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Any helpful information will be greatly appreciated!
If you haven't had luck with applying for jobs, I'd suggest to think a bit outside the box. From my experience it helps if potential employers see you're passionate about something, whatever it is, even more so if it is in a relevant area.
A GitHub profile on that topic, (semi-) deep knowledge or something comparable helps quite a lot.
In our company we're primarily looking at, ordered in descending priority:
* is the applicant either senior or does she/he show credible interest in learning?
* is she/he a cultural fit (i.e. for our case, shows ownership, is able to express criticism and accept as well, is honest, ...)
* does she/he have enough emotional and intellectual capacity to adapt to a changing environment?
To be honest, from my experience IT certifications don't bring much bang for the buck, but this probably depends on what kind of certification it is. If you haven't had luck with applying for jobs, I'd suggest to think a bit outside the box. From my experience it helps if potential employers see you're passionate about something, whatever it is, even more so if it is in a relevant area. A GitHub profile on that topic…
Sans does some of the best security education broadly available, but it's very expensive.
To be honest, from my experience IT certifications don't bring much bang for the buck, but this probably depends on what kind of certification it is. If you haven't had luck with applying for jobs, I'd suggest to think a bit outside the box. From my experience it helps if potential employers see you're passionate about something, whatever it is, even more so if it is in a relevant area. A GitHub profile on that topic…
What non-programming type roles exist that I could focus on?
* Do you like to really understand customer needs? Start focusing on UX/Interaction design
* Do you like to help the dev team to avoid critical bugs and you're feeling confident to delve deep into the domain of some product? Approach a quality assurance career or go into test automation
* Do you like to directly interact with customers, helping them overcome technical or product obstacles etc.? What about trying a customer support role?
I guess the main point is: find the thing you like, and sell it! :)
CCNA if you plan on doing anything with networking. I took a training course in highschool (many years ago!) but never took the test and it's been pretty invaluable. Yah there's a lot of vendor-specific stuff in it, but there is also a lot of theory that's applicable across the board. It's very hard to get any experience with that type of gear prior to your first real job.
Since you mentioned Networking and Security and let's assume you want to work in this field. - I would take Cisco CCNA/CCNP etc.
Disclaimer: it's been a while since I looked into them so do some research which ones are relevant to you.
If you wanted to focus more specifically on network design / admin, you could go for a major vendor certification, like Cisco CCNA or something.
Of course networking and security go hand in hand, and given your degree, it might be that you'd want to do some combination of both... getting a CCNA and the Security+ certification, for example.
The thing is, it's hard to do anything other than speak in terms of generalities here, because every employer is different in terms of what they are looking for and what they value. Some companies weight certifications quite heavily (they may even require certain ones), others don't weight them much at all. The key things I'd say are:
1. Don't treat certifications as a panacea. They can help, but they're not a magic wand. Look at all the ways you can beef up your resume.
2. If you do pursue a certification, stick with ones from credible / well known organizations. If it's a vendor certification, you can feel pretty good about going with a Cisco or Juniper or whoever. It it's from a consortium or certifying body, the well known ones are usually relatively credible. As a simple first-pass heuristic, if Linux Academy or Egghead.io offer a prep class for a certification, it's probably a credible one that's recognized in industry, that could be worth pursuing.
3. If you do pursue a certification, don't focus on just "getting the cert at all costs" (eg, don't go find braindumps and just memorize the answers). STUDY and LEARN the material for real. If you can find a way to take the stuff you learn, turn it into a portfolio project of some sort, and then publish that on Github, so much the better.
4. Write. Start a blog and write technical content. Write about your learning experience(s). If you start a project, blog about the project you're working on.
5. Network. Go to events (Meetups, user-group meetings, whatever you can find) that cater to the people doing the kind of work you want to be doing. Get to know people, and build personal relationships. Offer to speak at the group. In my experience, this is one of the best methods of "personal branding" available to you.
6.Use LinkedIn to your advantage. Have an account, fill it out completely, and post relevant content. What's relevant content? Well, if you write a technical blog post, share it to your network. If you complete a class on Linux Academy or something like that, share that. Etc.
7. You may be able to find some volunteer opportunities where you can gain some real world experience. Plenty of charitable groups could use somebody to build a database for them, or add some features to their website, etc. They may not be able to pay you, but you can still use that experience on your resume to help show what you're capable of.
Finally, you'll notice I mentioned Linux Academy twice above. That's only because I am a happy customer of theirs. I have no financial stake or other interest in that company aside from being a customer. That said, I DO recommend them highly for IT related training. They offer tons of classes on all manner of topics, with a heavy focus on certification prep. I used their material to prepare for the AWS Certified Solution Architect exam, and am going through their material for the Docker Certified Associate exam now. They also offer plenty of standalone classes that aren't specifically exam prep, and every time you finish one of these you get a "certificate of completion" which, while not necessarily worth a ton by itself, makes something useful to add to your LinkedIn profile. If you don't have real world work experience yet, a handful of these to help bolster your resume probably can't hurt.
I cannot offer you a job, but I can at least take a look on how you apply, and help you imrpove that process of application. I have several year of experience in recruiting on my back, and that in multiple countries.
Improving your resume and application progress might actually be the missing part and if not, you can still figure out a way sell yourself good enough to get hired. :)
Send me the following stuff to my email: zahrc_hn |at| protonmail.com
And please make sure you redact any sensitive or private information of you and the companies you've applied for.
- the listing or description (position name, requirements, ...)
- How long it took for them to respond, after you've applied
- your resume/CV/cover letter/portfolio whatever you send to a company
- a informal written document on what you did and at what level and how big the company was, paired with what you really like to do and what you would like to do in future
edit: formatting and adding: please also add from which country you are from