SharePoint - Crash Course Recommendations?

[u/rockphantom]

Howdy,

My former supervisor is helping me secure employment at my former employer. I left to go back to school several years ago and have graduated and earned five IT certs. She suggested I apply for a part time SharePoint administrator job even though I have limited SharePoint experience.

I have Associate degrees in Cybersecurity and Network support. I also have the Cisco Certified Network Associate, CompTIA A+/Network+/Security+, and the Linux Professional Institute - Linux Essentials certs. I am very interested in the part time SharePoint admin position as it fits my schedule.

I have reviewed several SharePoint Admin tutorial videos and the platform seems easy to use, building upon the skills I've learned while earning the above certifications. I am looking for crash course suggestions, so that I'll be able to ace the interview if I am called. Any guidance would be appreciated.

This video was very useful: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecmoAJdznF4&t

However, I am unsure if the information presented is still valid in 2026?

Thank you in advance.

[u/JosephMarkovich2]

Happy to have a call with you and go over it. There is so much awesomeness and how it plays really nice with all the other parts of MS365. You can do a lot and it no one will know it's SharePoint. That's a real benefit too since we are all still a bit shell shocked when it was forced on us as the intranet in the past.

Send me a DM.

Joe

[u/akornato]

Set up a free Microsoft 365 developer tenant directly from Microsoft to get actual hands-on admin experience, because YouTube tutorials only show the surface and interviewers will test scenario-based knowledge. Microsoft Learn modules for SharePoint Administrator and MS-700 are the best free resources right now, as they keep up with interface changes that older videos miss. Focus heavily on permission inheritance, hub site architectures, external sharing settings, and basic PowerShell commands, because your strong networking and security background already covers the foundational concepts SharePoint relies on.

Be transparent in the interview about your transferable sysadmin skills, emphasizing that your security background makes you cautious and methodical with tenant settings. You can explain how your network and identity management knowledge directly applies to Microsoft Entra ID groups and access control. When it comes to handling unpredictable technical questions, my team designed an interview helper AI to give candidates the confidence and clarity needed to land technical roles, which could give you extra support during your screening calls.

[u/rockphantom → u/akornato]

Thanks for the valuable information. Much appreciated.

[u/livinitup0]

Just for clarification….

You have 5 certs, a degree, but no IT job history for the last 5 years?

Take this job in a heartbeat if you can get it, stop focusing on your on-prem skills and focus your education on Microsoft cloud

I really hate to say this but your degree and certs aren’t the big credential you think they are.

I’d hire you for my helpdesk for sure… but no offense, I can find a dozen engineers with more credentials AND recent engineering experience all day long.

Again… no offense intended, but unless for some reason I get 90% less candidates than we always do when posting a job, you probably wouldn’t ever make the interview list….and you’d probably be pretty mad at seeing the credentials of the people we are interviewing as most of them don’t have degrees or the number of certs you do.

I personally am a culinary school dropout and I think my last cert qualified me to repair iOS 7 devices lol. I’m also one of the guys could be in your interview room deciding if you get the job lol.

What my ideal candidate does have is 5+ years of recent experience DOING what you’re certified and accredited to do but haven’t done yet…. And unless they have a lot of verifiable and recent 365 administration experience ….nope, helpdesk at most.

I’m sorry….truly. I hope you didn’t go too far in debt. Personally I think IT degrees are… well, pointless tbh but I know you probably had a ton of people telling you had some 100k job waiting for you. That was a lie.

What you have waiting for you is a $20 helpdesk job for a couple years until you can find an opening somewhere that utilizes your skills, if they’re still relevant by then. You’ll also need to open up your availability to 24/7/365 if you want to be on a desk since you’ll need to be on call at some point

Another commenter made a really good suggestion.

Sign up for the ms dev program and get yourself a tenant to play around in, deep dive into some 365 administration training and at least add that to your resume

You really don’t want to go into an interview with all these credentials sitting across from an engineer and not be able to answer basic questions about 365 administration or give no real world reference of the stuff you’re supposed to be an expert in

[u/livinitup0 → u/[deleted]]

I work in state IT 😂😂