Hi everyone, I am a third year undergraduate student (at UC Berkeley) right now, and have been using Linux for a couple of years now. Right now I am thinking about doing sysadmin work after I graduate. Last summer I was able to get a full time internship at a startup doing system administration work. It went really well, and I have been continuing to work there part time this past school year. During that time I did a lot of work, including assisting in the migration of our server/development environment when the startup was acquired by a much larger company. Based on my experiences at this job, I am very confident in my technical skills. I've worked with several other Linux sysadmins, many of whom who have been doing Unix/Linux system administration for most of their careers. While I can't claim to match them in experience or knowledge, I feel that a few specific area aside (e.g. database things), I have a very strong level of technical knowledge. My experiences participating in this and several other mailing lists confirms this. I've looked at a number of job websites, and most system administrator positions require several years of experience. The introductory positions (i.e. the ones that require essentially no experience) are hard to find and are generally not very compelling. I've been thinking about getting an LPI or RHCE certification before graduating in the hopes that when the time comes I'll be able to get a more interesting job. Based on the LPI material I've looked at (including the O'Reilly "In A Nutshell" LPI book), I think that I could get a level 2 certification fairly easy. The RHCE material looks a bit more advanced, but I still know a good deal of it, and if I studied I could get one before I graduate (next year). That being said, both exams are fairly costly for a student: LPI-2 would be four $150 exams, and the RHCE exam is $750. Additionally, I'd have to take the RHCE exam again anyway (albeit at a lower price) in a few years anyway to keep the certification. My question is: how valuable do you think that these kinds of certifications are? I feel like getting them might prove to employers that I might not be as green as I appear, when it becomes time to go job hunting. On the other hand, there doesn't seem to be a lot of demand for these certifications, and my impression is that very few people actually get them. Are these certifications important, or are they just skipped over on resumes? Thanks a lot! Evan Klitzke -- redhat-list mailing list unsubscribe mailto:redhat-list-request@xxxxxxxxxx?subject=unsubscribe https://www.redhat.com/mailman/listinfo/redhat-list
