jarandhel

I'm jobhunting again. I'm still employed, but I really want something better, preferably in the field I've been studying. Trouble is, I'm having a lot of difficulty finding entry level jobs in this field.

I've been studying Computer Networking and Security all year long. Presently I've got a Linux+ cert (or at least I passed the test and the actual cert is on its way.) I could probably easily get an A+ and Network+ cert as well, and I've resolved to get those at the earliest economically and chronologically possible opportunity. That's enough certification to get me a position teaching at my school, believe it or not. Problem is, it's not enough experience... and therein lies the rub. Every place I've seen advertising jobs requires at least a years worth of experience in the field, usually more. My school requires 4 years experience. (I know because I was going to apply with them, at my teacher's urging, till I found an ad on craigslist for the position and realized I was not sufficiently qualified.)

Am I just not looking in the right places? Are there no real entry level jobs in this field (or in this area?), or are they not advertised, or are they hidden in some obscure technical publication or website? I'm serious here, I'd really like to know.

And of course, it goes without saying that if anyone knows of an entry level position in this area I'd qualify for, or could if I got the A+ or Network+ certs soon, please poke me about it.

Just thought I'd give a brief update on my life, such as it is. School is going really well, we just finished the first class (A+ hardware) yesterday. I got either a 98 or 100 on my final (there is one question that is under dispute as we're reasonably sure a piece of information needed to answer it was not given to us in the book or other course materials) I'm holding off on taking the A+ hardware certification test, though, since a) it's useless without the A+ Software test as well, since the two certs are bundled, and b) I think some of what we're covering in the second class is technically on the hardware part of the test, judging by some of the questions asked in the practice test software we've been given access to. Primarily stuff on networking. Nothing too complicated, but I'd rather have all the material under my belt already rather than having to fake my way through part of it.

As for the rest of my life, the key word is jobhunting. Like I said in my last post, if anyone knows of a job in the greater DC area that I might qualify for, let me know. As long as it lets me get to classes on weekday evenings (starting 6pm in Clarendon) I'm game for anything and any hours. Well, anything as long as it's a paying job, anyway.

Thinking about also offering my services as a partially trained PC technician too, since there's already a good amount of stuff I can do to help people troubleshoot their systems, but frankly with my friends I think it would be a bit pointless, most of my friends work in tech jobs already or are otherwise much more computer savvy than myself. Kinda wish I knew more people like my roommates or my parents who are a bit hopeless with computers. Though my roommates have asked me to look into fixing their computer, maybe if I get that working I can get them to tell their friends and start a little sideline business of that sort.

Speaking of my parents, they've actually agreed to give me a bunch of old computer hardware they're not using anymore when they come through around Christmas time to visit my grandfather and me. Some of it is broken, but I might be able to fix it at this point, and some of it is just old but mostly works (may need a new OS installed, but that's not a problem, I'd probably put Linux on at least one of the machines anyway.) I've also been collecting computers and parts from Craigs List. (Yes, people actually give computers away. Working computers.) Got four already, though I've only tested two of them and found them to be in excellent working order. Only drawback is that of these four, I have only gotten ONE with a hard drive, and wouldn't you know it that hard drive seems to be dead. Thinking about trying to locate the utilities to low-level format it and see if that fixes the problem and lets the computer recognize it (it shows up under BIOS but when I go to run fdisk it says no fixed disks present), but I'm not even sure it's worth the effort at this point, it's a 2 gig hard drive. I'm pretty sure both of the computers my parents are bringing have hard drives bigger than that. I'll probably end up cobbling together the best machines I can from the four computers parts and then keeping the rest for spare parts (or selling them as spare parts, whatever.) Two of the computers I've gotten that way are actually really old, ATs. Came with AT keyboards and everything. The other two are ATX. Currently have one of them hooked up with one of the AT keyboards and an adapter. The computers work with USB keyboards, but someone (possibly the persons who determines the factory defaults) had the BIOS set to turn USB keyboard support off on both of them. And, of course, you can't turn it back on again using a USB keyboard. So got a nice little AT-to-PS2 adapter. Turned it back on, but saw no real reason to switch to the USB keyboard at that point, since the AT one works just fine over PS2 and the USB is in use for other things anyway.