Gaining the real world experience is really the hardest part. Many places will take advantage of you My Cousin tried to leave his line of business and got his MCSE, but he would have to take a 50% cut in salary for the first year or two to make the jump.
If you are willing to Tighten the belt (don't know what you are earning now) you may have to take a very entry level salary job for a year or two just to get it on your resume.
I officially gave up my Microsoft Certified Trainer status as of new years because I hated seeing people in class who had been lied to by the sales people. THe sales reps will tell you that you can earn $75K a year if you get your MCSE, but they leave out that the salary implies that you have 5+ years experience and are working for a consulting company where you are earning bonuses based on billable hours, etc. They leave out the 1-2 years of low salary just to get in the door.
What type of work do you specifically do prior to your IT changeover. If you were lets say a book-keeper, you could get a job in a big company accounting department as the "Intermediary" between the IT department and the Accting department. Since you would in this example speak both IT and ACCT. This way would give you hands on support of the accounting dept and interaction with the IT department.
I current co-worker who is responsible for the Migration of all NT workstations to Win2K Pro started out as owning the house that the IT director was renting. The guy lost his job in a high tech manufacturing plant and he made a deal with the IT director to work as an UNPAID intern for 3 months at the company and then they hired him on fulltime at an OK salary. We are hiring a new entry level person at my company and we decided to go with a guy working as a current sales assistant. He was going for his MCP, but the deciding factor was that they could probably get him cheap, he already understands the organization and by having worked with the sales staff he has an understanding of their problems that an outside hire might not know.
Best thing to do is keep your eyes and ears out for anything that you can use as a way in. And be careful of anyone who says something positive to you about these classes when they have financial gain from you taking the class.
A last piece of advice. I found that having 2 test machines networked together in a personal Lab environment was indispensible in learning this stuff. And with the lab, if you messed something up, no big deal just rebuild everything. Any PC you can buy today with any CPU over 500MHz, 128MB RAM (256 -512MB better), a bootable CD-Rom, 10GB drive and Network card will make a great learning machine. If you have a friend who is in the same situation you can split the equipment cost and have the lab at one persons house for 2 weeks and then 2 weeks at the other house. Or just one house if one wife is against the idea.
The sad part about all this is you have to invest money to make the money witch is a Catch-22 for many.
Good Luck
:goodjob:
Gcutler,
A former Microsoft Certified Trainer
If you are willing to Tighten the belt (don't know what you are earning now) you may have to take a very entry level salary job for a year or two just to get it on your resume.
I officially gave up my Microsoft Certified Trainer status as of new years because I hated seeing people in class who had been lied to by the sales people. THe sales reps will tell you that you can earn $75K a year if you get your MCSE, but they leave out that the salary implies that you have 5+ years experience and are working for a consulting company where you are earning bonuses based on billable hours, etc. They leave out the 1-2 years of low salary just to get in the door.
What type of work do you specifically do prior to your IT changeover. If you were lets say a book-keeper, you could get a job in a big company accounting department as the "Intermediary" between the IT department and the Accting department. Since you would in this example speak both IT and ACCT. This way would give you hands on support of the accounting dept and interaction with the IT department.
I current co-worker who is responsible for the Migration of all NT workstations to Win2K Pro started out as owning the house that the IT director was renting. The guy lost his job in a high tech manufacturing plant and he made a deal with the IT director to work as an UNPAID intern for 3 months at the company and then they hired him on fulltime at an OK salary. We are hiring a new entry level person at my company and we decided to go with a guy working as a current sales assistant. He was going for his MCP, but the deciding factor was that they could probably get him cheap, he already understands the organization and by having worked with the sales staff he has an understanding of their problems that an outside hire might not know.
Best thing to do is keep your eyes and ears out for anything that you can use as a way in. And be careful of anyone who says something positive to you about these classes when they have financial gain from you taking the class.
A last piece of advice. I found that having 2 test machines networked together in a personal Lab environment was indispensible in learning this stuff. And with the lab, if you messed something up, no big deal just rebuild everything. Any PC you can buy today with any CPU over 500MHz, 128MB RAM (256 -512MB better), a bootable CD-Rom, 10GB drive and Network card will make a great learning machine. If you have a friend who is in the same situation you can split the equipment cost and have the lab at one persons house for 2 weeks and then 2 weeks at the other house. Or just one house if one wife is against the idea.
The sad part about all this is you have to invest money to make the money witch is a Catch-22 for many.
Good Luck
:goodjob:
Gcutler,
A former Microsoft Certified Trainer
.
