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Ask Slashdot: How To Prove IT Knowledge Without Expensive Certificates?
An anonymous reader writes "I'm starting my Ph.D in psychology this year and plan to finance this period with IT freelance work, mostly building websites with Drupal and setting up Linux networks, servers, etc.. Now I have a little problem: Since I never studied ICT nor followed a course that resulted in a certificate, I can only prove my knowledge by actually doing stuff or showing what I've done so far. Unfortunately that isn't always sufficient to convince potential customers. So I was wondering what other slashdotters do. Are there any free or cheap alternatives to get certificates or other more convincing ways to prove your IT knowledge?"
Works for me every time.
Yes, you did.
Having nothing else left to live for, you can kill yourself now.
Just make your own certificates, for free!
Wrong question. What you really meant to ask:
And the answer is: networking. It's free or cheap, but it's time-consuming and time-delayed.
And I consider referrals to be a special case of networking. You said you already "did stuff". If what you did was just for yourself, then you need to do it for someone else. There are plenty of non-profits (or even mom & pop for-profits) who would love some free work.
Without expensive phd?
I prefer to affix the root login for their databases to my resume....tends to get their attention
Perhaps as an app on Android/iOS and a website. Cheap and shows off what you can do.
CompTIA offers several free courses and tests cost ~$168, which is cheaper than most out there. Sure, it's not as renowned as it was in the 1990's, but it is still something to show worth/value (most non-tech savvy business owners won't notice the difference).
Alternately, the Linux Plus Certification 101 (LPIC) can be had for $160 and several places will offer the test for FREE several times a year.
The answer is in your post: "showing what I've done so far". If you don't have enough work to show them, then maybe you don't have the experience they are looking for.
When hiring contractors (or employees), I prefer experience over certificates and generally only glance at certs.
This post makes no sense. Is there even such a thing a Drupal cert? If there is, hardly anybody asks for it.
Seems to me like the poster thinks he/she can make big money in IT freelancing without verifiable training, or experience. I find that attitude typical of people who don't know anything about real world IT, but think it must be easy.
Take a look at sites like rentacoder, elance, and odesk. Yeah, easy to make big money in IT.
med school gives you real knowledge.
It trade / tech schools give you real knowledge
They really aren't that much for basic ones. No they aren't the be-all, end-all but they can help. They help reassure people that maybe you know what you are talking about. They also show a level of commitment on your part, that you were willing and able to study for and pass the test.
I'm not saying don't take the advice of others with regards to networking and so on as well, but some certs can help things, particularly if you are getting started, but even later on.
drop the PHD and go to a tech / trade school
maybe take some classes that are not all book learning.
...has led me to believe this is a great way to go.
Honestly, if you have enough skills to support yourself through programming, why would you ever get a degree in psychology, especially a Ph.D.? That IMHO is the road to a dead-end career path without much hope of earnings.
Ph.D.s are often only useful in academia, or in career paths where there are so many students that they need a Ph.D. to distinguish themselves from the people with "only" a masters.
Better to just get good at some programming skills in high demand (hint, don't pick "popular" and "easy" languages) and have a good career path going forward. Then you don't have to waste 2-3 years of your life to get a piece of paper that won't pay itself off in the next 10 years.
Customers never give a crap about certificates.
Neither does any professional HR department. They know those things are largely paper mills.
Starting out, its all word of mouth and personal references. You also end up having to warrant your work and
maybe even offer to accept no payment till its up and working.
Best bet is to sign on with an existing tech shop for a while to gain experience and references.
Sig Battery depleted. Reverting to safe mode.
I've been an Independent Contractor in IT specializing in architectural and product consultation for early phase startups and internal product start-ups and prototyping for established enterprises. And in over 10 years and never have any shortage of work.
Yet I never went to college, am self taught and have never once bothered with shelling out cash for any bullshit certificate nor do I maintain any sort of web presence or "portfolio"
I merely have a resume on Craigslist, which most comment on being rather impressive and features some pretty big names and interesting projects.
In all the years I have been doing this, even when I was first starting out -- I obtained my work by being able to describe highly advanced yet exceedingly efficient solutions to my client's seemingly complex problems.
Of course, sometimes, descriptions aren't enough -- on occasion you will need to provide a proof of concept, the time for which you should be compensated for -- if successful in proving your point that is. For instance, to win a contract with a client to build a new social music service, I spent a week creating a prototype site out of my proposed frameworks and specifications featuring streaming on-demand music to an spider-friendly HTML5 AJAX UI with no plugins aside for degradation for archaic browsers with demonstrated mobile browser compatibility as a technical proof. That went over very well and I'm presently building the real deal.
Of course, offering proofs of concept might not work if you're looking for a rank and file job -- but, in any technical interview, the white board is your friend. You should always make a point to get up and draw out what you're talking about. You'd be surprised how effective a back of the napkin diagram can be in making your case. And it allows you to make a presentation and thus, take charge of the interview room.
But in the end, it all hinges on you being able to identify the problem and compose a compelling if not novel solution on the fly. I've found that there's not a great many that can do that, especially while under pressure in an interview room.
Have a few of your past happy clients write you a reference and offer to have them call your prospective clients. You can also add some testimonials to your website. If you're good people will also refer you to their associates. Build a reputation.
Get your feet wet and start working with things. You need experience in order to prove that you can do things. Frankly experience is often more valuable than a degree or certification. For what it's worth, a funny thing happens with the right experience. You do funny things like holding a senior IT position at a very large University without claiming a degree or being a former student.
That being said I believe certifications and degrees are both useful and have value.
Degrees show that you can commit to something that takes years to get. However they don't necessarily mean you know jack squat about the subject you have a degree in. I have cleaned up after many a person with higher level degrees who royally fucked things up. I have also trained a lot of people with masters or PhD's over the years that were absolutely amazed to learn that I never did end up earning my degree.
Certifications are useful as a guiding path to help you get started in learning a given subject well. You can take a certification to pass the test or you can take it to learn the subject. Most people do the former and not the later. Done correctly a certification can be very valuable in laying foundational knowledge or providing a /framework/ for you to learn by.
I've gotten certifications over the years from generic ITIL ones to rare certifications that are only held by a few hundred people world wide. However when I look back over the years the most useful certification I ever earned was the old Networking Essentials cert from an early version of the MCSE test. It acted as a foundational knowledge that my dives into Novell, Microsoft, Cisco, Mac and Linux were all able to leverage.
However certifications have their limits. A few years after I earned my MCSE braindump sites started appearing on the Internet and that certification went from being quite valuable to an Internet punchline. The net result is that people got burned by paper MCSE's / (insert_cert_here) and don't place a lot of value on them (or other certs) any more. The net result now is that if people feel your relying on a certification to get an interview they are going to grill the daylights out of you to make sure you know your subject cold and aren't limited to book knowledge.
The only way to get past book knowledge and paper certification stigmas is to have experience. In other words you need to get out there and start producing. Keep an open mind on ways to do this that don't involve getting paid, especially when you don't have experience. Whether that means tackling an open source project (look at sourceforge sometime and it is quite obvious a number of projects were resume builders), working as an intern of whatever means you want.
Once you have done this you will a portfolio. You need think of your portfolio as your resume 2.0 and treat it accordingly. Make it professional, interesting, make sure it doesn't offend anyone, keep it clean that kind of thing. The point of the portfolio is to show and prove what you can do.
When you present your portfolio, something you will want to keep in mind is your design tradeoffs. Be prepared to answer why you did things one way and not another. You should also be prepared to then offer an example of when you would do things the other way. This is more important this it sounds. Good luck.
There's a bit of self-fulfilling prophecy effect here. People who have "been there, done that" in the field, don't give a damn about certs, because they know they can be bought by inexperienced people who have spare time and who can pass tests eventually. I'm with the people who say "show them what you've done". Even if you have to invent sites and causes, do so. "Here's a site I built for the society for the prevention of cruelty to ice cubes", or whatever, but WOW, that's a great Drupal setup or whatever.
The biggest problem is getting past the HR idiots so the techie people even SEE your resumé. You have to play keyword bingo enough to get the HR droids to pass on your 20 years of SunOS experience to me, the guy looking for an experienced Solaris admin, and yet get your resumé to me intact enough to know that it's not your first day at the circus either.
If I see someone with no experience and some certs, I'll interview them for a low-level position if I have one open. But, if they've been in the field for 5 or 10 years and are still listing certs rather than real world jobs, I'm going to assume that there's something wrong with them.
My dad was placed in a high-tech job skills program after being laid off by his previous employer. He now has his A+ and Network+ certificates. Using basic terms with him like "CAT-6e cable" he still has to ask questions like, "you mean the yellow wires?" All things fair, he still muddles through his own problems now (which is a relief to me) but I think it speaks volumes how much a certification is actually worth.
Normally, I'd advise you to use your resume to show potential employers that you've done hard stuff and use your cover letter to point out the holes you're especially good at plugging (e.g. I, personally, tend to make tools that make tedious, manual, error-prone tasks a few clicks or a single command). However, since you're doing the freelance website thing, I suggest that you ask your satisfied customers to write referrals for you that you can reference. If you have an especially good, ongoing relationship with a particular customer, offer them a discount to take phone Q and As with potential new customers. In short: Network.
1) User groups, conferences: network network network
2) Volunteer to speak, and put that up on your blog
3) Oh yeah, start a blog. Blog regularly
4) Build your own sites/sample sites
Good approach to getting work: build site, find clients later. Most websites aren't that different. Pick an industry (say, air conditioning repair). Build a generic air conditioning repair site. Then go pitch it to those businesses (Google and start with the ones with current ugliest site); they'll always have you make customizations.
The best thing about a boolean is even if you are wrong, you are only off by a bit.
Except it is easy to make big money in IT.
99% of tech certificates will pay for themselves within 3 years (just because I made that number up doesn't mean it's wrong). Do the work and get a job. There are tons of jobs in the DC area, especially if you can pass a full scope poly (TS/SCI).
If you were paying your way to a PhD working at McDonalds, would you have the spare change to get tech certs?
If your solo and have no qualifications so to speak, then you need your evidence of past work and probably references from happy customers you have done this for. If you don't have either of those then you are up shit creek without a paddle as why would anyone hire a freelancer without those in a market where there are plenty of skilled individuals that have the evidence to back it up and many of them willing to do the job at good prices. Not saying you are one of these, but people who "think" they know how to do what you described because they built there home network and installed their own systems and help all there friends technically are a dime a dozen, and thankfully they keep the rest of us busy and paid cleaning up the mess they leave behind.
You're viewing this as an IT industry problem.
Considering what you're about to do for 4+ years, maybe you should treat this as a psych problem!
n/t
You proof things using evidence.
You proof IT experience by showing the results of your IT experience.
Slashdot social media options: AIM, ICQ, Yahoo, Jabber and Mobile Text. Why no MySpace?
Is there even such a thing a Drupal cert?
I would not be surprised to find that such a thing exists. I would also not be surprised to find that there are certs for Microsoft Office.
Good project worth a lot and tells a lot about its author.
If you're main focus is on web design, you have it really easy. Take a week to build out 10 or 15 websites of varying complexity and purpose, and host them all on a basic VPS. When someone asks for your credentials, give them a link of the online portfolio. For the vast majority of clients, that will tell them a lot more about your skill set than a few certs. It's fairly easy for the average person or business to look at a web site and decide if it's professional or fun or whatever.
Now the part about setting up Linux networks and servers and stuff is a bit more out of reach, since the average person can't look at a server or router config and have any clue as to what it means. They want you to have some kind of certification or recommendation from other businesses precisely because they can't judge those skills.
My advice, is to just focus on the web side of things. You have the advantage of being able to get some marketing out to an audience much larger than your immediate area, which should more than make up for any "lost" business on the networking side of things.
Education in many countries, especially at the PhD level, is free. There may not always be grants available or other research or teaching positions on offer to pay the bills, leaving the student rather short of cash. Why do you assume that a PhD student has lots of income to invest in certs?
Read again. The poster noted his verifiable experience: "I can only prove my knowledge by ... showing what I've done so far."
usually tend to be an indicator of exactly the opposite of what they are sold as being - if you had to go take a class, you probably do NOT know WTF you are doing.
Certs mean nothing to us when hiring. A degree means something so far as you stuck in there and got the degree.
But show us something you've done? That's gold. Doesn't matter if it's just for yourself as long as we can take a look at it.
So make one really polished public Drupal site you can show potential employers. Put down 'skilled at Linux' (people tend to believe this pathetically easy) and if they ask you about it be prepared to back it up.
If you can't show us a single thing you've done we're unlikely to hire you no matter what's on your resume.
As many others have stated. Show previous work. If you don't have previous work, get a job that will give you experience. I have no college degree. I barely graduated high school due to lack of interest, etc. 10 years later I'm in my prime, making decent pay at a company that is totally awesome to work for.
This seems blatantly obvious to me. Forget any psych certs and licenses. You can do IT work without them, and you can do the same in the psych field. Just don't lie about your qualifications.
Most psych patients won't give a damn about your qualifications anyway. All you need to do is listen to your patients. Psych patients don't feel better because they talk about things. They feel better because someone is listening to them about their problems. If patients have initial problems talking, just stay quiet, and stare at them with a puppy dog look. This shows your devotion, and that you are so interested in them that you are willing to wait for them to talk. Take notes. Before each session, read the notes and bring up topics during the session. This, again, shows the patient that someone is interested in their problems. Psych therapy is a long process, so you can always shove off difficult issues to follow-up sessions. If you are lucky, the issue will take of itself.
Now imagine if IT was like that! In a heated meeting about bugs and missed deadlines, just say something like:
"Now I feel anger here. It is really important for all of us to recognize that there is anger here, and we need to accept the presence of anger. There are issues here and we are not all happy about them. But we do have to accept that we cannot always be happy all the time. Not being happy is part of being a human being. Now about the system having bugs, bugs are an inherent part of programs. If it didn't have bugs, it wouldn't really be a full living program. By having bugs, the program is just completing the totality of its existence. And as to the deadlines, sometimes we are just being too hard on ourselves . . . "
Schroedinger's Brexit: The UK is both in and out of the EU at the same time!
How To Prove IT Knowledge Without Expensive Certificates?
Prove it with Inexpensive certificates. Prove it with 3rd party endorsements/referrals.
did i get it?
You did, but I'm still a bit dubious about your actual first post skills. Do you have a certificate or something to show for it?
They ensure not that you have "listened" the lectures.
They certify that you have passed complex online exams.
Wrong question. What you really meant to ask:
The one time there is actually insightful comment on Slashdot, it's modded interesting.
What's your company? Please tell me. I have a non-tech related bachelors but I know Linux (cut my teeth on Slackware for four years as my first distro). I've been reduced to nothing and now I'm contemplating going back to school JUST to add "Bachelors in XXX....and I know Linux".
I'm willing to start as low as it gets. The help desk. Whatever. I'm just desperate.
why would I hire a hobbiest thats majoring in a totally different subject?
I can hire a IT pro for a bag of peanuts in this day and age, and you want me to waste time on hobby hour?
heh
This isn't targeted at the author of the article, but I just need to get it out there and this article is very related:
I can't believe how useless degrees are these days. I mean, seriously, if you're busy with a PhD and you don't even know how to market yourself, what have you attained? That's the case all over the world. People get degrees but have no idea how to get work or even find work. They usually rely on a professor's referral or bursary requirements and people who have neither don't have a clue.
Obviously a gross generalisation, but it's b3coming more and more the case these days.
Kids think they can get their degree and then they'll be swamped with job offerings. Well, guess what? Having a degree is very common these days and alone won't get you employed. You need to differentiate yourself from the other degree-bearing masses. Some do it by networking, some do it by formalising other skills, other just plainly study so hard that they do very well at uni/college.
The thing is, no company wants to employ a graduate that they have to train from scratch. They'll always go for the more accomplished, balanced, driven candidate.
To answer your question: formalise your IT skills and network like crazy. You obviously have a website, use it as an online portfolio to showcase your work and also promote your skills at the bottom of the sites you've made. In short, do whatever you can to diversify yourself and never expect Business to just come your way. Prove to people that you are the best and you'll be fine.
It wasn't renowned in the 90s. On second thought, objection withdrawn.
Anyway, you don't want that crap. Might look into getting coursera or udacity "certs" instead. At the very least they'll get you started and while officially devoid of any credit (but free not counting the work you do to get them) you do get something to show off, and that might work while they're still new and exciting.
1) references 2) your previous work 3) communication of your knowledge demonstrated in technical interview 4) most certs are not expensive if you already know the topic. just do the exams and avoid the courses. if you're expert you may not even need to study for them.
Believe it or not, your prospective clients will probably not ask about your certifications at all. Your experience may differ but while I have five certifications and a technology-related masters degree, I have not had any questions from prospects about certifications or education during my entire career (as far as I can remember, anyway).
As other commenters have mentioned, shows of previous work and references will probably yield the most benefit in winning new clients. In my experience, getting new business from smaller clients is more about networking and building relationships than anything else. Even though I encourage clients to look at my previous work and speak to references, the smaller clients pretty much never take me up on it. Larger firms tend to have a more conservative, structured, and objective approach to engaging new vendors, however.
That said, some certifications aren't too expensive. CompTIA is a lower-priced option, though not exactly cheap (http://certification.comptia.org/Training/testingcenters/examprices.aspx). If you think getting a certification might help, maybe consider getting something like Linux+ and/or Network+. Both credentials require one exam.
In your situation, it might make sense to seek a part time job or contract somewhere, rather than run your own business. If you have your own company (even for those of us who are highly experienced), you will likely burn a lot of time trying to snag new business. The nice thing about working for someone else is that you are earning money for all your effort, which is why I think working for the man might be best for you -- your time to dedicate to this job will be limited.
Best of luck in your work and your studies!
Mike
Although I haven't used it yet, I found...
Just start writing a portfolio. You'll be surprised how much you've accomplished, AND how COOL it is.
Become a Certified Application Security Specialist! (http://www.asscert.com)
This will look great on your resume and impress the shit out of prospective employers.
This post makes no sense. Is there even such a thing a Drupal cert? If there is, hardly anybody asks for it.
The poster is doing a Ph D in psychology. The post makes perfect sense in this context: He is observing the reactions to the post, and will write a thesis about slashdot and online collaboration, whateva.
Referencees
Psych students are all nuts and think they will somehow figure out their own issues at school.
That makes a lot of sense. I've often found that engineering students are shoddily put together and hope to figure out their own issues at school. Also that physics students are mostly composed from particles beyond the Standard Model and medical students are dying of cancer. English lit students can't read and communications majors tend to be deaf-mutes. Based on your shoddy understanding of logic, I'm guessing... philosophy major?
Mock the GP all you like but my Psych 101 professor basically said they occasionally do have people choose the major in an attempt at self-treatment. The professor confessed he did so himself. He said that when he came home from Vietnam he was able to go to college using G.I. Bill benefits, wasn't sure what he wanted to study and chose psychology hoping it would help him deal with his personal issues. He said it did not, that it never does, and that anyone sitting in the class thinking of going that route should save themselves some time and frustration and seek professional help now.
... why is that mother f'er shooting at me ... God is you let me survive this ... sh*t I am not going to survive this ... might as well do my "job" until then.
He was a great professor by the way. His humorous description of how he progressed through all five stages of grief (denial, anger, bargaining, depression, and acceptance) in seconds during his first firefight was quite memorable. This sh*t can't be happening
Just test out of it. Most certs you can go take the test for, for under $200.
Also, you're PhD makes me suspicious that we're all being sucked into some graduate study.
Get written references from people you worked before, and wherever possible show them what you did. You may also be able to do some CS courses for credit in the context of the PhD, to get something academic.
Most ACs are not even worth the keystrokes to insult them. Be generically insulted by this and ignored otherwise.
If you want to do research (rather than psychotherapy) you might want to consider a degree in neuroscience, which often comes with a stipend for the student. Then you wouldn't have to try to moonlight to avoid taking on school-related debt - which a lot of programs frown on anyways.
Damn_registrars has no butt-hole. Damn_registrars has no use for a butt-hole.
Compared to working in a mine in Africa yes, but not by first-world standards.
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Today's students don't want to have to think. They study to try to pick a correct answer out of a mix of incorrect answers, but they don't perform well if they have to come up with the answer on their own.
I taught anatomy and physiology to a group of nursing students (there was one non-nursing student in my group of ~20) during a summer session. I realize that health care is in great peril, not from Obamacare, but from the people that we are going to have taking care of us.
As for medical school, I knew a lot before I went. I'd had biochemistry, microbiology, physiology, and pharmacology classes before I went. Now, residency (general surgery) was where I gained real knowledge. One bit of knowledge that I learned is that the 100 hour work week is a real bitch. The residents today, that have an 80 hour work week limit have it so easy!!
Unfortunately that isn't always sufficient to convince potential customers.
You sure about that? Like the interviewer literally and HONESTLY said the reason you were not picked was:
Since I never studied ICT nor followed a course that resulted in a certificate, I can only prove my knowledge by actually doing stuff or showing what I've done so far
There's a lot of people looking for work... how do you know its not the bosses son who got the job or whatever, regardless of your wallpaper?
I've never had a job interview where they cared about anything other than what I have done, with THREE exceptions:
1) We only hire bachelors degree holders as an idiotic policy (back before I got my otherwise worthless degree)
2) Our contract w/ Cisco means that we "need" to hire a certain percentage of CCNA CCNP CCIE to maintain a lower contract cost or something (been there, done that, got the CCNA and CCNP, long since expired)
3) We're high tech pimps and we spend lots of money to advertise that our hos all have a certain cert... we don't care about the cert but our customers, apparently, do.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
If you're technically skilled and so's your customer, you'll obviously find it easier to demonstrate your level of proficiency. On the flipside, if you're attempting to sell yourself to an HR manager, the only way to prove anything to one of them is with a brick to the side of their head.
show them documentation you've written. UML diagrams, tutorials, presentations.
Everyone wants an IT specialist who can sling code, but if you can convey information effectively to help other people work better, it shows that you're focused on the bigger picture and the longer term.
Koans and fables for the software engineer
Well, if you don't have the IT skills needed to print your own certificates, three words: "University of Phoenix".
Well, if that is a little too expensive, try some distance learning program of diploma mills from Chennai, Bangalore, Hyderabad, Karnool, Anantapur, Kakinada, Vijayawada, Chirala, Bapatla, Kattangulaththur, West Rajaseekamangalam, Thiruvadanai, East Seevalpatti, Kalayarkoil or Thondi. Typical diplomas go for about 100 Rs each. Three for 250. Wait for Diwali sale to save even more money.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I am sure you know what most people have been telling you.
- If you know your stuff, you can take many of the cert tests for not that much money after reading a book.
- There are a bunch of these and most aren't worth anything.
- There are better ways to market yourself than certificates.
- Your belief in a credibility gap will negatively impact your ability to find work.
What I think you are asking is if there are any that the /. community finds actually worthy of some respect and have some relation to the areas you list to help you with what you feel is a credibility gap.
As a programmer, I really don't have an answer for you.
You insensitive clod! I freelance in IT working for a mine in Africa!
char*f="char*f=%c%s%c;main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}";main(){printf(f,34,f,34);}
Have fake certs made to flash around.
Because this is /. The stages of acceptance when put on a new software project.
1. Denial. The code can't be this bad.
2. Anger. I'm going to break all of 'old coders' fingers so he can never do this again, all his toes to just to be sure. (I've just blown anon. I've left this message in comments several times).
3. Bargaining. Let me rewrite 'core function' and I can live with the 'data model'.
4. Depression. Just shoot me, 'core function' uses 'utility function set' which is tied to 'whole mess' I'm fucked.
5. Acceptance. We'll just keep this limping along until management authorizes a complete rewrite (at this point all your fingers should be broken).
John McAfee 'It was like that time I hired that Bangkok prostitute; to do my taxes, while I fucked my accountant'
If you are paying for your PhD in psychology it means you don't have an assistantship, and it also means you will have a very, very, very hard time competing against other people once you graduate. Doing IT work during your graduate studies will make you even less desirable as a graduate because it's nice that you have skills in that area, but those don't translate to useful research skills, and there are a fair number of computer savvy grads coming out who also have research skills and experience, so they are vastly more desirable.
In my lab, we bin any post-doc who applies who didn't have an assistantship because, well, what's wrong with them that nobody wanted to take them on? And we would also have to spend far, far more time training them thawe would someone who had been doing research or working with faculty during their graduate studies at that level.
If you do have an assistantship, there is really no way in hell you're going to have time to handle everything. I know they *say* 20ish hours of work per week, but it really goes far beyond that.
Being a freelancer/consultant eats up a LOT of time. I mean for every billable hour you have, or for every project you get, you are going to be spending a ton of time getting the work or adjusting to your client's changing demands. It sounds like you're really green (else wise why are you asking such basic questions here) so my prediction is that you would get eaten alive.
Seriously, as someone who is now working in your desired field and who has in the past done IT consulting, focus on your studies, get in a lab to do research (eveif you are in a clinical program - research experience makes you vastly more desirable in any number of ways) and get a job that has extremely defined hours if you need to pay the bills. Unless you are super human (and your basic question indicates to me that you aren't) you will just be completely screwed.
Again, I don't meats shit on your hopes, but seriously, if you want your PhD to be useful and worthwhile, focus on that and don't worry about tech stuff except as a hobby.
Signed, someone who went through her first semester in a clinical science psych PhD program thinking she could easily handle the coursework, TA and RA responsibilities, and also a part time job that required any thought at all, and learned from her mistake.
Since I can't tell them apart, I treat all ACs as the same person.
I guarantee if you come work for me and dont get fired in the first 60 days, you will be improving your IT skills.
I'm the owner of my company, so a bit part of my job is following certifications to qualify us for certain clients. That said for roles in my organisation where I know real-life technical knowledge is way more important than the cert, I recommend and pay for the A+, and let them develop their career on their own.
The A+, is THE entry-level IT Technician Certification. It covers a large range of basic criteria and qualifies you as a "Certified IT Technician". Small clients won't expect/understand the benefits of the other certs so for this use-case it's the best cost/benefit.
Also, please don't go running around installing CentOS servers in small offices. AD works just fine, don't fix what isn't broken. There is a time and place for Linux but trust me, it's mostly not in small offices.
Education in many countries, especially at the PhD level, is free.
Getting into those countries other than through birth, on the other hand, is not.
I would get a PHD in IT, instead of Psychology.
I must have missed the memo about the uniform global legal system.
What I've seen is pretty much uniform: If you weren't born here, and you don't already have an accredited master's degree and work experience, get out.
Change your major. Psychology locks you into child stealing and little else.
Operation Guillotine is in effect.
Please don't top-post with a complete quote in forums where the parent comment is immediately visible.
Education in many countries, especially at the PhD level, is free.
Really? You mean that the professors (in the countries you are referring to) work for free? I know they don't! Somebody pays for that "free" education, somehow. In fact, that "free" education gives the students enjoying it such peace of mind that they don't have to worry about employability (return on investment, really, although other people's money is invested) after graduation. In the US, government loans and lies by the universities make students think their education will be free (because—so the twisted thinking goes—they will borrow the money to go to college and after graduating they will be earning so much money that their student loan will be of no issue). University education in the US is very expensive, mostly thanks to government intervention, and should be treated as a risky investment, which is what it is. In countries with "free" education, the investment risk is socialized.
I've been working in the industry for over 20 years, 18 years with my own business. No one asks me about my skills, about my credentials, or if I even went to high school, let alone graduated from it. All of my clients come from the word of mouth of other clients. Correctly, no one could care less.
I have heard this argument over and over throughout the start of my IT career. I have worked in IT since I was a teenager. I have held various jobs such as a network administrator, technical support, systems implementation, and system maintenance roles.
I think there are two ways to looking at an IT career.
The first way is a bottom up approach where you are a user expert of a system provided by a vendor. For example, Microsoft Operating Systems, XYZ Software, Inc, Red Hat Linux Systems, Intel Diagnostic phone boards. These systems require experts to install, configure, and maintain these systems. When problems arise, they need to be able to provide troubleshooting skills to solving the various problems that come with implementing and maintaining these systems.
The second way is a top down approach to an IT career. This is when you work at organizations that make the systems. I call these the technologist creationists, the inventors like Bill Gates or Steve Jobs, or Larry Ellis, Larry Page, Linus Torvalds, Marc Andreessen, Mark Zuckerberg. The typical debate here is to the riches, but many of these people had the environment, support, and passion to be a tech creationist. These are the founders but for every founder there is an army of people with high education and experience that put together such large systems like the mars rover, missile attack systems, GPS, phone networks, and the likes. This level of skill requires a lot of education, a lot of studying, and a lot of persistence, and passion to make happen. Can this be done without an education? Sure. Can you live the fantasy that being at this level is easy and you can do it because of the motivational stories you hear, which in other words propaganda is, sure, everyone needs motivation. This level is hard, and it requires a different skill set, commitment, discipline, and network.
So with these two distinct roles in the market place it all depends on your goals. If you just want to be a user expert and political person that manages a vendor relationship for an organization focus on the bottom up approach, go get those certs, go get that computer science degree, network. If you want to do the top down approach, study, network, build, collaborate, be a bottom up user that can innovate the future and understands the vision.
I think those that attack certs don't clearly understand their purpose/objective as a basic requirement for a role. In addition to the people who don't do it, don't do it because of the time commitment, resources, cost, and because they fear looking like an idiot if they don't pass. Those that look down on people with certs as not being able to perform in the work place, that is a whole different issue to me. As for the computer science degree argument, its really the same thing in my eyes because I know people with computer science degrees who have no drive in an IT career. I know people who have masters and have weak performance and understanding of the system they are working on. Then there is also the people side to the organization, the politics, which like I mentioned earlier is a whole separate area.
That’s my input.
Prior to all my professional positions, oh heck even during a couple of them, I had some consulting deals I was working on. I don't have degrees or certs, I have contacts/clients who know me and my work. Sometimes these contacts even give me a referral at a company I haven't applied to yet. Good luck!
You can write FREE tests at odesk and your high scores can pull clients in. I know.
I posted the original question and I'm completely overwhelmed about how many people took the time to post an answer. Besides that I'm also amazed about how the slashdot community moderates itself....
After going through almost all answers I've found a couple of great things that I haven't considered yet on the one hand, and on the other I now have a bit more certainty that things I assumed to be the right way are actually right ;)
Maybe it's interesting for some of you to know a bit about my background and how this question came up in the first place: ;) ... and it wasn't till I got a part-time job (limited for one project) at a marketing company, where I worked with professionals, that I found out that my skill level is actually not too bad and that I could actually make some money with it. I'm not after the big money and I don't have any illusions, I just want to earn enough to persue my goal of acquiring an phd, living in a country where a phd is not free, but also not nearly as expensive as in the U.S..
Till now using Linux and Drupal was indeed just a big (sometimes even too big) hobby next to an academic "career" in psychology and sociology (set in quot. marks since sometimes you can't life on it alone). The closest thing to use my skills professionally till half a year ago was, when I worked as a network administrator in a big student dorm on an almost pro-bono basis
Upload your knowledge to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khan_Academy
Casteism
For networks of any kind, a CCNA works wonders. I know it's a certification, (which is what you expressed avoiding) but there are enough resources out there to learn everything that it contains for free, then you just need to sit the exam (which costs $$$). But, even when I used to work with Nortel equipment, the CCNA seemed to be valued more than the Nortel equivalent (I have no idea why). But, it at least proves some Networking chops. The thing I hate about certification though is they only last three years, and if you let them lapse (as I have done), you end up looking like you know nothing even if you have enough pieces of paper to get the bonfire going for your cremation after you die (which is a joke my friends make about how many pieces of paper I have earned over the years). I'm in the middle of going back and getting re-certified in several IT areas, simply because I need to look like I know something, and I've been in IT for 25 years (longer if you count my first real IT course in 1981). I've met others who have been in IT for 25 years who never got past setting up desktops or Helpdesk, so the cert. at least helps differentiate you from those sorts of people. Then, there are the CompTIA courses (which I believe others have mentioned), which are similar in the fact there are free resources and you just need to pay for the test.
For some reason previous experience doesn't always seem to count with some companies, especially if non-IT knowledgable managers are in charge (where pointing out that you looked after a WAN that connected 360+ different LAN's together just gets you blank looks). They only seem to understand a piece of paper.
The only other thing I can recommend is cheaper certification from places like Brainbench (never used them myself), where it's about $50 per test. I have no idea how much weight those certs carry as I've never met anyone who had one, I just know of their existence because someone online recommended them to me to get certs from back in about 2000.
Sure enough, the cow costume was hanging up next to the superhero outfit and sailors uniform. (S,Spud)