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[Exavior]

I knew a few who were laid off in my degree program a couple years ago. Sad times. Probably got their jobs with Associates and when the lay offs hit, they had to go back to school just to get back into things again. Of course I'm not finding much myself. I've got 4+ years experience and a Bachelors now. Only thing I don't have are certs. Wish I had the money for those...

Which some places might care about, others not so much. Depends on who does the hiring and reviewing of applications. For me, experience means much more than certs. I only currently have 1 cert myself, and that is the most worthless one A+. I have had classes on the other things, have 9 years exp, Bachelors.... a lot of places that I have noticed around here do say Bachelors or certs. For somebody just starting off with nothing else, the certs certainly won't hurt get you noticed. I will admit it is hard when looking at a resume for a system admin position and what you see if that the person has 3 years exp working at Burger King and a year waiting tables. Doesn't exactly help know if they know what a computer is, what DNS stands for and how to deploy software to a company network. Somehow you have to be able to show via a resume that you have actual knowledge to the person looking at it. And while certs doesn't exactly equal knowledge they are at least a step in the right direction.