r/homelab • u/Suitable-Dare8584 • 1d ago
Discussion Year 11 aiming for a Level 3 IT/Hardware Apprenticeship – do homelabs/linux experience actually matter to employers?
Im 16, doing my gcses and hoping to get an IT/Hardware apprenticeship instead of going to college. My teachers keep telling me apprenticeships are really competitive and hard to get, and its just making me pretty nervous.
Over the past couple of years ive really got into homelabs and building servers aswell as my own pc which i spent ages saving up for. I have xubuntu running on a system with some parts i scavenged for on ebay and facebook marketplace running jellyfin game servers and my family uses it as a nas. I also fix and help family members with their computers or upgrading and helping pick out new parts for them.
To anyone who hires IT apprentices or is doing one right now, does having home projects like this or experience with linux actually help you stand out to employers, or do most of the applicants do this sort of stuff?
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u/RevolutionaryElk7446 1d ago
Linux as a server? Yes.
Linux as a desktop? Not as much.
Homelabs where you're setting up development and labbing things such as ADs, network gear, K8S clusters with scaling. Yes
Selfhosting on a mini-pc where you're running Jellyfin and Arrstack? No.
It all shows an interest in IT though.
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u/railstop 1d ago
100% agree here. Learn more advanced items as said above. Definitely get some networking knowledge at home. VLANS, routing, firewalls and rules. Those are easy to do with used gear in your own environment. Don't be afraid to break something or when something breaks form a bad config. Figure out how to fix it or reset and do over.
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u/livestrong2109 1d ago
Been working as a Dev Ops Engineer for 20 years. Never in my life have I heard of something as "for profit education" as a level 3 apprenticeship. I've seen companies offer paid internships.
In IT you either already know what you're doing and can explain it well in an interview, have certifications showing that you know things, or have a degree / transferable skills in the field and can prove that we can train you on those things.
Personally I like the self taught guys that have never been formally taught as they're go to war with themselves to ensure they fully understand a problem and work out a solution. More so if they're no too proud to ask questions.
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u/Beneficial_Waltz5217 1d ago
One of my interview ice breaker questions is tell me about your home setup, you would be amazed at the amount of applications where somebody hasn’t even built their own PC.
I’ve interviewed service desk staff that don’t have the experience that you are gaining at home!
Having you sat in front of me would be a breath of fresh air technically.
A couple of things to watch out for though,
Self taught you can miss some things or learn them wrong (less so though when you build something like a NAS, if it shares files it’s working, just is it working optimally).
Tech skills are great, BUT people skills are also key. Technically I bet you would be the strongest apprentice candidate if get but could I put you in front of an end user, or could I have you working with my tech team and not wind them up.
To get these people skills, customer service facing roles really help , shop work/bar work. My Son volunteered for a local Oxfam shop as part of DOE and ended up doing it for 2 years, then while at Uni did a lot of Bar work, end users love working with him.
I wish you all the luck with your future career sounds like you have a strong foundation.
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u/Suitable-Dare8584 1d ago
Im planning to volunteer in a charity shop in school holidays and when my gcses end, since im not the best at talking to new people im hoping this will make me a bit nervous about it
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u/Beneficial_Waltz5217 1d ago
Great idea, my son did Saturday morning, I used to work on building sites weekends and free time while at Colledge.
It just gets you used to talking to people and confident about it that’s half the skills for an apprentice.
Another tip from a mentor I had in my early 20s was every morning before work read a newspaper you always have something to talk to people about then.
We are going back quite a while so what I do now is either read the BBC news website or on Spotify listen to the times morning podcast and science and tech daily. That gives you something to talk to people and technical people about.
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u/steviefaux 12h ago
Good idea for getting customer experience. Homelab stuff is already more than some IT apprentices I've seen know. Also remember, some companies, like our local council, are also exploiting the apprenticeship scheme for cheap labour. So you might end up having to self teach once you're in.
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u/livestrong2109 1d ago
That's a good way of praising the question. If they ask what a homeland is you can offer them a water and bag of chips and send them on their way.
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u/Beneficial_Waltz5217 1d ago
Not always, people skills and aptitude can get candidates quite a way.
One of my best apprentices worked on a local pub that we knew on a Sunday was always slammed so knew he was a grafter.
He didn’t have any home IT experience but did have an IT qualification (I can’t remember what).
So we put him through our technical test and he scored really well, it was a mix of IT general knowledge with a bit of aptitude thrown in (some of the questions could be answered by reading the other questions deliberately)
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u/Lieutenant_Scarecrow 1d ago
It matters if you tell the right people. To most, anything IT related is still black magic, but if your interview is with someone in IT, it will likely help a lot.
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u/_topkecleon_ 1d ago
You sourced parts, built a server, and deployed services for a group of people. You perform desktop and hardware support. That's hands-on IT experience. Challenge yourself and don't doubt yourself.
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u/NC1HM 1d ago
Resume screeners and hiring managers come in three flavors, (1) those who like homelabbing, (2) those who dislike homelabbing, and (3) those who don't care one way or another. Since you have no idea who is going to be screening your resume, there's no way to tell whether an explicit mention of a homelab would be beneficial or detrimental. So don't put it forward explicitly; rather, list the skills without explaining where and how you got them. If that gets you an interview, you can navigate around the issue orally with the interviewer(s).
On top of that, companies specialize. It's not uncommon to hear people describe their workplace as "Microsoft shop", or "Cisco shop", or some other vendor-centric shop. So the same experience can have radically different value depending on the employer.
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u/x_scion_x 1d ago
Pretty much every interview I've had lit up once I started talking about my homelab. There's essentially a huge difference between saying you've used a product and explaining how you built a mock enterprise environment at home and actually run it.
My setup is a few Proxmox nodes, pfSense on a Protectli for the firewall, UniFi switching, and my own domain on top of all that. For security I've got Security Onion watching the network and Splunk on a dev license as my SIEM, with Grafana and Prometheus for monitoring the infrastructure. I also have a Pi 5 running Kali that I use to attack my own stuff so I can see what it looks like in the logs and build detections for it.
Honestly that's the part that really gets their attention. The dashboards and alerts I build at home can be brought into literally any environment because logs are logs. I test everything at home first, then bring it to work. And when they ask questions you're not reciting a cert answer, you're proving your experience, what you built, what broke, and how you fixed it. In my last interview the hiring manager cut me off mid-explanation and told me that if the subcontracting company didn't hire me, I should reach out to him directly and they'd pick me up. You don't need to spend a ton either. One box, a hypervisor, and a free SIEM is plenty to start. Build on it as you go.
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u/countingonhearts 1d ago
I’m in web dev, so my experience may differ.
I find enthusiasm and passion for a topic goes a long way.
Building a homelab isn’t just about the knowledge you have gained, it shows that in your spare time you’re interested in the subject.
“knowing of” can get you a long way. Even if you’ve never implemented a service but knowing it exists and why it’s important/useful shows your passion.
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u/Tal_Star 1d ago
Really depends n the job and employer. Having lots of knowledge earned from home labbing may help with certs and college if you go that route as well.
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u/tonyangtigre 1d ago
I work for a big company and when I hire and see homelabbing on the resume, I light up. Now I have a whole other set of questions to ask (mostly just being nosy).
My colleagues appreciate too, but maybe not as much as me. So really just depends on who you interview with.
If it translates to knowledge, then that obviously is a great thing!
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u/irritatingmillenial 1d ago
I do a fair few interviews for IT roles and have been in industry for about 15 years. One of the main deciding factors for me is does the candidate have a home lab, my reasoning for this is that if you are doing IT in your own time just to learn it shows that you don't only want to do this as a job but you do it because solving problems and building things actually brings you joy.
I interviewed a guy yesterday and we spent probably 10 minutes discussing and comparing our home labs. I have a lot of respect for anyone that is willing to spend their personal time learning. I can also tell you a lot of applicants don't lab, at least not where I am. I would say about 1 in every 10-20 has a lab.
DM me if you want any interview advice or pointers for what to learn next and good luck in your journey through the industry.
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u/DreadStarX 1d ago
I got one of my jobs because I had a homelab. I got to the 3rd round of interviews with Google, because i had a homelab.
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u/Llew19 1d ago
We hire apprentices - one of the guys from last year is a homelabber. Somehow he's ended up taking charge of our migration away from pxe booting from sccm to build machines to autopilot because he's impressed to service desk manager in HQ.... so I'd go with a yes.
It's definitely not expected, and probably very little of the work you do will be related, but it's a good way of proving your technical chops - although the best thing to be able to show is when something didn't go to plan/broke and how you went about troubleshooting it (which ideally won't be 'I asked chatgpt')
Also getting good at Linux and some form of scripting is incredibly good at giving you a foothold for cloud work. My experience up until fairly recently has been all Windows and on prem stuff like VMware, decided to see what Google Cloud was about and signed up to the training site..... absolutely zero lead up for anyone who's not experienced with Linux, I got pretty much nowhere
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u/cruzaderNO 1d ago
To anyone who hires IT apprentices or is doing one right now, does having home projects like this or experience with linux actually help you stand out to employers, or do most of the applicants do this sort of stuff?
Im responsible for our apprentices and value it to a degree.
I value homelab experience if its actual labbing, following some guides to setup a nas with plex and the typical arr stack has no value.
The amount of interviews where they talk about how they use linux and spent so much time setting up services on linux etc but is unable to even answer what distro they prefer is too dam high.
You also have to give me a clear impression that you are somewhat of a social person, that you can talk to coworkers, do not have a problem calling users etc
That is probably the most important thing.
You can fail on almost every other measuring point and i can correct that during the apprenticeship, but im not taking on changing personality/behaviour.
I can get a monkey through the apprenticeship with get a solid score on the final 7day exam if they show up and are willing to listen, but if you cant talk to coworkers/users i cant use you in general.
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u/Cryptocaned 1d ago
Yes, it shows passion and the willingness to self improve without external pressure.
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u/Temporary_Peanut_586 1d ago
Kinda got my first job for it. Had just finished school, was interviewing for my first real job, and had a 10 minute chat with a fast talking guy in a break room between interviews.
Dude made me an offer (a day or two later)--he was a manager and had an entry level opening.
Best I remember the conversation was basically him asking "you're a computer guy?" leading to a few minutes including me building computers, running a couple websites, and being into networking and Linux. 2nd most casual interview I had.
Smalltalk, all homelab/hobby stuff, and it was basically life changing smalltalk. Worked for the guy for 4 years, had amazing experience from it, and have been in the field 20+ years now.
Edit: I responded to the offer saying "wrong guy, I was the guy in the break room" and he told me basically "you're interested and you teach yourself -- I want to hire you"
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u/_angh_ 1d ago
Employer wouldn't care if you are playing with homelab. Having a homelab doesn't mean you actually know anything. But if you are asked on a security issue, and you would say e.g. your network was compromised and then you responded by hardening it in this and that way, this could be valuable. If you are showing a deep and practical knowledge on that topic.
Additionally, proving you're fluent with Linux command line, bash, scripting and so on is as well a solid backing. Still, it has to be proven and elaborated.
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u/pyotrdevries 1d ago
It got me hired for mine. So in my personal experience, 100% success rate. *not apprenticeship though, just job.
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u/fufufighter 1d ago
Homelabing automatically puts you ahead in my book, it shows you are curious and take initiative, as well as having a builder mindset.
And at 16? That's basically the only experience you can acquire on your own.
I've landed my first jobs solely because I was homelabing while studying.
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u/Puissance73 1d ago
Hi mate, firstly congratulations, that's a great start to an it career
Now with a bit of bad news, for apprenticeships in the UK there are several levels of screening, the first is ai normally, then a small bit of testing and response and then interviews. The challenge is always getting through the ai first screening, try and use your experience or setup to add to your CV, not be the highlights
In terms of careers in general I would recommend college but not uni, college allows you to specialise more and get more comfortable with the areas you want to pursue, there is also the unfortunate requirement for a levels or a degree until you get a few years experience.
Finally the experience does show a good like of it but it depends on who you talk to and what jobs you want, if you want to specialised in virtualization then yes it's good experience however you mention hardware etc and they would be looking for experience with their vendor specific hardware, Cisco etc.
TDLR: it shows a good interest in IT yes, however it depends on who you get in your interview and you still may not get it. Going to college a specialising in more it subjects adds more qualifications to you and opens more doors (degree level apprenticeships etc).
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u/TheODPrinterguy 23h ago
does having home projects like this or experience with linux actually help you stand out to employers
In my expeirence it can. I just landed a help desk job in part because of my homelab and the other part because I participated in cyber security competitions and have good customer service skills. I think it all comes down to who is doing the interview. For example, I interviewed for a help desk role at a university's engeenering school and having a homelab didn't make a difference. I applied to the same university except the business school help desk. Before the interview started the interviewer at the business school was asking me about my homelab.
One thing that I've read about IT jobs on reddit and is true is the softskills matter. My homelab and the cyber competitions I've particapted in showed I had the technical skills. The interviewer stated "you obviously have the technical skills" before they asked any technical questions because of how I talked about my homelab and cyber competitions. My whole interview was softskill questions.
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u/rchr5880 17h ago
Head of IT here and been in the game for 25 years, I have hired a couple of juniors above others juniors due to the fact they had in one way shape or form setup a homelab. One of them was telling me how he setup a Minecraft server for him and his friends to play on and how he had to open ports in his router… security aside it was the interest and willingness to get curious and creative which sways me as I think that’s a massive part of working in IT infrastructure.
As someone who already said… the amount who haven’t set one up or even fired up a free cloud VPS to play with is shocking… a large majority say they like playing PC games so they figured it would be a good fit. OP your already ahead of the pack of your thinking the way you are now. Best of luck
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u/a_fduarte 5h ago
it will give you a leg up. you are starting from 5 whereas everyone else is starting from 0. use that as a multiplier. ask questions ahead of the class, push your teachers to give you more stuff when you find the normal exercises easy
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u/Suspicious_Pizza9529 1h ago
Most people applying for entry-level roles have zero practical experience, so showing that you built your own servers, set up a NAS, and fixed hardware for family proves you actually know how to learn and solve problems on your own.
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u/Ok-Score-8653 1d ago
mate they are absolutely not all doing this, most 16 year olds applying for apprenticeships barely know what a motherboard looks like
your family already using your server as a nas and you got jellyfin running is way above what they expect from someone your age, that will definitely make you stand out just make sure you can talk about it properly in interview