Adding Value To Your IT Career
In the world of It there are a few ways to add value to your skills. The top three ways are experience, education, and certifications. A good mix of these three will help a person further their career in the IT field. No one of these items would be good enough in our current economic environment. Not that I don’t like my job, it’s just that this year is the last year COMPTIA is going to allow three of it’s certifications to be valid for a lifetime without continuing education credits.
For me what I am missing from my resume is some certifications. Why should I invest time into studying, preparing and taking these exams? I feel that right now is the perfect time for me because of my experience in the IT field and timing. I do realize that I should have spent time in years past working on achieving the COMPTIA Certifications. One of the reasons why I didn’t was because I was selling myself short on how useful they were. Another reason was that I didn’t have the experience to be able to feel confident about taking the exam.
I have already taken The essentials part of the Exam on September 7th, 2010 and scored an 828 out of 900. I was very surprised at how much I knew about the IT field. I would like to say I was studying, but I was more of a review of concepts, technology, and vocabulary (aka buzzwords). I would have take the Practical part of the exam already, but I am waiting a few more weeks to be eligible at my job to be reimbursed for the cost.
A+ Certification
The A+ Certification has been around since 1993 and is an industry standard. If you are looking to break into the IT field this is the entry level certification you should go for. It will test your knowledge on hardware and software concepts. You can face questions about printers, basic networking concepts, and other related topics. This certification is most relevant to people who want to enter the Desktop Support or Help Desk Support sub field in IT.
The reason this Certification is important is because it communicates to people with-in the IT industry that you have a basic grasp of concepts of technology and what is expected of a technician. It doesn’t automatically make you a better IT Technician than someone who doesn’t have one. A piece of paper that says you passed two tests doesn’t take the place for knowledge or experience. If you have a good combination of the three that is the best way to be the best candidate for any job in IT.
Experience
When I had a chance in 2007 to take some classes and take the exam I was against it because I didn’t see the value of the Certification. In the years since I’ve been on a variety of interviews and it became apparent the value of this certification. While I was taking the exam I was very confident about my answers to the majority of the questions.
Experience was the major key that allowed me to succeed at the A+ exam. There were many questions that I answered quickly because I experienced the problems at work or ran into the problems myself. There was one question I knew only because I had to deal that specific printer issue at my day job. I am looking forward to taking part 2 in a couple of weeks. I know I will pass, but that won’t stop me from doing some reviewing before hand.
