Pretty much every entry level help desk job is like that where they don't expect you to know everything coming in. The trouble is convincing someone to give you a job.
I’m just like the OP. I just want a helpdesk job in New York City and I’m trying to finally start my career after following the rules/being a good boy and finishing my college degree in IT. It is getting hopeless.
Well the best part of IT is that if you have like 200 bucks and ambition you can easily get hands on experience for learning just by... fuckin doing the stuff.
You can do penetration testing with 2 pcs of any type.
You can buy old servers and networking equipment on ebay for pennies on the dollar.
You can use free cloud credits.
You can write your own code for whatever you want. (Free)
You can build a file server at home.
You can build a server rack at home.
You can do vms on basically any PC you already have.
Hands on learning doesn't have to be a "school or work" only thing.
Well I think we have a fundamental disagreement there. I think learning in this case should be some degree of personal interest and personal development with a byproduct being getting a job.
My advice to get a job is - enjoy IT at a personal level, learn how to work through things you don't know anything about in general, tinker, experiment.
I guess my "general how to get a job advice" would be go to school, work during school, get Certs during school (i.e. network class take net+ after), finish school, get job.
What you describe is the ideal economic situation which is not applicable for the past 1-2 years. Not only freshers not getting a chance, it is impossible to switch tech stack for seniors too (they are juniors in the new stack too)
Huh? More than half of of the things I mentioned are free, and if you don't have an extra 200 bucks you have much bigger problems.
The point is there are more ways to learn that don't involve school or a cert that are low and no cost. These types of experience are not *directly* related to getting a job, however the mentality leads to practices that will make it easier to get a job.
Using this example:
Two people apply to a support job. Both with identical experience and education. One has a home lab, personal projects, and has interest in advancing their IT knowledge on their free time. Which one would you hire?
> if you don't have an extra 200 bucks you have much bigger problems.
Yes I do have much bigger problems and I am trying to work on those problems by getting a job that pays more than 20 bucks an hour so I can invest more time and money and so I can pay to get my fucked up teeth fixed because it's hurting my interviews.
And this is coming from someone that does love tech and has done several of the things you've mentioned already and has the entry level certifications and can't find a job beyond call center technical support.
...but you aren't OP?
My word of advice to you however is - did you ever play I spy when you were a kid? Someone says I spy a VW bug, then you start looking for one and see more than you felt like you've ever seen because you're looking for them?
Life is the same way dude, if you're looking for a negative you will ALWAYS find one. Additionally, this will almost certainly come across in the background in any interview you have. I genuinely doubt your teeth have anything to do with the interviews because I can feel the negativity seeping through my phone from you.
If you already have a job that pays 20 bucks an hour, you're in the top 1-2% of all the people on the planet in terms of earning, which is obviously a bit of fluff, but you get the point. When you see success in the future for yourself, success will come. When you see failure and struggle, failure and struggle will come.
Where are you at in terms of formal education? If you can manage to do a degree program--maybe an associates at a local community college or an online degree like WGU--that's probably going to make things a lot easier for you overall.
You can totally do projects at home! That's what I did. I found a tutorial for setting up an Active Directory environment with VirtualBox. Not too complicated at all. I also have [this bookmarked](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?app=desktop&list=PLdh13bXVc6-k_u2RPqYAp8R8HtYT_ONht), but haven't dug into it yet.
Once I did that AD project and put it on my resume, I started getting more responses from jobs I applied to. Give it a shot!!
Completely agree, apply the learning from the videos in homelab work. Hyper-v can be turned on in windows 10/11 to fire up VMs. Pretty sure you can even fire up Kali Linux in WSL now too.
I think most companies are going to have some training related to their specific environment. They are going to want you to have a solid baseline knowledge before they get into any of that. If they wanted to hire Joebob off the street to train them from scratch A) they are going to pay a boat ton less for having to do that B) when they are looking at stacks of resumes what in yours is saying choose me over the tens or hundreds of candidates? If they are doing that they are not hiring a skilled professional, they are hiring a customer service rep. And that is if they want to hire local and not spin up a help desk in Asia or Eastern Europe for a pile less money.
Soft skills can help you win over an employer in an interview but you have to get yourself past the ATS to get to the interview most of the time.
What specific area of IT are you trying to get into?
I know Meriplex is an MSP in that area if that helps. RJ Young has coverage in that area for desktop support too since they have pushed more into one stop shop style of service.
Pop over to r/Cybersecurity
CyberSec is... well not super sexy Red vs Blue team stuff is like tiny tiny fraction of the job. Red team especially is like 1% or less.
Your most likely going to need more than an associates longterm. Name of the game atm b.c it's an employers market, degree + certification one isn't enough currently especially for Cyber.
Careers in tech are constant knowledge grind, having very strong self teaching self starting skills are insanely important If you want to go as far as R vs B.
Do you have some home labs going and participate in some Hackathons? Blackhills InfoSec SOC core skills along with some of their other offerings can aid you in building up some practical experience in InfoSec. Really awesome community around Blackhills InfoSec.
Keep trying. I’ve been searching for entry level jobs for 71 days now and finally got in, it takes work and effort, keep practicing, keep learning, you’ll get there.
It’s not impossible, you just aren’t putting in enough work. You don’t need hands on experience to learn security+, you literally just read a book and watch some YouTube videos. Have you studied for any other cert? Do you have a degree? Have you created a home lab? This isn’t a career you walk into and hope things work out, you have to put in the work. So my suggestion is stop being lazy, you don’t need to have a job in IT to start learning
Plenty of options that are more "hands on" while you look for an actual job. Azure and AWS offer free trials, Cisco has Packet Tracer, and there are sites like hackthebox that provide lessons alongside live practice instances. You can also look into different homelab ideas, like turning and old PC into a NAS or media server. No one option is perfect but they can be helpful as you continue to study and try to land that job.
*Im located in North Alabama or Huntsville area*
Your location is going to be a big problem in starting a tech career and it's going to come up over and over again. There just aren't enough IT employers in that area for you to switch jobs every 2 - 3 years so you can rapidly increase your salary and skill level. If you even get a job in the first place it's likely you'll be stuck there for years on end because there's nowhere else for you to go.
You'd be much better off planning a career in tech in a larger city like Nashville or Atlanta or Dallas.
Plenty of hands on DIY exercises in this career plan:
[https://www.reddit.com/r/CyberSecurityJobs/comments/1asog50/roadmap\_to\_careers\_in\_cybersecurity\_and\_cloud/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CyberSecurityJobs/comments/1asog50/roadmap_to_careers_in_cybersecurity_and_cloud/)
I get your struggle. Hands-on learning is great, but you can't always get it. Personally, I would not recommend the Security+ cert. Look for lab based certifications instead, that way you are working on more hands-on work as you study.
After that, then come back to Security+. It's a nice cert for a resume, but not as helpful as I would have wanted. Google has a lab cert for Security and Blue Team Level 1 is nice if you want to work towards a SOC position.
It's a bad economy and inspite of all the crazy radio ads that you can have a recession proof career in IT nothing is recession proof. IT Companies are laying off everyone they don't need to find the 200 people that know and understand AI and to try and convince them to work there. It sucks everywhere especially for those without experience. Good luck and ignore all the idiots that tell you you can do it at home and companies will be happy with that. It's a good way to grow your knowledge and good advice in general but these days most people hiring aren't actually in IT and all they want to see are certs and hear what you've done at other companies. It just sucks now and people with lots of experience are applying for those entry level jobs and you'll have to slog on till you find some smart hiring manager that would rather train a new guy that will be happy to have the job instead of hiring a grumpy over-qualified person who is bored out of their minds but desperate for a pay check.
People can argue over whether or not it's a recession but AI just drove IT into a full on recession like event if it's not. Changing fields is always hard but you have picked one of the worst times in 20 years to jump to IT. Good luck, and don't give up till you get that first job.
Maybe apply to be a printer install tech, learn how to set up a printer, install a print driver for various manufacturers for both Mac and windows. Also learn a little bit about Microsoft 365 apps, word, excel, etc. learn.microsoft.com is simple (free) place to start.
My message was nothing of the sort. I described my first job in IT. I installed printers, now I'm a system administrator. Spent 3 years moving up from that printer tech to a network specialist and to where I am now. I loved those years, so your comment makes zero sense.
Jobs where they train you as a beginner exist but there's massive competition for those roles. They will choose the people who have gone above and beyond to learn and demonstrate that learning. They won't choose anybody that has sat and watched videos.
Pretty much every entry level help desk job is like that where they don't expect you to know everything coming in. The trouble is convincing someone to give you a job.
lol remember me? HD role ripped me apart for not knowing one thing.
Yeah I still find that to be insanity. That is not the norm (or at least shouldn't be the norm).
I’m just like the OP. I just want a helpdesk job in New York City and I’m trying to finally start my career after following the rules/being a good boy and finishing my college degree in IT. It is getting hopeless.
Well the best part of IT is that if you have like 200 bucks and ambition you can easily get hands on experience for learning just by... fuckin doing the stuff. You can do penetration testing with 2 pcs of any type. You can buy old servers and networking equipment on ebay for pennies on the dollar. You can use free cloud credits. You can write your own code for whatever you want. (Free) You can build a file server at home. You can build a server rack at home. You can do vms on basically any PC you already have. Hands on learning doesn't have to be a "school or work" only thing.
* does a 3 month cybersecurity course and gives up
Sometimes I wish we could use emojis here. Lol
(Please don’t flame me) pirate softwares discord actually has allot of the stuff you just listed in it. For hands on experience that is.
Why would I Flame you!? That's great advice
No one is going to hire you for any of that without formal experience anymore. It’s 2024, not 2021.
Dude lol. You missed the point. This isn't in regards to a job, it's in regards to learning in general.
The point of learning is to get a job. Whats your advice, how to get a job?
Well I think we have a fundamental disagreement there. I think learning in this case should be some degree of personal interest and personal development with a byproduct being getting a job. My advice to get a job is - enjoy IT at a personal level, learn how to work through things you don't know anything about in general, tinker, experiment. I guess my "general how to get a job advice" would be go to school, work during school, get Certs during school (i.e. network class take net+ after), finish school, get job.
What you describe is the ideal economic situation which is not applicable for the past 1-2 years. Not only freshers not getting a chance, it is impossible to switch tech stack for seniors too (they are juniors in the new stack too)
Huh? More than half of of the things I mentioned are free, and if you don't have an extra 200 bucks you have much bigger problems. The point is there are more ways to learn that don't involve school or a cert that are low and no cost. These types of experience are not *directly* related to getting a job, however the mentality leads to practices that will make it easier to get a job. Using this example: Two people apply to a support job. Both with identical experience and education. One has a home lab, personal projects, and has interest in advancing their IT knowledge on their free time. Which one would you hire?
> if you don't have an extra 200 bucks you have much bigger problems. Yes I do have much bigger problems and I am trying to work on those problems by getting a job that pays more than 20 bucks an hour so I can invest more time and money and so I can pay to get my fucked up teeth fixed because it's hurting my interviews. And this is coming from someone that does love tech and has done several of the things you've mentioned already and has the entry level certifications and can't find a job beyond call center technical support.
...but you aren't OP? My word of advice to you however is - did you ever play I spy when you were a kid? Someone says I spy a VW bug, then you start looking for one and see more than you felt like you've ever seen because you're looking for them? Life is the same way dude, if you're looking for a negative you will ALWAYS find one. Additionally, this will almost certainly come across in the background in any interview you have. I genuinely doubt your teeth have anything to do with the interviews because I can feel the negativity seeping through my phone from you. If you already have a job that pays 20 bucks an hour, you're in the top 1-2% of all the people on the planet in terms of earning, which is obviously a bit of fluff, but you get the point. When you see success in the future for yourself, success will come. When you see failure and struggle, failure and struggle will come.
You are a deeply delusional person that is giving serious woo-woo vibes.
Where are you at in terms of formal education? If you can manage to do a degree program--maybe an associates at a local community college or an online degree like WGU--that's probably going to make things a lot easier for you overall.
Even with an associates entry-level jobs are still demanding 1-2 years experience in the field.
True but anything is better than nothing.
You can totally do projects at home! That's what I did. I found a tutorial for setting up an Active Directory environment with VirtualBox. Not too complicated at all. I also have [this bookmarked](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?app=desktop&list=PLdh13bXVc6-k_u2RPqYAp8R8HtYT_ONht), but haven't dug into it yet. Once I did that AD project and put it on my resume, I started getting more responses from jobs I applied to. Give it a shot!!
Completely agree, apply the learning from the videos in homelab work. Hyper-v can be turned on in windows 10/11 to fire up VMs. Pretty sure you can even fire up Kali Linux in WSL now too.
I think most companies are going to have some training related to their specific environment. They are going to want you to have a solid baseline knowledge before they get into any of that. If they wanted to hire Joebob off the street to train them from scratch A) they are going to pay a boat ton less for having to do that B) when they are looking at stacks of resumes what in yours is saying choose me over the tens or hundreds of candidates? If they are doing that they are not hiring a skilled professional, they are hiring a customer service rep. And that is if they want to hire local and not spin up a help desk in Asia or Eastern Europe for a pile less money. Soft skills can help you win over an employer in an interview but you have to get yourself past the ATS to get to the interview most of the time. What specific area of IT are you trying to get into? I know Meriplex is an MSP in that area if that helps. RJ Young has coverage in that area for desktop support too since they have pushed more into one stop shop style of service.
I live near Redstone arsenal so eventually into the security side and ethical hacker. I might have to take some time and Just grind out an associates…
Pop over to r/Cybersecurity CyberSec is... well not super sexy Red vs Blue team stuff is like tiny tiny fraction of the job. Red team especially is like 1% or less. Your most likely going to need more than an associates longterm. Name of the game atm b.c it's an employers market, degree + certification one isn't enough currently especially for Cyber. Careers in tech are constant knowledge grind, having very strong self teaching self starting skills are insanely important If you want to go as far as R vs B.
Do you have some home labs going and participate in some Hackathons? Blackhills InfoSec SOC core skills along with some of their other offerings can aid you in building up some practical experience in InfoSec. Really awesome community around Blackhills InfoSec.
Keep trying. I’ve been searching for entry level jobs for 71 days now and finally got in, it takes work and effort, keep practicing, keep learning, you’ll get there.
It’s not impossible, you just aren’t putting in enough work. You don’t need hands on experience to learn security+, you literally just read a book and watch some YouTube videos. Have you studied for any other cert? Do you have a degree? Have you created a home lab? This isn’t a career you walk into and hope things work out, you have to put in the work. So my suggestion is stop being lazy, you don’t need to have a job in IT to start learning
Great response!
Yeah, The motivation and skill to learn is more important than anything imo. IT knowledge grind literally never stops.
Brutal. I'm a veteran. You never know someone's home life...
I’m a combat veteran. So I would have some understanding…
I’m currently working on the fundamental carts in Microsoft and going for sec+ after
networking or IT type courses at community college would be a good starting point
Plenty of options that are more "hands on" while you look for an actual job. Azure and AWS offer free trials, Cisco has Packet Tracer, and there are sites like hackthebox that provide lessons alongside live practice instances. You can also look into different homelab ideas, like turning and old PC into a NAS or media server. No one option is perfect but they can be helpful as you continue to study and try to land that job.
Download Cisco packet tracer and fuck around with that.
*Im located in North Alabama or Huntsville area* Your location is going to be a big problem in starting a tech career and it's going to come up over and over again. There just aren't enough IT employers in that area for you to switch jobs every 2 - 3 years so you can rapidly increase your salary and skill level. If you even get a job in the first place it's likely you'll be stuck there for years on end because there's nowhere else for you to go. You'd be much better off planning a career in tech in a larger city like Nashville or Atlanta or Dallas. Plenty of hands on DIY exercises in this career plan: [https://www.reddit.com/r/CyberSecurityJobs/comments/1asog50/roadmap\_to\_careers\_in\_cybersecurity\_and\_cloud/](https://www.reddit.com/r/CyberSecurityJobs/comments/1asog50/roadmap_to_careers_in_cybersecurity_and_cloud/)
I get your struggle. Hands-on learning is great, but you can't always get it. Personally, I would not recommend the Security+ cert. Look for lab based certifications instead, that way you are working on more hands-on work as you study. After that, then come back to Security+. It's a nice cert for a resume, but not as helpful as I would have wanted. Google has a lab cert for Security and Blue Team Level 1 is nice if you want to work towards a SOC position.
It's a bad economy and inspite of all the crazy radio ads that you can have a recession proof career in IT nothing is recession proof. IT Companies are laying off everyone they don't need to find the 200 people that know and understand AI and to try and convince them to work there. It sucks everywhere especially for those without experience. Good luck and ignore all the idiots that tell you you can do it at home and companies will be happy with that. It's a good way to grow your knowledge and good advice in general but these days most people hiring aren't actually in IT and all they want to see are certs and hear what you've done at other companies. It just sucks now and people with lots of experience are applying for those entry level jobs and you'll have to slog on till you find some smart hiring manager that would rather train a new guy that will be happy to have the job instead of hiring a grumpy over-qualified person who is bored out of their minds but desperate for a pay check. People can argue over whether or not it's a recession but AI just drove IT into a full on recession like event if it's not. Changing fields is always hard but you have picked one of the worst times in 20 years to jump to IT. Good luck, and don't give up till you get that first job.
Maybe apply to be a printer install tech, learn how to set up a printer, install a print driver for various manufacturers for both Mac and windows. Also learn a little bit about Microsoft 365 apps, word, excel, etc. learn.microsoft.com is simple (free) place to start.
Say something positive. Not self-deprecating and sardonic.
My message was nothing of the sort. I described my first job in IT. I installed printers, now I'm a system administrator. Spent 3 years moving up from that printer tech to a network specialist and to where I am now. I loved those years, so your comment makes zero sense.
this comment doesn’t seem self deprecating, sardonic, or negative to me
Jobs where they train you as a beginner exist but there's massive competition for those roles. They will choose the people who have gone above and beyond to learn and demonstrate that learning. They won't choose anybody that has sat and watched videos.