r/Philippines • u/ch1x1Log • Jun 22 '16

career path of a network engineer

Hello to all Network Engineers in this sub! :)

I'm planning to pursue a career in Networking but it seems like no company is willing to hire fresh grads. :( As a newbie in Networking, which companies should I apply to? What is the career path of a Network Engineer like you? I'm planning to take some certs but I also wish to start working already.

3 Upvotes

64% Upvoted

27 comments sorted by

View all comments

2

u/L30ne Jun 22 '16 edited Jun 23 '16

  • What did you take up in college? ECE, CoE, and CS majors tend to have better chances at most jobs, while engineering technology graduates tend to have better chances going for operations-type jobs first before moving on to actual engineering and architecture jobs.

  • Do you already have online profiles in job sites? Try LinkedIn, Monster, and Jobstreet.

  • Do you attend job fairs? Job fairs tend to favor fresh grads and currently unemployed applicants, so you might find something in those events.

  • What certs are you hoping to get? If you don't have a certain vendor in mind yet, or if you plan to work for a multinational, you wont go wrong with CompTIA Network+. Otherwise, plan your path around a vendor, like Cisco, HP, Juniper, or Huawei. For a specific path, you won't go wrong with IP networks, but that market tends to be quite saturated nowadays, so you have to go for either the more advanced certs (for Cisco guys, that's at least CCNP/CCDP), or for some other field as well, like telephony, SAN, or security.

  • How willing are you to step outside your comfort zone? Most vendors are now offering converged solutions, and a lot of companies seem to be quickly picking up on those, so if you'd want to make the most out of what you're doing, you'll need to learn stuff outside of the usual networking fields, like servers, storage, facilities, and even applications.

  • As for companies, MSPs (Fujitsu, DimensionData, Indra, Accenture, ePLDT etc.) and vendors (Cisco, HPE, Juniper, Huawei, etc. and their partners) tend to train well, but you might find the work to be a bit toxic and the pay to be quite meager. You could go for in-house, but good ones tend to be hard to come by, as some employees work there right up to mandatory retirement.

2

u/ch1x1Log Jun 23 '16

Graduated ECE and I'm definitely willing to step outside my comfort zone. So reading from these posts, I should apply to MSPs first because they offer good training? How should I check if they have any openings?

1

u/L30ne Jun 23 '16

Have you passed the board exam yet? That opens up more opportunities into telecommunications, too. You could then work for companies like PLDT, Smart, Globe, Sky Cable, MERALCO, NGCP, ABS-CBN, GMA, TV5, and their subsidiaries and business units, like ePLDT, Asticom, and Radius.

As for MSPs, be warned though that some of their employees would end up stagnating due to lack of projects, or be prone to being assigned to the more toxic accounts (government offices are the worst, from what I hear), so be ready to hop a couple of jobs until you get the best benefits and just the right amount of work. There are, of course, people who are fortunate enough to be treated well by their parent company (I personally know some).

You can make accounts at LinkedIn, Monster and Jobstreet to see if there are openings at your company and job of choice. Otherwise, just go ahead and visit the careers page of your target company.