Developing strong technical skills and core network fundamentals are very important to your CCNA career.  You need to review all the best CCNA books, however, if you want to improve your skills as a qualified CCNA networks engineer, here are 3 areas I suggest you focus on to become effective in your role in the quickest time possible:

1. Troubleshooting Skills

Troubleshooting skills are the bread and butter of any network engineer.  As you progress you might be doing less and less troubleshooting and more deployment, but as a relative beginner it is the single most important skill you should develop as a good CCNA networks engineer.

This is even more evident evident from the newer Cisco exams, which have been structured to have more focus on debugging and fixing problems.  Most of the entry-level jobs are support positions, where you will be identifying and fixing network issues reported by users about 80% of the time.  It is thus important to become good at troubleshooting as soon as possible, so as to be effective.

2. Management of Expectations

Very often problems that arise cannot be easily solved quickly.  Some problems which are more vague in nature like the network being slow or intermittent disconnections can be hard to track down and fix.  More complex and mysterious issues might take from several days to several weeks to fix.  It is important to manage the users’ expectations properly and keep them updated with an estimate of when the problem can be solved.  If not, you might end up with a situation where they will call you every 10 minutes for an update.  This is a very important part of your CCNA career so don’t overlook it.

3. Planning One Step Ahead

The computer network industry is constantly in a state of flux and it is important to be abreast of the latest developments.  In the ideal situation, you should start training for tomorrow’s trends and technologies, however, this can be expensive and not all companies and corporations are willing to spend their training budget in this manner.  At the very least you should keep yourself up to date with the current market direction to ensure that you do well in your CCNA career.  For example, it’s likely that areas like cloud computing and media convergence will become increasingly important over the next few years and these are heavily dependent on network technology.

Hope this helps!

Cheers,
Francis (SavvyNetCert.Com)

P.S. If you’re still preparing for your CCNA exam, using CCNA video training packages are a great way to study.  Do check out our comparison between the 2 best CCNA Video Training packages now.  Click here to find out more!

Technorati Tags: ccna career, ccna careers, ccna job, ccna network engineer

Becoming a good CCNA network engineer and getting that first elusive CCNA job is definitely not an easy task, especially in this competitive job market.  Here are 2 tips to help you succeed in your CCNA career journey.

1. Get the CCNA

Despite Cisco’s introduction of the CCENT certification (which you will get after passing the ICND1 exam), the CCNA is still widely regarded as the must have basic network certification by the industry as a whole.  Thus, it is essential that you start working towards the CCNA certification as soon as possible.  It has been shown in many surveys (including the TCPmag Salary Survey) that certified networking professionals are paid more.  In this difficult market, being certified means that you have a better stab at that networking job.  I previously made 2 introductory posts on the CCNA which you should review for more details on the CCNA journey – this usually starts by reading and studying the latest CCNA books.  You might also want to take a look at CCNA video training which is an excellent way to get started.

2. Getting That First Networking CCNA Job

Once you have your CCNA, you can start looking for a suitable networking position.  However, even if you haven’t gotten the certification yet, some employers might still be willing to employ you based on other factors.  For example, if you are a CCENT certified and have relevant experience in other related fields such as servers, operating systems or general IT support, you might be considered favorably.  Other networking certifications such as the CompTia Network+ certification (which is vendor independent) might also carry some weight.

One thing you might want to note is that the people who write the job specifications on career websites, job boards or newspapers might not be the same people who are hiring.  Because of this, don’t always take the job requirements as set in stone and give it a shot anyway.  It is common that the person that is eventually hired might not fulfill all the requirements as employers usually put too wide a range of certifications required in the ad.

An impressive and professionally written resume also helps with getting that CCNA job.  You can do this yourself by reading some books or get a professional resume writer like those at ResumeWriters.Com (Tip: Use coupon code “newjob” at checkout for a 10% discount) for help.  Using a professional to get your resume done can improve your chances of getting an interview significantly.

Let me know if you enjoyed this post!  I can be contacted on twitter (@savvynetcert) or using the feedback form above.

Cheers,
Francis

P.S. If you are using a professional resume writer to get your resume done (recommended), don’t forget to claim your 10% discount at ResumeWriters.Com by using the coupon code “newjob” at checkout.

Technorati Tags: ccna career, ccna careers, ccna job, ccna network engineer