Sheep Guarding Llama

Often overlooked as a means of entering many industries is the practice of interning. While paid cooperative learning experiences and paid internships might relatively rare the more traditional unpaid internship is still widely available. Unpaid internships are hardly glamorous but they do offer a significant means of rapidly entering the IT profession.

One time in an interview early on in my career a technology recruiter told me that six months experience was considered to be equal to or better than a four year degree specific to the field (i.e. an IT or CIS degree and not a CS degree – unless you are doing research, of course.) Now this might be an exaggeration but in what direction? Perhaps real world experience is worth even more than that. Maybe some less but my experience agrees with that assessment. Experience beats certifications, education – anything.

Some people manage to get entry-level jobs without having to intern, get a cert, take a class or whatever. These are the lucky few. I happen to be one of these. I got a very entry level job just two weeks out of high school. I happened to have been in the amazing position of having proved that I likely possessed the skills for the job and was offered a very low-paying position that I hadn’t even applied for or knew existed. I took it and the rest is history. The job paid so little that I might as well have been an intern but it gave me real world programming experience and introduced me to large scale UNIX systems that I had never worked on previously. I did my first networking and worked with lots of hardware that I had never even seen before this job. I did this entry-level position for a year and a half. It made more difference than anything I have ever done before or since to advance my career.

That first job put a stake in the ground and declared, in writing, that I had a “start date” in the industry as well as someone to use as a reference. Even today my “career length” is still determined by that first day working in IT. It is unlikely that anything else that you do in your career, at least for the first several years or decades, will have so much effect as your start date. Everything that you do before getting your first position should be focused on getting that first position. Once you get that entry level job, no matter how mundane (but beyond working at Circuit City,) you will be amassing “experience” that will add to your total from there on out.

One of the great advantages to interning, paid or unpaid, is that because of your incredibly low cost and obvious ambition you have a better chance of being allowed to work with technologies that you might be barred from otherwise due to your lack of experience. And your boss will probably love you because you are costing him or her next to nothing. It isn’t hard to get an incredible return on investment under those conditions.

Interning is not designed to be a means for gaining gainful employment with the company that you are interning with but, obviously, that is a possibility. Do a great job as an intern and the company is very unlikely to turn around and give their next job that you can handle to an unknown entity when they have someone that they know right there. But this is not always the case.

Interning is not meant to last forever. Six to nine months is usual enough. A year isn’t out of the question. Interning is my personal recommendation for anyone who is starting their career during their normal “college years” and has the advantage of living at home with the folks. If you are older it might not be something that you can reasonably do. If you are really motivated or lucky you can often get into a good internship during your high school years. This is the optimum solution. You can often walk out of high school and right into the field. Or even get work before then. It is rare but it happens.

If you intern for too long the benefits will start to go away. You can only work for free for so long before it becomes a problem. I suggest looking for a paying gig starting somewhere in the six to nine month range of your internship. It may take a while for the right position to open up. Interning is perfect because the company that you are at can’t complain about you heading off to interviews.

While interning you shouldn’t be kicking back and taking it easy figuring that you are earning it because you are not getting paid. What you should be doing during this time is working on certifications. Even if you just get one or two during this time it shows a lot more ambition than just interning alone and it provides more material for your resume which is critical at this early stage.

As an intern you should act as much as possible like a professional employee. This is your chance to learn how to be a professional without the pressure. Take advantage of it. Do the best work that you can do. Show up early and work late. Work hard, do your best, take time at home to study the technologies that they are using in the office and be persistent in asking to be allowed to work on more and more advanced projects once you have proven yourself on more menial tasks.

Chances are if you are able to seriously consider interning you are either one of those amazing people who doesn’t need to sleep or else you are young and living with family and have few or no bills that you have to take care of yourself. If you or your supporter(s) argue that interning is a waste of time, that no one should work for free and that college or university is a better use of your time and money then consider this:

Interning can begin during high school or, if not, as early as being immediately out of high school. This gives ambitious interns months or potentially years of a lead on their college-bound peers and their lead puts the proverbial stake in the ground showing the beginning of their careers. College does not do this.

A four year college student who waits until after graduation to pick up their first IT job could be five or six years behind their peer who left high school to take an unpaid internship. That former intern could potentially be well situated in a lower mid-career position before the college student starts looking for their chance to “break in.” That lead is very tough if not impossible to overcome.

Additionally the college student probably has debt. A lot of it. Racked up from years of not working and spending like crazy. Most colleges are very expensive and most require that you spend a lot of money on dorm rooms and activity feeds. Not only has the intern way ahead in debt load but has probably been making positive cash flow for almost the entire time that the college student was in negative cash flow.

Now the obvious retort is that the college student has some level of education that is so valuable that he or she will instantly be able to do more tasks and advance their career faster than the former intern. Perhaps. I will talk about that issue in another article. But assuming that the educational advantage is real lets look at the equation again.

The college first person has a four year university degree and finds and decent, entry-level job right out of college. Life is good. Degree under their belt and the first job underway. The former intern has four or five years of experience under their belt and no degree at all. We will assume that both of these potential professionals have an equal number of certifications and other factors are generally comparable. At this stage the former intern has the massive career and financial advantage. It will take two to five years for the college graduate with the same skill and drive to likely approach the interns career potential at this point in their career. That is a long time.

As we move into the future, let’s say another five year, we see the college student now has five years of industry experience and is now mid-career. During the past five years the former intern, being a mid-career professional, was given the benefit of getting to go to university as part of their pay package. Educational benefits have a tax advantage for both parties and many companies will pay some or all of college education and often other types of education. So after ten years the college first professional has five years experience, a college degree that is very out of date and a large debt load to show for it. The intern has ten years of experience, a more recent degree and no collegiate debt.

The bottom line is that college is a huge risk. It is a gamble. In many industries college level work is required to gain entrance but in IT it is more likely to be a barrier. The risks associated with foregoing real experience to spend time in college are very high. College isn’t the “safe” route that it is with other industries. Often IT professionals are more likely to look at “dedicated” time spent in college as party time as so many professionals did their degrees while working. IT is not other fields and people going into IT should think carefully about how taking the “safe” route will affect them in the long run. A four year degree is very likely to be enough to get you an entry level position but for an ambitious, career-minded IT professional it can be a stumbling block that can have ramifications that will stay with you for the rest of your life.

Additionally, an the intern had a safety, a fall back, all along. If, at any time, they were to be in a position where they were unable to find a position whether due to a contract ending or being laid off or whatever they could simply enter college at that point. Take classes until another position came along and then switch back to working using college as something to fill the gaps. Or they could do college at a slower pace doing evening or distance classes which are generally geared more towards motivated professionals and not full time non-professional college students.

One of the big mistakes that people often make when considering a career in IT or soliciting advice about moving into the career is to look at IT as if it was any other professional domain. But IT is very unique. It is larger than other fields and has more of an employment gap. It is a constantly changing field where a college student going to school for four years is likely to have the knowledge learned in their freshman year be nearly useless by the time that they graduate. This doesn’t happen to engineers. This doesn’t happen to teachers. This doesn’t happen to chemists, to pharmacists or lawyers. All of those fields change but IT changes at a pace that other industries cannot even imagine and it is likely to stay that way. IT is broader than other disciplines. IT is different. Accept it. Embrace it. It is what makes IT so great but don’t be fooled because what worked for your cousin to get that job as in insurance is not going to get you into IT.

Nothing makes you better and doing something than actually doing it.  Hence the expression “practice makes perfect.”  Hands on, real world experience is the best teacher.  Getting that experience isn’t always so easy but in IT we have more opportunity to get experience earlier than in almost any other field.

Almost everyone uses computers today including members of your family and your friends.  Chances are that many of them will need help with their computers from time to time and this represents an opportunity for you to demonstrate your abilities with computers and customer service.

Dealing with family computer problems will not exactly prepare you for the issues that you are going to face in the business realm but it will give you a pretty good idea of what it is like dealing with “users” and some of the problems that they usually face.  Business users will have different problems including complex networking issues involving interfacing with active directory and storage servers.  Home users are more likely to encounter complex hardware issues involving non-standard peripherals that they want to attach to their computer and are far more likely to be dealing with virus and malware.

Helping home users keep their computers humming along, doing operating system reinstallations, setting up computers, teaching family members how to use their applications, etc. will help you be prepared for real world problems.  Even though helping friends and family may not be the optimum learning situation it is an opportunity that you will almost always have at your disposal and it should not be overlooked.  Working with home users will also give you a broader scope of hardware and software configurations that you will have run across.  But keep in mind that the software and hardware that you encounter in homes is seldom the same as what you will find in business.

Home users are increasingly using network devices such as routers and firewalls, switches, wireless, print servers, media servers and even network attached storage.  Networking home computers, setting up anti-virus packages, doing tuning and more can contribute to a well-rounded desktop support education.  Be sure to focus on security as well.  Home users need security as well.

Information Technology as a field offers a number of different paths that can be used to gain entrance into the field for beginners. In the late 1990s and early 2000s the most prevalent and popular path was through the use of industry certifications. Since the early 2000s the popularity of certifications has been decreasing as the tests are generally becoming easier and systems for “gaming” the test and even outright cheating have become common.

This is not to imply that certifications do not have their place. They still show initiative and other systems of showing competence can also be gamed or faked so certifications have their place. Over time industry certifications are likely to find a reasonable middle ground of usefulness without the unnecessary hype of 1999.

Certifications have the benefit of being able to cover very specific ground and can have value that few other resources can offer. Certifications range from simpler, single test based certifications that are designed to show knowledge of a single technology or large, in depth, multi-exam monsters designed to show knowledge in a specific family of technologies at a level unheard of in even the most demanding collegiate circles. Generally certifications are most valuable in general technology areas for people early in their careers to use as “foot in the door” tools or later on for mid-career professions to demonstrate in-depth knowledge of a specific skill that may be difficult to represent in any other way.

In this article we are only looking at using certifications as a means of breaking into the IT industry. Getting that first job can be difficult. Often, once the call is rolling, finding more IT work is easy. Each subsequent position is easier to find than the last. But the first one or two can be very difficult indeed and every tool at your disposal should be used. Certificates are one of the best tools. In fact, I would be very reticent to hire anyone without experience who has not taken the time and effort to get at least one or two certifications under their belt.

CompTIA A+: The most common “beginning” certification known widely in the industry is the A+ offered by CompTIA. The A+ is a longstanding cert and is designed to test the knowledge of a desktop technician supposedly at the level that should be obtained after the first six months of experience. In reality few companies would want to hire someone without the level of knowledge tested for in this exam. The biggest difficulty with the CompTIA A+ (and continuing on with later CompTIA certifications) is that the test is generally horribly out of date, based on a set of technology that only applies to Windows desktop support and often the questions of outright incorrect. People studying for the A+ must study from actual A+ materials as they will be stuck memorizing many CompTIA specific facts that must be forgotten as soon as the test is completed as they are either wrong, useless or irrelevant.

As much as the A+ is poor it has become the de facto standard certification for entering the industry. The theoretical purpose of the test, to examine basic desktop class hardware and software skills, is good and anyone working in the industry or even near the industry should have a good grasp of these everyday skills – even programmers and managers. But since the test is based on so much archaic knowledge and non-commercial grade systems it does not actually test the knowledge base that it would portend to. Often the material on the test is so old that no one with the first three or four years of their careers, even in the largest IT shops, would ever have had even the remotest access to some of the ancient systems that the test is based on. In Information Technology there is no room for people and certainly not tests that cannot keep up. But most of this knowledge can be memorized easily and once you are through the A+ test you can move on to bigger, better and more useful things.

Popular certifications following the A+ (it is almost always advisable to focus on getting the A+ over and out of the way as early as possible) include the CompTIA Network+, the CompTIA Server+ and the Microsoft desktop exam of the day. We will look at each of these certifications in turn.

CompTIA Network+: The Network+ is designed to be based on the expected knowledge of a technician with two years of industry experience. The exam is based solely on computer communications and networking. It is a broad and general test and, in my opinion, it is the most valuable test that CompTIA offers. The knowledge that is tested on the Network+ is knowledge that is useful to people in any IT field and I would love to see everyone taking this exam.

Unlike the A+ which is full of outdated and worthless knowledge my experience with the Network+ is that the subject material is much better though out and mostly relevant to the real world. In the process of studying for the Network+ it would be advisable to spend a good amount of time becoming very familiar with the subject matter as it will be useful again and again throughout your IT career. Often the Network+ is a “growth” certification and not a “foot in the door” cert but it can work wonders for someone trying to get off the ground who hasn’t found that first real position yet.

CompTIA Server+: The Server+ is not an exam for everyone. Programmers, Analysts and others may find the subject matter almost completely outside of their discipline and not useful to them. But for anyone looking to a career in the hardware areas or systems administration the Server+ can be quite useful.

The Server+ is designed to be roughly of the same “level” as the Network+ and picks up where the A+ hardware section leaves off. Instead of focusing on desktops and laptops the Server+, as its name suggests, spends it time looking at server class hardware tackling storage issues, redundancy and rack mounting among other issues. The Server+ also touches, just slightly, on server operating systems as a server technician will need, from time to time, to be able to access the systems themselves and not just the hardware that they run on.

Microsoft Desktop Support Exams: Microsoft offers a new professional certification exam with every major operating system release. At the time of the this writing Microsoft offers certifications for Windows 2000 Professional and Windows XP Professional – Vista certification is expected to be available very soon. In fact, they offer a second, more advance Windows XP exam for people who are interested in going further down that path. Since almost all desktop support personnel are involved in supporting primary if not exclusively Microsoft enterprise desktops this certification can be a real differentiator between candidates.

The Microsoft exams are very closely focused on the knowledge and skills that are needed for serious desktop support professionals to do their jobs efficiently. The Microsoft exams are extremely well written and are clearly peer reviewed extensively. Microsoft takes their certification process very seriously and their exams reflect this. It is a pleasure taking a Microsoft exam. In all of my exam taking experience while others, notably CompTIA’s, exams are loaded with poorly worded questions that have no actually correct answer possible the Microsoft exams have been flawless with every question, regardless of how difficult it was, clearly having a correct answer even when I did not know what it was. You never get the impression that you know more about the product than the test writers do when taking a Microsoft exam.

The Microsoft desktop support exams cover a lot of knowledge areas and are fairly challenging. But they are very valuable and can do wonders for the ol’ resume. Once you have the basics out of the way having a good, solid Microsoft exam or two under your belt can be just what you need to get into that first position or to advance on to your second.

Current Microsoft exams targeting the desktop include:

Windows Vista and 2007 Microsoft Office System Desktops, Deploying and Maintaining
Windows Vista Configuration
Installing, Configuring, and Administering Microsoft Windows XP Professional
Installing, Configuring, and Administering Microsoft Windows 2000 Professional

Of course, newer exams are more useful than older exams. By the time that you spend a few months preparing for an exam the focus will increasingly shift towards newer technologies so even if Windows XP offers the greatest installation base and demand in business when your studies begin Vista is much more likely to be valuable to you near the start of your career and will be increasingly so until another operating system replaces it.

Microsoft exams of this nature also have the very nice advantage of being part of the learning path towards larger and more difficult composite certifications from Microsoft such as the MCSA, MCSE and MCDST.

The Microsoft Certified Desktop Support Professional, or MCDST, was a two test composite certification (two Windows XP stand alone certifications) that demonstrated a real commitment to Windows XP support for the desktop. By taking each of the underlying exams you would gain a standalone Microsoft Certified Professional certification to put on your resume and with the completion of the second you would also achieve your MCDST status. Three resume “lines” for the price of two. A great value indeed.

With Microsoft Vista the certification structure has changed and the MCDST has been replaced with the MCITP or Microsoft Certified IT Professional: Enterprise Support Technician. The new structure is very confusing, unfortunately. It makes it much more difficult for aspiring IT professionals to be able to definitively know what certification paths will be most valuable to them. But it does allow for great levels of differentiation of a company takes the time to learn the meanings of the myriad certifications. The new MCITP still requires two exams but they are different exams than previously required and Microsoft’s current web site should be consulted.