Starting out...

How did you get your start doing network engineer work, and what career moves did you make to get to your current position?

Do you need a particular educational background?

I started out working HelpDesk at NCR for the NCR account. I worked their for 6months. The work I did was unappreciated by the customer and co-workers. I once had a felllow help desk associate sitting beside me walk a technician through copying an image straight to a floppy drive when it was meant to be extracted to a Floppy drive for booting from. I then moved to Cincinnati and took a system specialist II job with a casino. I was really the network administrator their but because of policy and they did not want to pay me enough I was called a system specialist II. However, I put network admin on my resume anyway. I worked their for about 6-7 months and then found a job with an IT Consulting firm as a Network Engineer. I studied for my CCNA the entire time I was with NCR and also at the casino, I earned my CCNA before leaving the casino, its probably what got my the Network Engineering job. I now have my CCSP and have learned 100 times more on the job as a network engineer than I ever learned studying for these certifications. I also have a bachelors degree in computer information systems, I had it before taking the Casino job.

I recommend taking any kind of low paying IT job that you can get your hands on, preferably one where you get experience with many many different types of software and hardware. While your doing this you should try to attain your CCNA. And actually study dont just use brain dumps.

I also have 3com Certified Wireless Expert and some kind of 3com NBX certification.

If I had it to do over again I would have skipped college all together, Got my CCNA right out of high school and then took a low paying IT job and then went from their.

Also Location is Key to any Network Engineering job.