November 18 is National Career Development Day! In fact, the whole month of November is dedicated to career development and is sponsored by the National Career Development Association, which promotes and supports professional education, preparation, and credentialing for career development programs and services.
The Linux Foundation offers many career development resources for developers, users, and administrators of Linux systems. One of the most important offerings is its Linux Certification Program, which provides performance-based exams that are continuously updated using feedback from the community, so they are always up-to-date and relevant.
Whether you’re looking for your first job or just looking to upgrade your current position, a Linux Foundation certification will help you demonstrate your value and verify your skills. With a wide choice of online, classroom, and on-site Linux training offerings, Linux Foundation courses can help you stay ahead of the curve.
To celebrate Career Development Day, here are some of the ways that recent training participants, scholarship winners, and certified engineers and sys admins say the certifications will help them meet their career goals. What are your goals? How could training help you? Tell us in the comments, below, or weigh in with @LF_Training on Twitter.
Career Goal #1: Technical Leader in Linux Networking
Diego Xirinachs, who is a Linux Foundation Certified Engineer, says his career goals include becoming a technical leader on Linux networking technologies.
“Having a certification straight from the company that hosts Linux and even employs the Linux creator is a statement about my real Linux skills, and proves my skills are not tied to any distribution in particular,” says Diego.
Career Goal #2: Expert in Linux for the Enterprise
Enrique Sevillano works as an IT manager at an energy utility company. He says Linux and open source have allowed him to deploy a high-availability virtualization infrastructure as well as affordable storage and cloud solutions.
”I am ensuring my career as an expert of deploying Linux for the enterprise as well as transitioning to Linux from another computing platform… I do see Linux Foundation courses as an essential part of my career,” Enrique says.
Career Goal #3: Linux Security Specialist
Eva Tanaskoska is a university student in Macedonia who sees training as a way to enhance her education and build a specialized skill set. She is currently forming a CERT team, where she mentors students on using Linux to perform penetration tests, forensic investigations, and incident response.
She is taking the Linux Security course, because, she says, “I want to learn as much as I can about Linux’s security mechanisms. My graduation thesis will also be Linux security oriented. Therefore, I’m certain the course will help me greatly with it and possibly with my postgraduate studies, too.”
Career Goal #4: OpenStack Expert
Ivan Melia took the OpenStack Cloud Architecture and Deployment course as a way to rapidly gain expertise with OpenStack. He says, “Training helps me have a real skill set and background that puts me in better position to talk about technology and have credibility. Training for me is an acceleration in the ramp up in building a technology skill set.”
“I was expecting that the training would be in-depth and it was. It was the perfect amount of theory and practice. I wanted to be able to deploy OpenStack in data centers, and consult on Open Cloud deployment, and the training was a great value add. I wouldn’t have felt comfortable doing that without the training,” Ivan says.
Career Goal #5: Differentiating Job Skills
Nam Pho, a recently certified system administrator, works in the research computing group at Harvard Medical School. He sees training and certification as a way to differentiate yourself from others when applying for a job.
He says, “Having been on both sides of the process, I’ll say that hiring is tough. There are so many applicants for jobs these days that say they know this or that and without talking to them it’s tough to really know the depth or quality of that experience. I like to think that having certifications is a rough proxy for some competency and will increase the odds that you get a response.”
