mcsa 2008 – please talk to me…

There’s a deal on at the moment giving a free re-sit and am more than likely to jump on the bandwagon to get my career change in motion…

Considering i only have administrator experience of home computers do you think this is the best one to do off the bat so to speak?

Come on help me become a geek 😯

What kind of job are you looking to get?

The Second Shot stuff has been going for a while and shows no sign of stopping any time soon. Get the MS Press books, study, do some Microsoft Virtual Labs (or ideally, build some of your own – Windows Server trial can be freely downloaded) and take the exam when you think you know enough.

Only thing I would say is that a lot of 2008-era certs are being retired (although MCSA is staying for a while longer) in favour of the new 2012-based MCSEs.

Yeh, that’s right the second shot offer…

So it may be worth doing the lower grade mcse2012 then would you say?

I’m looking to go into 1st line support, progress to 2nd and 3rd then decide where/if I want to specialise.

It’s all part of a bigger plan to emigrate and it is as good as any other with in mind.

What was your route into the industry?

I got into an IT assistant job (smallish company, there was an IT manager, me and a similar guy at another site), made myself as useful as possible, read up on anything that might save us time and/or money and put what I could into practice. Did a few minor exams, although more to justify salary advances. From there into a higher level systems/network admin job, from there to a consultancy.

I think smaller companies give you much more scope to try lots of things and easier to be seen to be useful – bigger ones you can get stuck just doing phone support all day.

Generally the newer certs are better, but the 2008 & 2008R2 stuff is far more widely deployed than 2012 and probably will be for quite a few years yet. MCSE is a few more exams, but there’s a conversion from the MCSA 2008 so not much in it. Do MCSA (3 exams) then you can do one upgrade plus two more exams for MCSE (6 in all), rather than 5 for MCSE from scratch.

Really though, having an exam or two behind you can help get you an entry level job but experience counts as you move further up – way too many people seem to think they can do a bootcamp course, get all sorts of fancy certs and walk straight in to a senior job.

Best of luck.

Cheers for that simon – i don’t expect to go straight into a senior role, especially with zero experience. I imagine you learn a hell of a lot of the first 6-12 months in a support role and to miss that would be just wrong.

FWIW, a mate of mine who has been in I.T for a fair few years, and currently looking to get work as a Project Manager gives the same advice as you have done.

Thanks again.

With your lack of experience it would only really help lift you above other candidates for a junior/help desk role rather than make you especially desirable. So worth doing if you’re not spending a lot of your own money on it. You’ll need to study and preferably build a home lab though to get the understanding you need, even for the MCSA exams. As Simon said though you’re better off going for 2012 stuff as even most experienced IT server admins haven’t had much exposure to this yet. Again it wouldn’t allow you to step straight into a senior or contracting role but it would certainly look good on the CV.

My own route into IT was a bit strange, I went to a company to do work placement in a finance department (as part of an NVQ) but the all-female dept didn’t really want a bloke so I was asked if I wanted to try the IT dept instead as they had a junior opening so I changed to that (I was interested in IT though and was doing a part-time evening course programming but gave that up soon after). First year on placement I was just on an extra £10 a week over income support but they gave me a job after a year and two years after that I moved on to my current job in what was a mid-size company but then got taken over and is now part of a global IT outsource/consultancy company where I still am 15 years later. So a lot of luck really although I got bored of IT about 10 years ago so it’s not exactly nirvana :p

Cheers fuzzy

Why not just lie about it? no-one has ever asked to see my (now lapsed but who cares) MS or Compaq accreditation. In fact, I used to award myself whatever the current server version was because, if you can do one, how hard can the rest be? Just read the books and bluff.

Any employer who’s a Microsoft partner will want to link your certification status to their company, as they need however many people with a certain cert to get a competency at a certain level.

It’s very easy to securely share your cert status with anyone these days, I’ve been asked for it a few times.

Why not just lie on the rest of your CV too?

Yeah do not lie about it – we didn’t used to check (going back a few years) until someone turned out less clued up than his CV suggested, he didn’t last the 6 month probation (was escorted off site after repeatedly failing to provide evidence of certs once called on it). Our standard procedure now is to check certs when they are a requirement for the job – it’s very easy for MS certs as once you’re an MCP you register and provide a link as proof. Also, as said above, MS partners need a certain amount of certified people to qualify so they’ll want to link your ID to their partner agreement and likely won’t find it amusing if you can’t actually provide it.