What recommendations would you guys give for what type of job I should be going for and where best to look.
I recently got my ccna certification and want to get to CCNP inshaAllah and really need to get into something more challenging then what I do now, as this is really starting to bore me.
Presently I work for an ISP as a senior technician doing tech support on the phones, which I have been doing for 3 years.
I really this is not the best time to be looking for IT jobs but I still want to give it a go.
Hello ukwali,
well firstly congrats on getting your ccna... that's definitely a first step.
now, since you say you're a lil bored of your current job and yo're doing mostly tech support work - I would think the CCDP track suits you better then the CCNP track.
Mind you, there's only one exam which is different in both tracks i.e. the CIT exam in CCNP and the CID exam in CCDP so there's nothing stopping you from getting bothe certifications by just writing an additional exam.
The reason I would suggest CCDP is beacause it is more network engineering oriented rather than network support oriented.
I personally like the design aspect more than support as well... working with clients and their requirements, advising them on an appropriate solution and managing the deployment are some of the things you can look forward to.
Finally, I wanted to mention that Cisco has also recently announced the CISS (Cisco Internet Solutions Specialist) certification which I'm directly involved with and hence can't disclose much at this time, but yeah some research may prove useful.
For me, I work as an E-Business Solutions Architect and just the CCNA and CCDA were enough although I may upgrade my switching skills sometime next year.