[TriLUG] Career planning - certs(?)

[Greg Cox]

> Work on your skills, volunteer if you have to.  Beef up your
> resume with actual knowledge.
>
> Having interviewed several hundred people, knowledge
> impresses me over paper.

I'll second what Matt's said, with a little more.  One of the things
I ask in every interview is "Tell me about your home network."

There's plenty of sysadmin-y things you could run that would let you
pick up some knowledge that might help you get in the door.
Set up a server.  LVM your partitions.  Set up automounting your
home directory across boxes.  Run your own internal DNS.  Set up
a DHCP server.  LDAP your userids.  Set up serial consoles to
everything.  Set up apache and mysql and a wiki.  Document your
changes.  Get some cheap managed cisco switches off ebay and VLAN
your servers from your desktops.  Set up a backup rotation.  Set
up monitoring for all the services you just spun up.

There's plenty you can learn at home for far less than an RHCE costs,
and it gets you buzzwords for resume fodder.