Before making recommendations about certifications, can we have some context about the hypothetical person receiving our suggestions?
I'd recommend something different to an experienced IT pro than to a young person still in school.
Lots of things are going to be intuitive:
- Get the cert(s) that enable you to achieve your goals
- So first define your goals:
- Do you want a first job?
- Are you experienced and simply looking for advancement?
- Is your goal to improve your pay?
- Or do you have a driving interest in a specific field/topic?
- Is there a problem that a certification could help you solve?
- Second define the area(s) that new certifications will help to achieve those goals, and then start studying.
- So first define your goals:
- Make sure you can not only talk the talk, but that you can walk the walk
- Many companies may hire on the basis of recommendations, a C.V. or resume, and one or two interviews
- More demanding and technical firms will test your hands-on practical knowledge. This how they weed out paper MSCE's and the equivalent
So let's suppose you wanted to work for my company. You'd go to Find a Job | Essentia Health and choose the New Applicants option, fill in the necessary blanks, and then start looking for anything to do with "Network". You'd find several openings, and you'd learn how to list your certifications as well as what criteria are required to be considered a candidate.
It'll help if you have a CCNA that's current. It'll help even more if you're a CCNP. And we'll potentially be impressed if you're a CCIE, or have multiple Cisco certifications in various areas of specialty (Route/Switch, WLAN, Security, Data Center, etc.).
Maybe you want to be involved in Security. Well, you'll have to enjoy it, and you should have a CISSP, and it wouldn't hurt to have more security credentials. A government classification wouldn't hurt; we've hired people with various government clearance levels (Top Secret, etc.), and they've been some pretty good people for discovering or solving problems.
But the A Number One Thing we've learned about new employees: We can train someone to be a better Network Analyst, or System Admin, or Security Analyst, etc., but we can't change their personality.
What does this mean for an incoming person? An honest, pleasant, hard-working person who gets along well with people, who can take instruction and work without whining or pushback--will be easier to work with than a person with ten CCIE's who is not a people-person. Guess who gets the job?
The person who has great people skills to augment their technical abilities.
Long story (OK, WAAY too long) short: Work on your people skills as much as you do your technical certifications, and you'll have a big edge on the competition. Many people have technical skills and certifications; not all of them are excellent coworkers, people you'd like to spend your lunch break on, maybe even get together for fun on a weekend or after work. And that's what makes teams.
