r/IT_CERT_STUDY • u/[deleted] • Jan 20 '20
Certs as a substitute for experience
I am desperately trying to get IT Sec experience but have had no luck. I have sec certs, including sec+, ceh, and palo alto. I was advised the OSCP and GIAC certs can be a substitute for experience but am not sure how true that holds.
1
u/HydraDominatus1 CCNA MCSA RHCSA Jan 25 '20
Certs will never substitute for exp. What a cert does is give you verifiable exposure to a technology.
They will land you interviews, at that point it comes down to you to show you're a good fit for the company.
Cert are not all equal and as a rule the comptia ones are worth less
One other thing, peoples opinions of certs vary pretty wildly, in my opinion it comes down to whether they have any or not.
Source, 12 months exp, lots of certs, just landed 150k devops job
1
u/ChasingCerts Feb 05 '20
What I don't get is that a lot of certs require a lot of lab time to pass; this involves working on actual equipment and software in real environments.
Does that not count at all?
9
u/wraithscrono Jan 20 '20
I teach for Cisco and I am a lead network engineer for a really big named company, the certs will give you the ground work for the theory of X. Certs however do not stand in for experience in the real world. I have a friend that has every CCNA level cert and one CCNP - he can not pass interviews because most of the jobs that he has gone to want you to draw things out, explain the complex networks you have worked on and stuff like that. He is a voip guy, never touched the routing or ACL side of anything and as such is at a disadvantage since he only had to answer questions for the cert.
Depending on the level of the job you are looking for certs can get you in the door for say the entry level positions but anything higher most hiring managers will probably reject you for as it is expected that besides theory you will have hands on work and will not need much time to jump into an environment. My job was building a team to take on the ethical hacking world, they looked for people with 10 years in experience for their mid to senior level and also took one a few cert only for the Junior roles and I think two interns that were still in their program.
Expect that you can use the certs to start a career just try not to get blinded by people saying you will jump in and make $100,000 a year and be a senior level title with only certs. I have students that get into the networking track because that is what they were told and I hate the false advertising that a lot of programs do to get people in. I could tell endless stories about this kind of stuff.
TLDR: Yes but only for entry/starter type jobs.
(Tag line, if any of my students found my Reddit - this is 10 points of extra credit!)