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Part 3 - Breaking Down the Door

So you’re faced with a paradox.

For a Systems Administrator, the most valuable thing on his or her resume is experience. People without experience simply cannot compete for a job against people who have it. This field is completely hands-on and practical - most of the skills and knowledge you use, you will learn on the job.

So how the hell do you break in?

Before you even begin

Are you into Linux? Get a box, install linux on it, and start messing around with daemons. Don’t waste your time with stuff nobody uses - get CentOS (free recompile of RedHat) http://www.centos.org/ and install it on something. Play with databases, webservers, email servers, webmail, samba - get a bunch of functionality working. Create a database in MySQL without phpmyadmin - do it with the command line. Build some tables, learn basic SQL. Move onto PostgreSQL, do the same thing. Learn to dump out databases and back them up. Learn how to use rsync, learn the command line options to tar. Put “bash tutorial” into google and learn basic bash scripting. Learn how to use find, watch, grep, cut, and sort. Get used to reading man pages and googling stuff when you get stuck. Learn to paste error messages into google.

If you’re into windows get a copy of 2000 server and 2k3 server and start playing with them. I don’t know how you’re going to afford that - buy educational copies or something. Get Exchange, get IIS, get them working. Get outlook talking to exchange. Get webmail working. Get an AD server going and learn how to manage groups.

Ideally, you want to have done most things a business will ask you to do before you start. More importantly, you absolutely MUST have learned HOW to learn things quickly. Where to look for information.

Second, focus on this one fact: You must get into a role where you’re performing Systems Administration work, and you must be willing to make any sacrifice necessary to do so. It’s worth almost anything to get 12 months of ‘Systems Administrator’ on your resume. Even a three month contract puts you 100% ahead of a guy with no experience.

Strategy One - the Direct Approach

I’ll include this for completeness sake.

1. Get a big qualification (say all the way up to RHCE, or a degree or something)
2. Apply to every “junior admin” role you see advertised. Sometimes people advertise ‘graduate’ positions.
3. Keep getting interviews until you land a role.

I don’t know how well this one works. It certainly isn’t the approach I used. I imagine university graduates who scored really well soak up these handful of jobs, and best of luck to them.

I didn’t get any qualifications at all until I was several years in and had experience under my belt. But - if you can manage it - starting out with RHCE or MCSE if you’re into windows would help you a lot, and give you a chance to go straight in the front door like this.

Strategy Two - Small Business

Several ways to approach this one.

1. Find a small computer/support business and apply for a job. If you can’t get a job, offer your services as a casual, or even apply for work experience. So long as you have some opportunity to interact with SERVERS. Start accruing months of experience working with servers. Apply your knowledge. If you can’t find a place with one of these businesses keep looking.
2. Start servicing a bunch of small businesses yourself. Everyone has data, almost everyone has a computer. You’re going to have to deal with a lot of desktops at first, and your own business is a nasty proposition on so many levels, but this is better than being purely unemployed. Just make sure that within a few months you’re working on some servers - any servers. Run your own servers and supply services to small businesses with them. Host their damn backups remotely or something. Just RUN SERVERS.

Experience in small business isn’t the most valuable out there - but experience working in small business is priceless compared to no experience at all. A few years, maybe even a few months, working for small business and you can move across to a more exciting and lucrative area. But I’ll discuss that in another article.

Strategy Three - Back Doors

This is the last approach. I list is last because out of all these approaches it’s the least direct and the most likely to trap you along the way.

Back doors are ways you can get into businesses that have systems administrators, and eventually maybe possibly perhaps become one yourself.

1. Get a job in a network operations centre. You will no doubt have to man phones and monitor hideously boring things, rotate tapes and all kinds of other menial crap. BUT, big companies that have a NOC also have sysadmins - and odds are there’ll be at least one unix box you can log into here. This is the closest you can get to systems administration without being an SA. Prove yourself here and make sure everybody knows your aspirations, make every effort you can to learn and grow towards them. Don’t get stuck here for years. Be looking both outside and inside the company all the time for opportunities to move into that junior sysadmin role.
2. Desktop support. Desktop support roles generally give you more of a chance to move into windows systems administration. If you’re smart, have an MCSE, play with windows servers at home etc, you may get the chance after a few months or a year or two. Again - make sure everyone knows your aspirations, keep learning, keep pushing yourself and proving every day that you’re the smartest desktop admin there - ready at any moment to move over into a junior admin role. Again, look constantly within and without your company for that opportunity.
3. Helpdesk / L1 support - avoid this if you can. You wont be working anywhere near the sysadmins and you’re two steps removed in most companies. From here you probably need to push for desktop support or NOC style roles. Similar things apply - keep studying, fund more qualifications, keep playing with servers at home and make sure everyone knows what you want to be. Except here you probably want everyone to know you want to be a desktop support or NOC guy next - and a sysadmin later.

The road can be tough - but remember this: Varied experience helps, and nothing turns people on more when they read your resume than a progression up through the ranks. People who learned desktop support before they became systems administrators have valuable knowledge that the guy who jumped from uni to a junior admin role didn’t get. You learn all kinds of things answering phones to pissed off customers and teaching total dumbasses how to turn their computer on too. Things like patience and people skills that you’ll still be using as a senior SA.

Finally - don’t look on these options as hot coals you need to walk over to get what you want. Most of these jobs are fun, all of them pay money, all of them will give you experience and give you opportunities to learn and grow. Not to mention meet new people. Pick whichever of this option sounds like it will work for you - or sounds the most fun - and go for it. If it doesn’t work, try another. If you’ve got what it takes to be a Systems Administrator (see part one), you belong in the role and deserve to get there - so keep working on it. We need you.

One last piece of advice - if you’re in a small town with not much of an economy, move to the big city nearby. Don’t make this harder than it already is. Once you’ve broken down the door and got some experience as an SA, you can come back to your small town, if you still want to, and have a much better chance of getting one of those rarer SA roles there.

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