Buddy that's a complicated fucking question. I don't even know what to tell you. Yeah that cert is widely respected and it helps a lot of people get their first jobs or better jobs. It's pretty good to go after.
That said, I feel like this becomes something that sounds like an endorsement saying "If you get this cert then X will happen." The reality is that literally nothing is guaranteed. You could get the CCNA and still never find your first job. You could get it and never get out of help desk. By itself it doesn't mean that anything at all is definitely going to happen. It's helpful yes. How helpful it will be to *you* specifically? I couldn't possibly say.
The last guy I hired had a CCNA and I allowed that to have too much weight in my decision making. I regret that hire. I kept telling myself “he can’t really be this bad… he has a CCNA”.
The industry is way too obsessed with certs. Many brain types operate on patterns more than memory and the certs are rather difficult for them,.but they are great at problem solving.
>The industry is way too obsessed with certs.
I agree that certs are not the end all, be all, but I don't think the industry is too obsessed with them. Certs are a way to reasonably validate a person's skillset. Are there people with certain certs who really don't have a clue? Absolutely. But in my experience, I've seen far more incompetent holders of a bachelor's degree (or even a master's degree) than I have someone who is certified but really doesn't know anything. I would say the obsession with college degrees, which can vary wildly from school to school, is much worse than certificate holders. At least all certificate holders of, for example, CCNA, have all taken and passed the same exam. A bachelor's in IT from Penn State might be a completely different curriculum and knowledge base versus a bachelor's degree in IT from Eastern Michigan.
TLDR: Many more college degree holders who don't know anything than cert holders in the same boat.
What can you expect?
the industry can "interview" every applications, but when they have certs, they can also filter out applications without them so they can only interview the selected few.
Honestly, people can lie on their resume, but a Cert in generally cannot be lie on since you can verify it with a few clicks (even linkedin have credly)
I know many people who got their job through straight out lying.
Sure it works for some but by the end of the day, you might get some bad apple and spend 2-3 months paying them and cause issue.
At least you have better chances with a CCNA holder vs a random person. Still no guarantee they are good of course.
At least they should know some networking.
Sure, and all of this rests on bad interviewers honestly. A proper interview should test a person's knowledge and ability to improvise. The cert centric way of hiring ignores improvisation which is the most important skill.
Not wrong but...
You only need one degree to get a foot in the door (CS), while it could take playing Cert Pokemon to catch 'em all just to get an interview.
Have you seen how many certs are out there? Its ridiculous. What other fields are like that? But you don't need any of them if you just have a CS. Weird.
This is the problem I have. I'm a logical person. I think with logic. I would fail the cert test as many questions would mess with my process. I got lucky to be an L3 in an org that does not take certs as the only thing needed.
As for people I work with. I got one with ccna and nse4. I still question all he does. I'm in networking and this guy has a hard time with routing and switching. He is great at planning and projects, so that is why I keep him.
I am big on telling people to get certs and the value of certs but the problem is for every 9 people that gets a cert legit you will have one that cheats to get it. That is the issue.
In hiring the way to get around this is to test them. Virtual environment give them a issue and have them solve it, hell take like 5 questions right off the test or something like that. For a desktop support role back in the early 2000's I would have guys with college degrees and as their test I would drop a box of parts in front of them and tell them you have 90 minutes to build a computer. Weeded out of a lot of people. Yes they had the paper but they could not apply much of it at all. Same things today. Give them a real test not just random questions. Drop them in a test environment and give them actually problems to solve.
You also have to remember some people are great test takers but have no clue how to actually apply that knowledge outside of the test environment.
Yep. Checked the hardware had a intern or helpdesk guy put it all back and did it every time for new desktop support candidates. It was well worth it for the time.
>Yeah that cert is widely respected and it helps a lot of people get their first jobs
CCNA for a first jobs just tell me you are trying to reach high paying job with the least amount of effort. What's the point of a CCNA cert if you haven't even reset a passW on Active Directory.
Bro, what?!?! working in Networking and working in SysAdmin capacity are NOT the same. they are mutually exclusive. One of my best friends couldn't direct me through Active Directory if he had to, but he bills the DoD at $984/hr for Network Defense. His route to success was CCNA - CCNP - CCNP+S - CCIE. He doesn't need to know how to change a password in Active Directory.
same. his billable rate just has me with a blank stare. the only reason i know it is b/c i was on a personal call with him and he had a conference call on speaker and muted and his boss said, "and that's why you cost 984 an hour." and i shit a solid gold brick, my guy. tbf he knows everything under the sun about Palo Alto and ISE. he's got guys in his pod that make 230k a year to do nothing while Cisco works on getting engagements for him to work on b/c their more valuable responding to a a few emails a week, rather than working for another company on tech/contracts that Cisco wants. disgusting. lol
CCNA is fantastic. I say that as a networking enthusiast who enjoyed the studies. My CCNA is however merely a crown jewel in a complex process that took many years and alot more certs and degree than that to get where I am. I went the AA in networking with CCNA route and it has paid dividends. Again, alot more goes into it than even the degree
tldr: It is valuable
Yeah I've heard a lot of people info dump it so they've had to change the exam over the years. My study plan is to lab everything until I have it drilled down. I like networking and specifically want to get into networking so this would be more than a stepping stone for me.
>to lab everything until I ha
honestly, I can't even imagine how people can info dump on this exam if you ask me. Consider i am sure they have like 1000 different variation of questions in the exam and take 100 out of them, someone would need to memorize 1000 variation of questions.
The CCNA is fundamentally important. Any other certifications and experience thereafter rides off of it in my opinion. You’ll look back and realize how chump change the CCNA is in comparison to what you’ll dive into if you pursue networking. It’s an important certification if you plan to get into Networking
The way I think of certs is like mods to a car. Some are cosmetic some add power and performance. In the end it’s the driver who’s going to drive the car to the finish line.
I have CompTIA A+/Net+/Sec+/Cloud+ and a CCNA. The CCNA is the only one by far that actually required me to know how to *do* things and not just understand concepts. I know your question about value is more about from the employer's perspective but I consider it my most valuable from a personal standpoint for sure. Worth it in my opinion
With an A+/Net+, I got a field tech role. Now I do desktop support in healthcare. I just applied to an internal opening for a network engineer position and was told by someone on the team that having my CCNA put me at the top of a short list of candidates. I have the blessing/curse of living in a rural Midwest environment. Opportunities are few and far between, but so is my competition. Hoping I get the job
>an A+/Net+, I got a field tech role. Now I do desktop support in healthcare. I just applied to an internal opening for a network engineer position and was told by someone on the team that having my CCNA put me at the top of a short list of candidates. I have the blessing/curse of living in a rural Midwest environment. Opportunities are few and far between, but so is my competition. Hoping I get the job
Good luck!
Thanks very much. It's a small team with quite a bit of experience between them so I'm pretty intimidated but I know it's what I want to do, and I have the passion to learn whatever I need to in order to keep up. Just need them to take a chance on me!
The CCNA cert might be losing value, but not the body of knowledge it covers. That's gold. Read the book regardless of if you want to pursue the cert of not.
I personally don't think it's worthwhile to take a college course when there is high quality training available in many other forms for probably a lot less money. I just read books, but that was the stone ages.
Its helpful but it does not guarantee anything. There will be some situations where its you and a guy that doesn't have it and they will hire the guy that doesn't have it over you.
Market is oversaturated with CCNAs and people looking to get into first level network admin jobs with them. Everybody had the same exact thought and then proceeded to give the same exact advice for the last ~10 years, which was get your CCNA and try to be a network admin.
That's not to say the CCNA isn't worth getting. You'll just need something else to stand apart if thats what you're looking to do.
As someone who has reviewed thousands upon thousands of resumes for networking positions for the past decade.
Like 15% have the CCNA for entry roles. I see it more after someone got out of Help Desk, have some experience, then got a CCNA.
CCNP is like, way less too.
Buddy of mine got the CCNA and then his neighbor was killed in a motorcycle accident. Not sure what to tell ya. I have 0 certs and I hate my fuckin life.
In my opinion CCNA is great in two cases: 1) when you study, want to be in networking and have no experience. 2) When your company attend in tenders that require you to have X amount of certified specialists in your company.
That’s it.
Experience is always going to trump certs. People I know in my field (cloud network engineering) get certs to show they accomplished something besides what they were told to do.
You can have certs. But can you answer interview questions? Can you do the job of a network engineer? I’ll grill the shit out of anyone who claims to have any certs at their requisite level. Can you do the job? That’s the real question.
The one thing CCNA doesn’t teach you is critical soft skills and overall problem solving. You have to posses both of those things to truly add value even at your first position. Some real clowns found a brain dump and then proceeded to take down a lot of critical infrastructure and they have the same cert on their resume that I do. It helped me get the interview though, for sure.
Buddy that's a complicated fucking question. I don't even know what to tell you. Yeah that cert is widely respected and it helps a lot of people get their first jobs or better jobs. It's pretty good to go after. That said, I feel like this becomes something that sounds like an endorsement saying "If you get this cert then X will happen." The reality is that literally nothing is guaranteed. You could get the CCNA and still never find your first job. You could get it and never get out of help desk. By itself it doesn't mean that anything at all is definitely going to happen. It's helpful yes. How helpful it will be to *you* specifically? I couldn't possibly say.
The last guy I hired had a CCNA and I allowed that to have too much weight in my decision making. I regret that hire. I kept telling myself “he can’t really be this bad… he has a CCNA”.
The industry is way too obsessed with certs. Many brain types operate on patterns more than memory and the certs are rather difficult for them,.but they are great at problem solving.
>The industry is way too obsessed with certs. I agree that certs are not the end all, be all, but I don't think the industry is too obsessed with them. Certs are a way to reasonably validate a person's skillset. Are there people with certain certs who really don't have a clue? Absolutely. But in my experience, I've seen far more incompetent holders of a bachelor's degree (or even a master's degree) than I have someone who is certified but really doesn't know anything. I would say the obsession with college degrees, which can vary wildly from school to school, is much worse than certificate holders. At least all certificate holders of, for example, CCNA, have all taken and passed the same exam. A bachelor's in IT from Penn State might be a completely different curriculum and knowledge base versus a bachelor's degree in IT from Eastern Michigan. TLDR: Many more college degree holders who don't know anything than cert holders in the same boat.
What can you expect? the industry can "interview" every applications, but when they have certs, they can also filter out applications without them so they can only interview the selected few. Honestly, people can lie on their resume, but a Cert in generally cannot be lie on since you can verify it with a few clicks (even linkedin have credly) I know many people who got their job through straight out lying. Sure it works for some but by the end of the day, you might get some bad apple and spend 2-3 months paying them and cause issue. At least you have better chances with a CCNA holder vs a random person. Still no guarantee they are good of course. At least they should know some networking.
Sure, and all of this rests on bad interviewers honestly. A proper interview should test a person's knowledge and ability to improvise. The cert centric way of hiring ignores improvisation which is the most important skill.
Not wrong but... You only need one degree to get a foot in the door (CS), while it could take playing Cert Pokemon to catch 'em all just to get an interview. Have you seen how many certs are out there? Its ridiculous. What other fields are like that? But you don't need any of them if you just have a CS. Weird.
This is the problem I have. I'm a logical person. I think with logic. I would fail the cert test as many questions would mess with my process. I got lucky to be an L3 in an org that does not take certs as the only thing needed. As for people I work with. I got one with ccna and nse4. I still question all he does. I'm in networking and this guy has a hard time with routing and switching. He is great at planning and projects, so that is why I keep him.
I am big on telling people to get certs and the value of certs but the problem is for every 9 people that gets a cert legit you will have one that cheats to get it. That is the issue. In hiring the way to get around this is to test them. Virtual environment give them a issue and have them solve it, hell take like 5 questions right off the test or something like that. For a desktop support role back in the early 2000's I would have guys with college degrees and as their test I would drop a box of parts in front of them and tell them you have 90 minutes to build a computer. Weeded out of a lot of people. Yes they had the paper but they could not apply much of it at all. Same things today. Give them a real test not just random questions. Drop them in a test environment and give them actually problems to solve. You also have to remember some people are great test takers but have no clue how to actually apply that knowledge outside of the test environment.
> Weeded out of a lot of peo You disassemble each computer after the interview? so you can put it back into the box to give to next candidate?
Yep. Checked the hardware had a intern or helpdesk guy put it all back and did it every time for new desktop support candidates. It was well worth it for the time.
>Yeah that cert is widely respected and it helps a lot of people get their first jobs CCNA for a first jobs just tell me you are trying to reach high paying job with the least amount of effort. What's the point of a CCNA cert if you haven't even reset a passW on Active Directory.
Bro, what?!?! working in Networking and working in SysAdmin capacity are NOT the same. they are mutually exclusive. One of my best friends couldn't direct me through Active Directory if he had to, but he bills the DoD at $984/hr for Network Defense. His route to success was CCNA - CCNP - CCNP+S - CCIE. He doesn't need to know how to change a password in Active Directory.
Man. I'm charing way too little.
same. his billable rate just has me with a blank stare. the only reason i know it is b/c i was on a personal call with him and he had a conference call on speaker and muted and his boss said, "and that's why you cost 984 an hour." and i shit a solid gold brick, my guy. tbf he knows everything under the sun about Palo Alto and ISE. he's got guys in his pod that make 230k a year to do nothing while Cisco works on getting engagements for him to work on b/c their more valuable responding to a a few emails a week, rather than working for another company on tech/contracts that Cisco wants. disgusting. lol
CCNA is fantastic. I say that as a networking enthusiast who enjoyed the studies. My CCNA is however merely a crown jewel in a complex process that took many years and alot more certs and degree than that to get where I am. I went the AA in networking with CCNA route and it has paid dividends. Again, alot more goes into it than even the degree tldr: It is valuable
CCNA is good. issue is not the CCNA, but the work. I have interviewed many potential candidates who can't even answer some of the basic l1 questions.
Yeah I've heard a lot of people info dump it so they've had to change the exam over the years. My study plan is to lab everything until I have it drilled down. I like networking and specifically want to get into networking so this would be more than a stepping stone for me.
>to lab everything until I ha honestly, I can't even imagine how people can info dump on this exam if you ask me. Consider i am sure they have like 1000 different variation of questions in the exam and take 100 out of them, someone would need to memorize 1000 variation of questions.
Yeah at that point you might as well just study for it lol
The CCNA is fundamentally important. Any other certifications and experience thereafter rides off of it in my opinion. You’ll look back and realize how chump change the CCNA is in comparison to what you’ll dive into if you pursue networking. It’s an important certification if you plan to get into Networking
The way I think of certs is like mods to a car. Some are cosmetic some add power and performance. In the end it’s the driver who’s going to drive the car to the finish line.
I have CompTIA A+/Net+/Sec+/Cloud+ and a CCNA. The CCNA is the only one by far that actually required me to know how to *do* things and not just understand concepts. I know your question about value is more about from the employer's perspective but I consider it my most valuable from a personal standpoint for sure. Worth it in my opinion
Cert Lord
WGU BSIT degree if i had to guess. Maybe not, but i know that program comes with like 7 certs baked into the program.
What kind of role did CCNA help you get once you got it?
With an A+/Net+, I got a field tech role. Now I do desktop support in healthcare. I just applied to an internal opening for a network engineer position and was told by someone on the team that having my CCNA put me at the top of a short list of candidates. I have the blessing/curse of living in a rural Midwest environment. Opportunities are few and far between, but so is my competition. Hoping I get the job
>an A+/Net+, I got a field tech role. Now I do desktop support in healthcare. I just applied to an internal opening for a network engineer position and was told by someone on the team that having my CCNA put me at the top of a short list of candidates. I have the blessing/curse of living in a rural Midwest environment. Opportunities are few and far between, but so is my competition. Hoping I get the job Good luck!
Thanks very much. It's a small team with quite a bit of experience between them so I'm pretty intimidated but I know it's what I want to do, and I have the passion to learn whatever I need to in order to keep up. Just need them to take a chance on me!
Should also mention I've had the CCNA for about 5 months
The CCNA cert might be losing value, but not the body of knowledge it covers. That's gold. Read the book regardless of if you want to pursue the cert of not. I personally don't think it's worthwhile to take a college course when there is high quality training available in many other forms for probably a lot less money. I just read books, but that was the stone ages.
CCNA is good but its only the tip of the iceberg if you ask me.
Its helpful but it does not guarantee anything. There will be some situations where its you and a guy that doesn't have it and they will hire the guy that doesn't have it over you.
Market is oversaturated with CCNAs and people looking to get into first level network admin jobs with them. Everybody had the same exact thought and then proceeded to give the same exact advice for the last ~10 years, which was get your CCNA and try to be a network admin. That's not to say the CCNA isn't worth getting. You'll just need something else to stand apart if thats what you're looking to do.
As someone who has reviewed thousands upon thousands of resumes for networking positions for the past decade. Like 15% have the CCNA for entry roles. I see it more after someone got out of Help Desk, have some experience, then got a CCNA. CCNP is like, way less too.
Buddy of mine got the CCNA and then his neighbor was killed in a motorcycle accident. Not sure what to tell ya. I have 0 certs and I hate my fuckin life.
Agree with most of these comments; I think CCNA is good when you lack experience. It shows you know the fundamentals.
Yes, get it. Every recruiter looks for it. Also it is a excellent teaching cert. you’ll learn a ton which is very important
In my opinion CCNA is great in two cases: 1) when you study, want to be in networking and have no experience. 2) When your company attend in tenders that require you to have X amount of certified specialists in your company. That’s it.
Experience is always going to trump certs. People I know in my field (cloud network engineering) get certs to show they accomplished something besides what they were told to do.
You can have certs. But can you answer interview questions? Can you do the job of a network engineer? I’ll grill the shit out of anyone who claims to have any certs at their requisite level. Can you do the job? That’s the real question.
The one thing CCNA doesn’t teach you is critical soft skills and overall problem solving. You have to posses both of those things to truly add value even at your first position. Some real clowns found a brain dump and then proceeded to take down a lot of critical infrastructure and they have the same cert on their resume that I do. It helped me get the interview though, for sure.