MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
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Having been out of the IT industry for a few years, I am now looking at getting back into it.
What are the latest/minimum qualifications recommended for IT Support & IT Technicians these days?
Anyone on STW work in IT recruitment?
The support guys here all have ITIL qualifications - think this would be viewed as an industry standard for this type of role.
It depends what level, for service desk/junior engineer roles I don't think we require IT qualifications, ITIL Foundation would be a 'nice to have' though especially for service desk. 2nd/3rd line support roles don't require quals/certs as such but it would be expected a candidate would have MCPs (Microsoft) or VCP (VMware) or other relevant certs if it the role was supporting a specific tech (e.g. Citrix)
Mostly experience is king though and being able to explain in an interview why you had time out of the industry (a company wouldn't want to invest in training you up if they thought you were likely to switch industries again).
There are a lot of qualifications around these days and it really depends what area you want to get in to.
Cisco is as ever a big thing, MS qualifications seem to have taken a back burner now but if you're heading in to desktop support or server support they would be useful.
VMWare qualifications seem to be appearing more and more in roles now too so could be worth a look?
Generally an employer will look at your experience and not worry too much about qualifications so make sure your CV is focussed towards that.
As above really, i'd only bother with qualifications if they were offered for free through work, I was contracting (maybe) or struggling to get a job (unlikely the way the job market is at the moment)
Suppose if i'd been out of the market for a while i'd do something like "Microsoft Windows Server 2012 70-411 with R2 Updates"
Just to show a bit of willing, the CBT nuggets course is 21 hours and you could be exam ready in a week if you've got the time.