[AusNOG] Work experience in networking/telecoms/DCs? Getting my foot in the door?

[r_jones at netspace.net.au]

P.S. I can't believe I forgot this (it happens when you're a bit
sleepless!), but I am based in North Brisbane.

Thanks again. 

----- Original Message -----
From: r_jones at netspace.net.au
To:
Cc:
Sent:Sun, 21 Dec 2014 02:10:48 +0800
Subject:Work experience in networking/telecoms/DCs? Getting my foot in
the door?

 Hi guys. I've been perusing the list on and off for a fair few months
now, and this is my first time posting here (or to any mailing list at
all! Forums have spoiled us kids it seems), so please forgive me if my
posting technique/etiquette is not quite right, or even if this
question is not quite the scope of the list, and I'll try not to
prattle on too much, but here goes...
 I'm 21, fresh out of a 12 month TAFE Networking Diploma that... could
have ended better than it did, if I'm honest. Have had a few personal
issues and some rather nasty illness this year, and budget and
equipment cuts to my campus towards the end of the year only made
things worse. I simply ran out of time. 
 Anyway, I'm also studying a CCNA which I am about halfway through and
am plugging away at at home, however my resume is quite still bare,
having never had a job anywhere in I.T. before, and I'm trying to get
my foot in the door. It has been suggested by a few people, some of
them rather respectable in their fields, that I look at work
experience or volunteering just so I can fill my resume up with
*something*, and so I can gain some experience as well since it seems
that even entry level mop pushing jobs require 6 months of mop pushing
experience. Where do you start? 
 But that seems to be the question wherever I turn - where do I start?
How do I get my foot in the door? How do I know if that's the door I
should be putting my foot into? Where is the door? Etc, etc. 
 So I figure, based on previous advice, that I should look at work
experience or volunteering my time to gain some experience. But this
still presents that pesky question for me - where do I start? And
another standout, what companies would allow work experience kids? I
realize very well that not everyone is thrilled with the idea of a kid
waltzing into their company for a couple of weeks, finding out how
everything works in the pursuit of eventual employment somewhere, and
this I accept, but hey, we all have to start somewhere, I guess.

If you're still with me (I apologize for the length of this post), I
think now is the time to explain the fields I'm most interested in and
why. 
 In three (or nine) words: I love networks. I love infrastructure. I
love datacenters. 
 To be a bit more verbose, I love the very concept of it. How the
internet itself functions at a basic level, how complex and intricate
network and telecommunications infrastructure can be, is always
something that has fascinated me. I want to be at the heart of it, and
yet I'm also one for details. From the NOCs to the last mile, I love
it all. Perhaps I'm idealizing too much, but if you were to ask me
what I see myself doing in 5 or 10 years, this paragraph is pretty
much it. I love helping to set up LAN parties when I get the
opportunity to do so (the infrastructure is actually quite impressive
to my untrained eyes. 10Gb trunks to edge switches and 40Gb stacks
between core switches - a lot of data gets shuffled around at LANs!) 
 To be honest, I'm not even quite sure what the job description of
what I eventually want to do is. But, as you can probably tell, I like
big things. But I like to pay attention to the small things, too. I
love the idea of overseeing the operation of datacenters or enterprise
networks or telecommunications infrastructure, but also analysing and
troubleshooting when things go wrong. Finding out what went wrong, why
it went wrong, devising the most elegant way to fix the problem, and
making sure it doesn't go wrong again. Call it morbid, but I love
analysing outages (as much as I can with publicly available
information) and knowing what went wrong, why, what was done to
correct the problem and perhaps even what (if any) preventative
measures were employed to prevent it from happening again.

I think you get the idea at this point! 
 I think I've droned on quite enough, but I would love to hear any and
all of your suggestions as to how/where I could get my foot in the
door of the networking scene, because while I would be interested in
roles like sysadmin, networking seems to be where my heart is set, and
always has been, really. 
 If pertinent, I'm more than happy to link my current resume, as bare
as it may be, but I did notice that the AusNOG charter said no
attachments, so I'm not totally sure how the best way to go about this
would be.

Thanks for your considerable time! I look forward to hearing what you
guys have to say! It's been a pleasure to read this mailing list when
I can, I just hope my babbling doesn't impact on the pleasure of other
readers too much. :) 
 Thanks again,

Rory.
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