Unemployed? Good at Networking? Let's Talk!

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thedude0901

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Oct 17, 2004
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First off if I'm breaking the forum rules with this post then please delete and I'll gladly take my beating from the Mods.

OK, I need a Network Admin. I need one bad. And I need one today.

For the past three months I've posted the job to the major sites (Careerbuilder, Dice, etc) with complete list of requirements but, I've had no sucess in finding anyone that's even remotely qualified for the position. Nearly all wern't even qualified to be a PC Tech.

So, here I am reaching out the community hoping to find someone. Here's a brief overview of the position:

1. This is a "Routers, Switches and Firewalls" kind of network. Not a "Windows Servers" kind of network.

2. We are a Cisco shop. Drank the Cool Aid. Bought the T-Shirt. Worship at the Church of Cisco every Sunday.

3. Need someone that is fluent in MPLS, BGP, EIGRP and likes routing tables like others like crossword puzzles.

4. Experienced in network architecture, design and implementation.

5. Demonstrated experience with LANs, WANs, campus area networks, and Metro-E.

6. Understanding of QoS, VOIP LAN switching (L2 L3), VLANs, Etherchannel and spanning tree.

7. Doesn't mind taking a pile of misconfigured crap and turning it into a well oiled machine.


If you only THINK you know networking or have the word "Linksys" anywhere on your resume then move on. You're not what I need.


The catch: We're in Lexington, KY. We'd like candidates that are near or are willing to relocate. Sorry, No M&L packages.

You're a consultant that only does contracts? Fine. Let's talk terms.

Yes, this is a real job.

Yes, I'm serious.

PM me for more details.

Best regards,
The Dude.
 
I'm just curious, but it sounds like more of a Network Engineer position, is it possible you're not getting the hits you're looking for because people with the above qualifications think they're worth more than the typical netadmin salary?
 
Greetings,

In the original job ads I clearly stated it was a Network Engineer and not a Windows Admin position.

I did get a lot of Windows Admins that had dabbled in networking as part of their job but that's not what I need. Yes, I know there are a lot of Windows Admins out there that are decent, even good, with networking (I'm one of them) but, I need a hard-core, dedicated network engineer for what I need done.
 
I'll do it for $150,000.

only $90,000 if I don't have to move to Kentucky.
 
Oh come on... Kentucky isn't all that bad. Well, most of it anyways.

But yeah, I got a lot of that as well.
 
What is the salary range. There are lots of people that can do what you are asking easily enough. But if you expect the skills set you outlined above and are only willing to pay 40k/yr then I can understand why you are not finding good candidates.
 
Hmm if ya caught me a few months ago, I needed a new job. :) Cisco certified (though only low level) but I'm a Linux Admin now in Atlanta

Good luck
 
I think your salary range is probably your limiting factor. Of course I could be wrong.

In the DFW area (cheap cost of living) jobs like that are starting at $80K.
 
SpaceHonkey said:
I think your salary range is probably your limiting factor. Of course I could be wrong.

In the DFW area (cheap cost of living) jobs like that are starting at $80K.
Click to expand...

Pretty sure Dallas cost of living is not anywhere close to as cheap as Kentucky.
 
Surprised you're not getting any decent hits. There's gotta be a CCNP out there looking for work... $75k isn't that bad people. :rolleyes:
 
Must be a brain drain on this kind of thing around Kentucky.

Pretty good salary offering unless you're living in some metropolitan area.
 
Protoform-X said:
Surprised you're not getting any decent hits. There's gotta be a CCNP out there looking for work... $75k isn't that bad people. :rolleyes:
Click to expand...

Speak for yourself.

Based on the required skill set, and the fact that you have to live there ... I'd need at least quadruple the offer to consider ... and I probably still wouldn't accept it. I'm not trying to be an asshole, I'm being dead honest.
 
First of all, I wasn't speaking for you or for anyone else. Your comment is pretty asinine.

Unemployment in the US is still around 10%, so my comment still stands. There HAS TO BE many CCNP certified folks looking for work. $75k is way way waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than unemployment.
 
Protoform-X said:
First of all, I wasn't speaking for you or for anyone else. Your comment is pretty asinine.

Unemployment in the US is still around 10%, so my comment still stands. There HAS TO BE many CCNP certified folks looking for work. $75k is way way waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than unemployment.
Click to expand...

+1.....Keyword here being "Kentucky." Salary seems well enough for the area. If you were talking where I live, Metro Boston, bump that price tag up about 35k.
 
Protoform-X said:
First of all, I wasn't speaking for you or for anyone else. Your comment is pretty asinine.

Unemployment in the US is still around 10%, so my comment still stands. There HAS TO BE many CCNP certified folks looking for work. $75k is way way waaaaaaaaaaaaaay better than unemployment.
Click to expand...
Didn't think you'd take that so personally.

Yes, I'll agree that it's very decent if you're unemployed and average otherwise .. but I think most will agree that a great network engineer is rarely unemployed. Right now his job hunt is proving that. He's getting a bunch of under-qualified candidates that think what you think -- this is much better than nothing. Some great network engineers may not be happy at their current place, but that means they need a compelling reason ($$$?) to switch. I can't name any of my good colleagues in NYC that I've worked with in the past that are unemployed.

For someone that knows what they're doing, this job requires more than 75K. Alternatively, at 75K, he could take a chance on someone with less experience that will learn some of the skills on the fly, but it looks like he's not having much luck. Though, if he waits long enough, he'll probably find someone like this.
 
thedude0901 said:
RE: Vito_Corleone: We have 53 sites sitting in an AT&T MPLS cloud. That's why.
Click to expand...

But you're not actually running MPLS (LDP), right? I mean you likely have an ethernet handoff and, at most, run BGP with the provider, no?

Maybe I'm nitpicking, but this has always irked me on job descriptions. Very few enterprise engineers are actually touching MPLS/MPBGP, yet you see "MPLS" all over the place for enterprise (or lower) network engineering positions.
 
The search has been very difficult. I had a long list of Windows Admins that had done networking to some degree and had "worked a little with Cisco." When pressed during the phone interview they could mostly do basic config and that was all. "Enough to be dangerous" was the popular theme here.

90% of the resumes I received were from people that had little to no computer experience of any kind. Some of the more advanced of the lot had no more tech experience than someone at Geek Squad. Nearly all of the resumes read like this:

Job 1: Sandwich Artist. (Actually got this one.)

Job 2: Forklift Operator

Unemployed for a while

Graduated I.T.T. Tech or Sullivan or Phoenix University with some IT related degree.

Then they applied for my opening.

I had many put every networking buz word on their resume they could find but their job experience just didn't support their claims.

One guy was in College for some useless degree and had never worked a day in his life. His __only__ computer experience was he bought a computer at Walmart and installed Linux on it. Took him a year to do it. Yes, he actually put that on his resume and listed himself as a "Computer Professional."

I understand I won't get a top tier engineer for what we're offering for salary. We're looking for someone with 3 to 5 years of actual networking experience.

Perhaps we're way off base here. Let me tell you what we have:

Main Campus with 3 multi story buildings connected with fiber. Each building has a distribution switch with fiber back to a campus core.

53 locations with T-1 connections to a MPLS cloud.
40 locations with S2S VPN back to primary data center.
3 campus locations conneccted via Metro-E
2 data centers. 1 at main campus and the second at remote campus acting as DR.
About 300 network devices. (Routers, switches, firewalls, etc.)
260 servers with 80% in main data center. 80 of which are VMs
1000 Cisoc VOIP phones (VPN sites don't have VOIP)
2000 employees

Inside all of that infrastructure are multiple companies including banking, health care, construction, insurance, finance, retail, broadcasting, and more.


Woudl the person I'm looking for be way under qualified for something like ths?
 
It's hard to say the level of knowledge you'll need without more info. Is this position the only network engineer? How complex is the network? How is routing configured across your WAN, BGP, EIGRP, static, or are the WAN routers managed by the provider? How much redundancy is built in (this complicates routing quite a bit, obviously). Then you have the voice stuff on top of it. It's tough to find guys who are solid in route/switch/security AND voice. The route/switch/security aspect of this job is likely a joke for me, but I couldn't do your voice shit. There's a lot more to it than what you're posting.
 
The OP lists like my resume and I'm sure I couild do the job, but I "ain't" moving to Kentucky. Sorry.

I am in Ohio though, but closer to Cleveland, not Cincinnati.
 
Well I am in NW Ohio and I used to work at local ISP here as a call tech and I also work on networking at home on my spare time at home.
 
thedude0901 said:
The search has been very difficult. I had a long list of Windows Admins that had done networking to some degree and had "worked a little with Cisco." When pressed during the phone interview they could mostly do basic config and that was all. "Enough to be dangerous" was the popular theme here.

90% of the resumes I received were from people that had little to no computer experience of any kind. Some of the more advanced of the lot had no more tech experience than someone at Geek Squad. Nearly all of the resumes read like this:

Job 1: Sandwich Artist. (Actually got this one.)

Job 2: Forklift Operator

Unemployed for a while

Graduated I.T.T. Tech or Sullivan or Phoenix University with some IT related degree.

Then they applied for my opening.

I had many put every networking buz word on their resume they could find but their job experience just didn't support their claims.

One guy was in College for some useless degree and had never worked a day in his life. His __only__ computer experience was he bought a computer at Walmart and installed Linux on it. Took him a year to do it. Yes, he actually put that on his resume and listed himself as a "Computer Professional."

I understand I won't get a top tier engineer for what we're offering for salary. We're looking for someone with 3 to 5 years of actual networking experience.

Perhaps we're way off base here. Let me tell you what we have:

Main Campus with 3 multi story buildings connected with fiber. Each building has a distribution switch with fiber back to a campus core.

53 locations with T-1 connections to a MPLS cloud.
40 locations with S2S VPN back to primary data center.
3 campus locations conneccted via Metro-E
2 data centers. 1 at main campus and the second at remote campus acting as DR.
About 300 network devices. (Routers, switches, firewalls, etc.)
260 servers with 80% in main data center. 80 of which are VMs
1000 Cisoc VOIP phones (VPN sites don't have VOIP)
2000 employees

Inside all of that infrastructure are multiple companies including banking, health care, construction, insurance, finance, retail, broadcasting, and more.


Woudl the person I'm looking for be way under qualified for something like ths?
Click to expand...

I'm in Pittsburgh and the market is depressed here for IT professionals. That said, you would have to offer $70,000-$85,000 to get a qualified CCNP, with experience, to move to your area. In my opinion you're a little low on the pay side....... AND if your network is as screwed up as you claim, its a fairly large long term project.

A project of the scale you are talking about either takes a small group of individuals to manage or one guy who knows most/all of it.

Since you are heading in the one guy route, you may want to make sure you have the RIGHT one guy.
 
Mackintire said:
I'm in Pittsburgh and the market is depressed here for IT professionals. That said, you would have to offer $70,000-$85,000 to get a qualified CCNP, with experience, to move to your area. In my opinion you're a little low on the pay side....... AND if your network is as screwed up as you claim, its a fairly large long term project.

A project of the scale you are talking about either takes a small group of individuals to manage or one guy who knows most/all of it.

Since you are heading in the one guy route, you may want to make sure you have the RIGHT one guy.
Click to expand...

And make sure you pay him well enough to stick around.
 
Vito_Corleone said:
But you're not actually running MPLS (LDP), right? I mean you likely have an ethernet handoff and, at most, run BGP with the provider, no?

Maybe I'm nitpicking, but this has always irked me on job descriptions. Very few enterprise engineers are actually touching MPLS/MPBGP, yet you see "MPLS" all over the place for enterprise (or lower) network engineering positions.
Click to expand...

We had AT&T MPLS at my last place and it we redistributed EIGRP to their BGP router. So I doubt there's actual MPLS knowledge necessary if he's using the same setup. This job sounds a lot like where I'm currently at where they have 5-6 guys that run it. 2 dedicated VOIP guys running 1500 phones and 3-4 others running the routing/switching/security responsibilities.

OP, not trying to be a stick in the mud about you finding a good person. KY is just tough to find anyone that wants to live there especially if it doesn't work out.
 
Just a word about unemployment. There is a huge difference between the unemployment rates of college educated vs high school only. UR for college educated is about 2-3% above the near full employment of 2007. In general the market for well qualified and competent technology folks is competitive. They are not easy to get especially with the right experience.
 
thedude0901 said:
53 locations with T-1 connections to a MPLS cloud.
40 locations with S2S VPN back to primary data center.
3 campus locations conneccted via Metro-E
2 data centers. 1 at main campus and the second at remote campus acting as DR.
About 300 network devices. (Routers, switches, firewalls, etc.)
260 servers with 80% in main data center. 80 of which are VMs
1000 Cisoc VOIP phones (VPN sites don't have VOIP)
2000 employees
Click to expand...
You are way off on your capacity here.

I recommend the following.

A dedicated windows/linux(whatever OS you are running on all those servers) administrator that has virtulization experience to continue to get your other 180 servers virtulized (as much as possible) Cost savings from reducing your server footprint by 180 physical servers could potentially cover up to half this persons yearly salary.

1 Junior Network administrator (CCNA minimum with either a CCNA:Voice or prior experience with Cisco VoIP)
1 Senior Network Engineer (CCNA minimum with at least 3-5 years experience, or a CCNP with at least 1-2 years experience)

Salary requirements are up to you to decide for what is best with your area. But to expect 1 guy to support that large of an environment is a bit of a stretch.

You haven't mentioned any other IT people here so perhaps you already have that server administrator... if you do then disregard that position.
But with 2000 employees and such a wide degree of business operations that this network person needs to support you need a team of at least 1 junior and 1 senior guy (if not more) to make sure that your infrastructure is always available even if a network guy is sick or on vacation.
 
Along with my Wild Turkey comment, I wish I had the skills for your job but I am not there yet (I am a Windows Sys Admin). I would move to Kentucky in a heartbeat and it would be a sweet raise.

 
cyr0n_k0r said:
You are way off on your capacity here.

I recommend the following.

A dedicated windows/linux(whatever OS you are running on all those servers) administrator that has virtulization experience to continue to get your other 180 servers virtulized (as much as possible) Cost savings from reducing your server footprint by 180 physical servers could potentially cover up to half this persons yearly salary.

1 Junior Network administrator (CCNA minimum with either a CCNA:Voice or prior experience with Cisco VoIP)
1 Senior Network Engineer (CCNA minimum with at least 3-5 years experience, or a CCNP with at least 1-2 years experience)

Salary requirements are up to you to decide for what is best with your area. But to expect 1 guy to support that large of an environment is a bit of a stretch.

You haven't mentioned any other IT people here so perhaps you already have that server administrator... if you do then disregard that position.
But with 2000 employees and such a wide degree of business operations that this network person needs to support you need a team of at least 1 junior and 1 senior guy (if not more) to make sure that your infrastructure is always available even if a network guy is sick or on vacation.
Click to expand...

cyr0n_k0r your spot on with your recommendation since I have been in the same recruiting position as thedude for the past 6 months. I work as a Infrastructure Support Manager for large financial firm in Canada and had to go through the process of recruiting Junior and Senior Network Analyst positions to handle the day to day support requirements of our environment. I split the role requirements and experience levels for the two positions and insisted on pre-screen phone intervews before bringing in potential candidates for face to face meetings. All interviews were a 2 step process with the first being a very technical review of current skillsets and the 2nd round more of an assessment of professionalism and understanding of business process in an enterprise environment.
 
I agree with two people just for the Networking. It only takes a single network problem to take that guy out of commission while the other MACs go unserviced. And then there is vacation to contend with.

At least one of them should be a CCNP, with aspirations to be a CCIE.
 
OP needs a team of individuals with varied overlapping skill sets.

Last time I worked at a place that size we had about six network engineers, an off-shore tier 1 help desk, and a dedicated server team for each platform: VMS, Unix, and Windows plus virtualization guys. And that was without having to mess with VOIP phones or voice on the LAN. I think our entry level guys started around $75k and went way up from there for those of us that had deep resumes.
 
Valnar said:
I agree with two people just for the Networking. It only takes a single network problem to take that guy out of commission while the other MACs go unserviced. And then there is vacation to contend with.
Click to expand...
And that's not even counting the "Hit by a bus" scenario.
 
Sounds like you guys are spoiled. My last place had 50k+ users and there were four engineers (including me) when I left. We also had some tier 1/2 people in India, but they didn't do much.

I agree that two people would be preferred, but more than that seems like overkill to me.
 
$75k for a nightmare network that will leave you 0 free time for a year and understaffed after that? No way, been there, done that, never again.
 
stormy1 said:
$75k for a nightmare network that will leave you 0 free time for a year and understaffed after that? No way, been there, done that, never again.
Click to expand...
You hit the nail on the head.
OP, you might find a single guy that will do all that but he will be so burned out after 8-12 months that you'll probably lose him.

You need to think about long term retention.
split the job into a junior and senior role. At the interview for the junior admin make sure he sounds like he is hungry for more networking experience and would do well to shadow your senior guy (the CCNP) around all the time.

You might feel like you're overpaying thinking to yourself "why does it always take 2 guys to do that" when they are racking switches or doing configs. But your junior guy is soaking up all that CCNP knowledge and getting amazing on the job training. He will love you and love the job because he is learning

Then after a few months when your senior guy starts to get antsy and needs a few days of vacation outside Kentucky your junior guy will know enough to keep things up (barring anything catastrophic) and will again love you for giving him that kind of responsibility.
 
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