Please take note that I’m not trying to tell you what to do with your career, I’m just sharing my expert opinion with you. I also get the occasional angry message from readers (I’m not sure why they read my messages in fact). They complain that I’m selling courses which is why I recommend them! Selling IT courses is what I do, but it’s the wrong way round, I create courses I know will give you maximum employability and longevity in your career.
Anyways, rant over. Here are your IT career and study goals for 2017. You must start planning now; I know only 6% of people reading this message will bother, but goals will make a huge difference to your career and income next year.
Get IPv6 Certified
I’ve said this time and time again. If you are not intimately familiar with IPv6, then you are going to get left behind. It’s just like the coal industry, IPv4 has a limited lifespan, you must understand this technology if you are to have any hope of being relevant.
And yes, I sell an IPv6 course. I chased down a world class expert and paid him a small fortune to create a unique course which will turn you from a novice into a guru. Nothing like it available. Check it out below:
https://www.howtonetwork.com/courses/tcp-ip/ipv6-certification/
Get Cloud Certified
We’ve reached the point now that if you are in IT and can’t explain basic cloud technology and concepts like SaaS, then it’s embarrassing. Corporate networks are going the way of the dinosaur and if you can help businesses move to the cloud your phone will never stop ringing with job offers or consulting projects. I kid you not.
Consider the CompTIA Cloud Essentials if you are new or jump into a vendor cert like Amazon AWS. Oh, and you can literally have access to all the technology you need to study for the exam by way of free trials.
https://www.howtonetwork.com/courses/amazon/amazon-aws-associate/
Get a Technical Cert
While cloud is technical, you can still get away without understanding what is going on under the hood. The certification which is still regarded as number 1 for laying a strong foundation is the Cisco CCNA.
The syllabus covers all the basics such as TCP/IP, IPv6, security, VLANs, troubleshooting, WAN, routing, QoS and more.
https://www.howtonetwork.com/courses/cisco/cisco-ccna-simplified/
Get ITIL or Project Management Certified
The days of the IT person being considered as the smelly geek who works out of the basement are long gone. You are now an integral part of the business infrastructure, and IT managers are board level positions. Not much happens without the IT department being involved.
If you have project or process management skills, this makes you a very valuable asset to the company. You can be the bridge between the IT functions and the business goals.
https://www.howtonetwork.com/courses/itil/itil-foundation/
https://www.howtonetwork.com/courses/comptia/comptia-project-plus/
Learn Virtualization
Can you explain the business benefits of virtualization? Do you understand how the technology works? You should.
There are so many benefits to this amazing technology and it goes hand-in-hand with Cloud computing. At the moment, VMware is the market leader, so I put their course up first.
https://www.howtonetwork.com/courses/vmware/vmware-certified-associate-data-center-virtualization/
Change Jobs
Many of you are looking to get into IT. I cover career training and how to do just that on the website under the career section. If you are already in IT, you need to work on either getting promoted into a more technical role or moving to another company doing a job which you find exciting and challenging.
The days of a job for life are long gone. You should be moving around every 12 to 24 months. Learn new things, work on new technologies and have some adventures. If you don’t do this, you will find that you get stuck, become underappreciated and your skills go stale.
If this all sounds like a lot of work you are right. You should be nailing a new certification every three or so months. You should be volunteering for projects at work, learning new stuff and going for promotions. You should be calling agents telling them you are looking for work. If you couple a bit of ambition with some of the certifications listed above you will literally blow the competition out of the water.
Summary
Only around 6% of people are motivated and out there hustling. The rest just make excuses, and they wonder why life never changes for them. The phone never rings, they get passed over for promotions and are always dreading redundancy.
If you want to win in 2017 promise yourself that you will set aside at least one hour per day to make it big next year. The average American spends 5 hours per day watching TV and surfing the web. One hour is nothing.
Next steps. Go find a coffee shop, turn your phone off and use a pencil and paper to write down what you want to happen in 2017. What job do you want and where? How much money do you want to be earning? What do you need to do in order to make that happen?
Break it all down into monthly, weekly and then daily tasks and then go do it.
Have Fun
Paul Browning
P.S. I do offer all the above courses but feel free to check out other vendors. My main goal it to get you all out there studying and achieving.
