[TriLUG] Career planning - certs(?)

[Christopher L Merrill]

Greg's suggestion is great.  While you do that - write about it!
Many technical people lack good communications skills.  Showing the
ability to write clearly may give you the extra edge over the other
guy.  Beyond that, it will show how much you understand the topics.
Saying you're running LDAP, LVM, DHCP et. al. at home is nice, but
anyone can say that.  Writing out the experiences (what was tough,
what you had to learn, what you discovered, how it turned out) will
show your learning process and your persistence - which can just as
valuable as knowledge in many situations.  These days, it is a safe
bet that potential employers will Google you - be sure that the
result is relevant to their interests.  A blog is a good way to
do it.

Chris


Greg Cox wrote:
> There's plenty of sysadmin-y things you could run that would let you
> pick up some knowledge that might help you get in the door.
> Set up a server.  LVM your partitions.  Set up automounting your
> home directory across boxes.  Run your own internal DNS.  Set up
> a DHCP server.  LDAP your userids.  Set up serial consoles to
> everything.  Set up apache and mysql and a wiki.  Document your
> changes.  Get some cheap managed cisco switches off ebay and VLAN
> your servers from your desktops.  Set up a backup rotation.  Set
> up monitoring for all the services you just spun up.
> 
> There's plenty you can learn at home for far less than an RHCE costs,
> and it gets you buzzwords for resume fodder.
> 


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Chris Merrill                           |  Web Performance, Inc.
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