This is the question all the CCNA aspirants love to ask when the networking industry and related opportunities become a topic among their cronies. The CCNA exam was coined out by Cisco hiring team to illustrate (read filter) that you understand and can digest the topics relating to routing and switching. Putting simply, CCNA is the stepping stone for the IT organizations to acknowledge you as a serious candidate interested in pursuing a career in the networking industry. Of course there are other certifications, but Cisco has set a standard which this industry has got used to or should I say cannot live without.

It is true that Cisco products sells like hot cake. Though it can be debated that they might not be in the forefront in providing the cutting edge solutions to their clients, but they are known to provide the best output from whatever they have. One thing that sets them apart, is their aggressive sales and a well trained battery of TAC (Technical Assistance Center) engineers which would amount to around 5,000 engineers worldwide to support the products should the client need. I can say that with confidence since I was one among the TAC engineers couple of years ago and now I am working with Hewlett Packard. Only this time I get to play the role of a client interacting with the TAC to resolve complicated issues that are normally out of my reach. Every time, I am impressed.

The reason I am elaborating this work culture of Cisco, is because, CCNA certification does help in getting our basics right. Once you have the certificate in hand, the best way to start your networking career is by getting in as a TAC engineer with Cisco. But we all know it is not an easy coming, so, plan B is to try getting into a network support industry or implementations. Implementation in a simple language means… company A signs contract with Company B taking responsibility of designing and also maintaining their network. Assuming you are the network engineer with the Company A you get lot of chances to go onsite and help set up and maintain their network. This profile involves you to troubleshoot loads of network issues, which in turn sharpens your networking fundamentals.

Interviews will pour in the moment you post your resume online stating that you are CCNA certified, the tricky situation arises when you have to chose between organizations, one that offers your lots of onsite opportunities and the other that would be a desk job with your profile consisting of taking up calls from the clients, check up with them for the basic troubleshooting and if that does not resolve the issue, involve your escalation engineer or raise a TAC case with Cisco. As we all know, experience pays, so choosing the first organization would be wiser, because I am sure CCNA is not where you would intend to stop, you would consider more certs for growth opportunities.. won’t you?

Few things that I would love to share with you….

1) The moment you get a chance to play with a router/switch to configure it. Grab it.

2) Do not hesitate to appear for your interviews or telephonic ones, a good interviewer will surely expose a chink in your armour. But freshly certified CCNAs are never thoroughly checked for their bookish knowledge, instead for the choice of wordings in your replies.
3) Last but not the least, if you are serious about pursuing networking, never give up in case of a ‘mishap’. CCNA can be passed with barely 2 months of systematic preparation for beginners. For ones with experience and fairly good amount of hands on experience ….I would say just a month.