Professionals often consider either doing a part-time job or pursuing a certification course along with a current job. A lot of confusion is often seen persisting among professionals while deciding which path to follow, improving skills via certification or earning from another job. However, it also requires a lot of time and additional efforts to achieve both of them.
Also, already doing a job and see paychecks rolling in might become extremely helpful in changing your mindset and convince you into enrolling in another part-time job. You start believing in ‘living for now’ especially after you become financially stable.
Although a bit difficult, specially when having the responsibility of a family, it is quite possible to balance through everything and achieve a relevant Cisco certification.
There are certain questions that you should always ask thyself before taking any decision.
- How much benefit would a job give me leaving aside a certification?
- What is the value of the Cisco certification?
Let us try to quantify the value of Cisco certifications. Quantifying the value helps to understand if one should go for a certification and put in the required time and effort.
Analysis 1:
Part Time Job VS Certification Study
Go through the exercise mentioned below.
- Choose the number of hours that you will spend studying per day.
- Identify the certification that you wish to pursue in the next year.
- Analyze and identify the amount of money that you need per hour in order to choose the job instead of a Cisco certification.
Analysis 2:
Value of Study Time
Identify the track of the Cisco certifications that you wish to follow. For example, the track may be:
- CCENT
- CCNA R/S
- CCNP R/S
- CCIE R/S
Next, check the time and effort that these exams would require. The figure will just be an estimate.
Further, analyze the value of this estimated time to get a certification. This analysis may enable you to understand the opportunity cost, if instead of studying for the certification the time was spent in working in a part time job.
Pro Tip: To fast-track, your learning about CCNA Certifications, consider Updated CCNA Training Courses.
Now let us consider some scenarios looking at the entire CCENT through CCIE R/S track, basis the time and effort that you have put in.
Worker 1: Only works, doesn’t get certified in any of the credentials, and makes $10/hour.
Worker 2: Gets certified in CCNA R/S credential and then earns $20/hour.
Worker 3: Gets certified in CCNP R/S and then earns $40/hour.
Worker 4: Gets certified in CCIE R/S, only studies afterwards, and doesn’t work.
For your own analysis, pick any two workers from the four given above and compare their goals. Remember, this is just a technique or method to put a value on the time that you wish to spend. Understand which of these workers will you want to be?
You can further analyze the assumption by considering some other examples. Keep in mind that these methods do not give an absolute value to a certification, rather compares and this comparison might help you choose which path to follow.
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