SoulSe Posted September 28, 2003 Report Share Posted September 28, 2003 I could swear we had a thread discussing this, but I can't find it. Could be that dreams vs. reality problem I am having :wink: Anyway: I am considering taking night-classes for a qualification in Linux. The two I am presented with currently are Linux+ and RHCSE (I think.... the Redhat one :? ). I want something internationally recognised and since the classes are expensive, I want it to be worthwhile. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Ronin Posted September 28, 2003 Report Share Posted September 28, 2003 Can't help either way with your decision other then go for it. Unfortinuatly far too many managers are all hot and bothered about certs and fancy letters behind your name. That and having one of those could make getting a paying IT gig that you want easier. I'm looking around home hoping to find someone that is giving one of those but so far I'm sol. :-) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
spinynorman Posted September 28, 2003 Report Share Posted September 28, 2003 Can't recommend anything personally, but http://lintraining.com lists lots of LPI certified training centres, including several in South Africa. :) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Guest TweakHound Posted September 29, 2003 Report Share Posted September 29, 2003 You don't need any classes for the Linux+ exam. See my article (which may show up in a 'nix mag!) http://www.tweakhound.com/reviews/linux_plus/index.htm Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
youngmug Posted September 29, 2003 Report Share Posted September 29, 2003 If you are trying to gain a certification for help in employment, you should base the certification you are going to study for on the type of job / corporation you want to go to. As is seems to me, CompTIA is somewhat respected for their usually neutral exams, making Linux+ great if a shop is running multiple distributions, even Unix flavors to some extent. RedHat is also respected, but their exams seem geared to their version of Linux (obvious point, I know). An RH cert would be good for going into an environment that is heavily invested in RedHat and their products. There is also LPIC, another certification looking to gain recognition. The educational sector is a good target for Linux+ (more likely to have multiple distros), while commercial enterprises are a good target for RH. As for me, I chose Linux+, mostly for the learning experience. If you choose Linux+, I recommend running something that requires a little more technical skill than Mandrake (I found Slackware to be a good choice). Either way, good luck on your certifications. BTW, TweakHound, I used the Sybex book, and I'd rate it a point lower. It takes too much time explaining stuff not on the exam (and that has no relation to skills one needs to know for it). -Michael (A+, Linux+) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted September 29, 2003 Report Share Posted September 29, 2003 Hmmm That seems to be the bottom line... What are they looking for? Perhaps the question is where do you want to work and what certs are they looking for. IMHO RH is a bit limiting if the employer doesn't really understand linux. Even if we know the system (distro) specific stuff is mainly just config tools etc. your employer might not but equally if they chose RH then your missing out.... I'd look through any local trade mags and even go as far as applying for some jobs. You might get one.... or they might tell you they were looking for some qualification or other. They might even pay ofr you to take one .... (but don't hold yourt breath) Some other things you could do are write some commercial type articles for a local linux/unix mag. Get your self a name in an area where most employers are fumbling about. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulSe Posted September 29, 2003 Author Report Share Posted September 29, 2003 Great answers, thanks :lol: I have no qualifications and I work at a radio station. My industry is a fickle one and the future is always uncertain, if I was not in radio, I would aim to either be a Linux Administrator or a web designer. I want to get qualified on the side, while I am working, so that I have a backup plan, should radio not pan out for me. If I just wanted to learn, then I would not spend money on a qualification, I can learn on my own (as I am). Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted September 29, 2003 Report Share Posted September 29, 2003 SoulSe One of the aspects you just mentioned has a certain easy path. The web design has one outstanding area you can prepare and your already doing it. Creating a portfolio is a very valid way to get a job doing web design. I think qualifications (or lack of) are meaningless if you can showcase a good portfolio. However, how far you take this is up to you. Do you wanna show php skills, database integration or whatever. Your ability to administrate your own web-server etc. Being able to explain why a certain web design is better because of maintainability or open-standards or whatver gives you a dual path... To a certain extent you can use your web-design to illustrate IT management skills. You could do some charity work and manage a project for a charity setting up their servers etc. If nothing comes of it you will have the satisfaction of knowing you did something worthwhile and you'll probably have fun too. Just ideas..... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
youngmug Posted September 29, 2003 Report Share Posted September 29, 2003 Well, considering this is planning, Linux+ might be the best for you. Since this is not terribly urgent, you could probably get a book and study on your own (the exam is not difficult if you have a computer or two to use in studies). You would then have some good base knowledge to study for and pass Red Hat certification if you needed it. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
scoopy Posted September 30, 2003 Report Share Posted September 30, 2003 Found this story that may interest you: http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...=11&u=/nf/22380 According this article: Other hot certification areas include Linux (news - web sites) (Red Hat Certified Engineer and Linux Professional Institute) Looks like our mub friends are pointing you in the right direction :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
SoulSe Posted September 30, 2003 Author Report Share Posted September 30, 2003 Found this story that may interest you:http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=stor...=11&u=/nf/22380 Good article, very inciteful. I think qualifications (or lack of) are meaningless if you can showcase a good portfolio.However, how far you take this is up to you. Do you wanna show php skills, database integration or whatever. Your ability to administrate your own web-server etc. Being able to explain why a certain web design is better because of maintainability or open-standards or whatver gives you a dual path... To a certain extent you can use your web-design to illustrate IT management skills. You could do some charity work and manage a project for a charity setting up their servers etc. If nothing comes of it you will have the satisfaction of knowing you did something worthwhile and you'll probably have fun too. Excellent points! My portfolio would look pretty good as I have a few websites I currently am in charge of. Most of them are still in construction, but are almost done. I think I will start by getting a Linux+ book and taking the exam... Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted September 30, 2003 Report Share Posted September 30, 2003 Yeah I think in this sort of thing you need a belt and braces approach. (Or belt and suspenders if your american). The qualification thing seems cyclic and some IT depts insist on them, others would rather see an example of what you can achieve. All companies have different philosophies over this.... If I take a complately out of context experience to illustrate this.... On an oil rig the 'mud logger' is one of the most menial skilled tasks. Sure you have rouchnecks who just supply grunt but the mudloggers lot is pretty much down the ladder for skilled people. When I took my masters we had a couple of ex-Mudloggers, a Cambridge grad (UK equiv of Ivy League) and a whole mix.... Towards the end we all started applying for jobs.... It was almost uncanny the correlations.... Some companies had a policy that once a mudlogger always a mudlogger. If you accepted the menial work early on then you obviously didn't have what they wanted. Others distincly favoured Oxford/Cambridge grads.... regardless of the 'quality' of their Masters degree.... Others preferred down-to-earth first degrees. Rather ironically AMOCO and BP were poles apart. BP has (or had) an unofficial (and illegal) policy of only employing from certain universities. Even better if you also went to a top fee paying private school. AMOCO was more or less opposite.... they didn't want the sort of people who fitted comfortably in the rareified atmosphere of Ox-Bridge. Being stuck up on a rig is a sure fire way to screw the rig... AMOCO actively looked for ex-mudloggers knowing they had the ability to muck-in...literally up to their neck in caustic and mildly carinogenic mud. Now the irony ... BP bought AMOCO..... suddenly lots of practical people were mixed with lots of academic clean fingernail people. Many of them were laid off but lots more just left becuase they found it 'hard to breath in the rareified atmosphere'. So you need to decide what sort of employer you wanna work for..... The type who want MSCE's or the type who want results/competence and a proven ability to muck in. OR somewhere inbetween :D Course ... any job is better than no-job.... but it strikes me the sort of company willing to employ someone only with MSCE's is unlikely to have the sort of corporate policy of employing someone who left school unqualified. They may be looking for Rhodes scholars ... Of course this is down to individuals within the company as well. A little secret... I used to receive hundreds of applications per day.... I had a few methods to whittle down the numbers.... 1) Anyone who's highlight of their CV is headboy/girl ... straight in the bin. They are unlikely to fit in working for me. 2) Ox-Bridge graduates .... well, I'd read it but they were starting out with a disadvantage... they had to convince me they were practical to overcome my prejudice. 3) Anyone claiming to be the first <insert minority> to achive anything that has nothing to do with their <insert minority> This is like the first woman to sail single handed round the world .... AND To her credit she didn't make ANY fuss about the fact .... just the media. So she would have got through .... if I was looking for sailors or navigators :D But people who claim to be the first .... to get the such and such scholarship are usually too hung up on it to be any use.... Those who are really cool about it and don't mention it on their CV (like a friend of mine Ransford - 6'8" of Masai - who I did employ before becoming friends) on the other hand get extra points.... you know they are comfortable with themselves and are going to fit in ..... Taken to extremes a sister of a friend didn't understand why she wasn't getting interviews ... it was blatently obvious that she had massaged her degree title from "18th C English literature" - the title of her course to something like "Degree in English feminist literature" Enough to make the alarm bells ring anywhere .... aided by her achivements being topped off by being 'head girl '. Of course some people might want people like that..... I can't think who right now but I'm sure someone does. :wink: So: My advice is to look at the market and see what the employers want. My friends sister could easily have done the same thing but didn't want to accept that no-one thought her achivements were important in the real world. Fundamentally theris nothing wrong with being head-girl ...but if you think its important to put on your CV then your missing the point of the real world. IMHO. Try and find some local IT people and see what qualifications they have and scope out the companies and the type of people they employ. Your fist choice would be one who want to employ YOU ... but life isn't always that simple. So sometimes you have to make the YOU look like the sort of person they wanna employ. IMHO you have a lot of great qualities the right employer is going to value. So you need to work out how to showcase these. Getting a Linux+ in your spare time highlights your initiative and drive. Some employers will value that, others will not. Finally: You wanna work out HOW serious you are. Are you willing to leave SA .... One thing I noticed is a lot of employers have 'unofficial clubs' where people who work for them went to the right schools and university BUT this only applies to their own nationals. (My company is like this....and several others I have worked for) They have a closed club of their nationals but international staff just don't fit into their stereotyped predjudices so you get a better position than you would in your home country. Others apply the same predjudice in a different county... CityBank for instance has a policy in the UK of only employing Ox-Bridge graduates in customer positions. Their rational seems to be they want to attract this kind of customer and know that the 'Old boy network' is the way it works.... BUT They might make an exception if you were say german working in the UK office because your outside of their sphere of experience. I deal/socialise with lots of expatriates and a startling number have found the same as me. Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlc Posted September 30, 2003 Report Share Posted September 30, 2003 YeahI think in this sort of thing you need a belt and braces approach. (Or belt and suspenders if your american). The qualification thing seems cyclic and some IT depts insist on them, others would rather see an example of what you can achieve. All companies have different philosophies over this.... If I take a complately out of context experience to illustrate this.... On an oil rig the 'mud logger' is one of the most menial skilled tasks. Sure you have rouchnecks who just supply grunt but the mudloggers lot is pretty much down the ladder for skilled people. When I took my masters we had a couple of ex-Mudloggers, a Cambridge grad (UK equiv of Ivy League) and a whole mix.... Towards the end we all started applying for jobs.... It was almost uncanny the correlations.... Some companies had a policy that once a mudlogger always a mudlogger. If you accepted the menial work early on then you obviously didn't have what they wanted. Others distincly favoured Oxford/Cambridge grads.... regardless of the 'quality' of their Masters degree.... Others preferred down-to-earth first degrees. Rather ironically AMOCO and BP were poles apart. BP has (or had) an unofficial (and illegal) policy of only employing from certain universities. Even better if you also went to a top fee paying private school. AMOCO was more or less opposite.... they didn't want the sort of people who fitted comfortably in the rareified atmosphere of Ox-Bridge. Being stuck up on a rig is a sure fire way to screw the rig... AMOCO actively looked for ex-mudloggers knowing they had the ability to muck-in...literally up to their neck in caustic and mildly carinogenic mud. Now the irony ... BP bought AMOCO..... suddenly lots of practical people were mixed with lots of academic clean fingernail people. Many of them were laid off but lots more just left becuase they found it 'hard to breath in the rareified atmosphere'. So you need to decide what sort of employer you wanna work for..... The type who want MSCE's or the type who want results/competence and a proven ability to muck in. OR somewhere inbetween :D Course ... any job is better than no-job.... but it strikes me the sort of company willing to employ someone only with MSCE's is unlikely to have the sort of corporate policy of employing someone who left school unqualified. They may be looking for Rhodes scholars ... Of course this is down to individuals within the company as well. A little secret... I used to receive hundreds of applications per day.... I had a few methods to whittle down the numbers.... 1) Anyone who's highlight of their CV is headboy/girl ... straight in the bin. They are unlikely to fit in working for me. 2) Ox-Bridge graduates .... well, I'd read it but they were starting out with a disadvantage... they had to convince me they were practical to overcome my prejudice. 3) Anyone claiming to be the first <insert minority> to achive anything that has nothing to do with their <insert minority> This is like the first woman to sail single handed round the world .... AND To her credit she didn't make ANY fuss about the fact .... just the media. So she would have got through .... if I was looking for sailors or navigators :D But people who claim to be the first .... to get the such and such scholarship are usually too hung up on it to be any use.... Those who are really cool about it and don't mention it on their CV (like a friend of mine Ransford - 6'8" of Masai - who I did employ before becoming friends) on the other hand get extra points.... you know they are comfortable with themselves and are going to fit in ..... Taken to extremes a sister of a friend didn't understand why she wasn't getting interviews ... it was blatently obvious that she had massaged her degree title from "18th C English literature" - the title of her course to something like "Degree in English feminist literature" Enough to make the alarm bells ring anywhere .... aided by her achivements being topped off by being 'head girl '. Of course some people might want people like that..... I can't think who right now but I'm sure someone does. :wink: So: My advice is to look at the market and see what the employers want. My friends sister could easily have done the same thing but didn't want to accept that no-one thought her achivements were important in the real world. Fundamentally theris nothing wrong with being head-girl ...but if you think its important to put on your CV then your missing the point of the real world. IMHO. Try and find some local IT people and see what qualifications they have and scope out the companies and the type of people they employ. Your fist choice would be one who want to employ YOU ... but life isn't always that simple. So sometimes you have to make the YOU look like the sort of person they wanna employ. IMHO you have a lot of great qualities the right employer is going to value. So you need to work out how to showcase these. Getting a Linux+ in your spare time highlights your initiative and drive. Some employers will value that, others will not. Finally: You wanna work out HOW serious you are. Are you willing to leave SA .... One thing I noticed is a lot of employers have 'unofficial clubs' where people who work for them went to the right schools and university BUT this only applies to their own nationals. (My company is like this....and several others I have worked for) They have a closed club of their nationals but international staff just don't fit into their stereotyped predjudices so you get a better position than you would in your home country. Others apply the same predjudice in a different county... CityBank for instance has a policy in the UK of only employing Ox-Bridge graduates in customer positions. Their rational seems to be they want to attract this kind of customer and know that the 'Old boy network' is the way it works.... BUT They might make an exception if you were say german working in the UK office because your outside of their sphere of experience. I deal/socialise with lots of expatriates and a startling number have found the same as me. Be honest people, did you read this whole thing :?: /me like Gowtor, his English, grammar & spelling are better than mine and it makes me jealous! Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
Gowator Posted September 30, 2003 Report Share Posted September 30, 2003 This is my perspective as the guy doing the interviewing. I bring along my prejudice like everyone and those who offend it have to work extra hard. Getting an interview is the hard part. Especially if you have no qualifications but lots of experience but my prejudice is these people are usually far better at working with/for me than someone from an Ivy League or Ox-Bridge past. But I remain flexible, I have a few friends and ex-colleages who did go to these schools/universities. However Ive found that when the CV's come flooding in you have to sort them into potentials and hopeless pretty quickly. A good education and no experience is hard to judge. Will they fit in, are they mature and can they get their head down and work? Someone with a proven ability and initiative however already passes these criteria, at least as far as getting an interview. I always maintain that getting an interview is the biggest step. Most companies don't have much time with interviewing bus-loads of hopefulls. Not that you shoould sit back ... but you can explain a few things on your CV that might need clarifying. When I write my CV it takes months .... reviews by my peers who's judgement I trust and usually they say ... hey your responsible for this and that why not say so. More often than not your technically not responsibel but are in practical terms.... So now I write it anyway and clear it up at the interview. I hope the interviewer will be impressed by my honesty and if they aren't then I figure that wasn't my kind of place to work/boss. Obviously SoulSe has said he's unqualified so he will want to target people who know that IT qualifications count for little by the time they have been reaslised. But just taking the Linux+ is showing initiative and the ability to get down and work on your own initiative. If I was interviewing him that would be a big plus :D It is also important to know what to leave out..... I had a boss who turned down a guy for an interview who was a martial arts teacher. Now to me that speaks of self discipline and ability to dedicate to a task but to my boss it was a faintly scary prospect indicating the guy was violent. My boss disn't know I have black-belts in Karate and Ju-Jitsu !!! You can never tell....so be sparing with information. Like we all know cybrjackel is religious.... Its no big deal but don't advertise it as a quality because unless someone shares your church its unlikely to be positive and at best neutral. And theres always a danger of someone not liking it. This is in degrees.... Take the sister of my flatmate... with the feminist literature. Writing it on a CV is inflamatory.... bringing it up, especailly if asked at an interview is considerably different. For a start you are able to put it in context. So I'd say being involved helping out at the local church is a fine thing but saying you are on a mission to convert the world is another. Once you get the job you can be pretty open about it. Hobbies and Interests is another minefield: Its sorta expected so find something positive.... One person thinks paragliding shows a lively go get it guy and another a reckless fool. Better not to risk extreme sports etc. unless applying for a job doing them. I stick to the very boring ones.... reading, chess and remember to blalnce this with a team sport or event and word it so they know you like working with people and you can work alone..... reading is very vague but no-one can argue.... don't go into anything to far becuase SciFi is sometimes viewed as extemeist and you can even balance this by saying you enjoy helping out at the church and helping organise events. Sometimes you can even leave exciting leads.,..... interview me and you'll find out more !!!! I think its always better to do this than give away too much and risk it being misinterpreted. Forget about being in the reservists or whatever.... very few employers will want their staff taking extended absences. Well I hope this helps someone. :D Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
jlc Posted September 30, 2003 Report Share Posted September 30, 2003 I would pretty much agree with all of that Gowator. There are several things in an interview that your just not supposed to talk about. Like wise, there are several things that the interviewer isnt supposed to ask either. Some were out there, maybe monster.com has a list of questions you should avoid and how to avoid them. There are questions that just aren't any of there buisness and they don't have the right to ask, and you can recpectlively decline to answer them. I would point you to were it is on www.monster.com but I'm at work and big brother is watching me. 8) Quote Link to comment Share on other sites More sharing options...
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