Training courses?

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Hello,

After a career break I'm looking to get back into IT. I worked as a Project Manager for almost 10 years in the IT industry but I would like to go into support and hopefully network support as my career advances.

Can anyone recommend a good training course/qualification which will make my CV stand out. I don't know whether to go down the CompTIA, or Microsoft route.

Any advice would be warmly welcomed.

Thanks

If you are looking at networking then you can do a lot worse than a CCNA from Cisco - it covers core networking as well and they tend to be quite well respected for what they cover as well as how.

Microsoft certifications are still considered a tick box exercise I'm afraid. That's possibly a bit unfair on them - I haven't taken an MS exam in years as they don't benefit me but they used to follow this kind of process:

Ask a question and give the following selection of answers:

A) The way you would never do this; aka the patently wrong answer
B) The way you might actually do it in the real world; aka a correct answer but not in the MS world-view that no other ways/software exists
C) The way you would have traditionally done it according to MS - aka the "old" way
D) The new feature in this version of their software; aka the correct answer

To be fair once you got into their design exams it was far tougher and I suspect that things like their Azure exams are tougher as well.


I'd avoid things like A+ and I say that as the first person to pass it in the UK. It's a very generic, broad test, but not many places view it as more than a very basic, entry level type of exam.

But to be honest, there's good money to be made as a PM still and good PM's are like hen's teeth.

Edit:

Just found this: https://www.cybrary.it/course/cisco-ccna/

No idea what the quality is like etc or how relevant it is but can't hurt to run through.

It's also always worthwhile either picking up a Cisco switch off of eBay or getting a simulator. Some are mentioned here: https://learningnetwork.cisco.com/thread/120792