in your area and call them up to see if they are recruiting.
I would continue to study and improve your Cisco skills beyond the CCNA with some security and voice configurations. You don’t need to take more exams unless you want to but do keep on learning.
The End?
There will always be a need for Cisco engineers so long as Cisco exist which by the looks of things will be a very long time. Avoid news because it is all bad news designed to induce panic and despair. Stick with your study strategy and apply for 2 jobs per day.
Best of luck.
About Paul Browning
Paul Browning owns Networks Inc. Ltd who have been teaching Cisco courses in the UK since 2002. Customers include BT, Shell, British Army, Jaguar, Ford and many many more.Paul also owns the worlds only complete end-to-end CCNA training sitewww.howtonetwork.net which is one of the fastest growing training sites in the world. Paul believes that anybody can pass their Cisco exams if they are prepared to put the work in and follow a proven successful study method. He is the only person in the UK to have authored his own Cisco CCNA study guide – CCNA Simplified.
