From the course: CompTIA A+ Core 1 (220-1101) Cert Prep

Why get CompTIA A+ certified?

From the course: CompTIA A+ Core 1 (220-1101) Cert Prep

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Why get CompTIA A+ certified?

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- So by now you're probably wondering, hey, why should I get CompTIA A+ Certified? That's actually a very easy question to ask. Besides the fact that it's a highly recognized industry standard certification for both IT hardware and software, it's pretty much valued in our industry. Companies such as Blue Cross Blue Shield and HP and Dell and Intel and Ricoh value the A+ certification, and actively seek out and hire individuals with that certification. Also, it's actually become a recent requirement for any information assurance technician jobs in the DoD. It is a baseline certification for the 8570 directory that enables people to get the IAT Level 1 qualification to work in the DoD. Very, very cool. Also, you know, you make more money. Certifications add to your value to the company and add to the value to your paycheck. Now I have to back up here a little bit because it won't guarantee you a job, but it well puts you well on the path to finding that dream career. So you might be wondering now what kind of job can I get with an A+ certification? And there are tons of different names for these jobs and some of them are intermingled and used in the same manner, but some of them may be help desk technician or a field service technician. Perhaps you've heard of desktop support specialist or support technicians and junior systems administrators. Those are all different types of job titles and careers that you can achieve with a CompTIA A+ exam. Now you might be wondering the big question, how much money can I make? Well, an IT support specialist just starting off with a CompTIA A+ certification averages nationwide about $38,500 per year. And if you become a field service technician, the average is about 45K. And if you move up to a level two or a tier two help desk support, that is actually right around 45K as well. And all the way up on the high end of desktop support analysts can make $60,000 or more. Now let's take a look on CompTIA's site at some of the positions available. This is the IT support specialist career path. And it gives you a very clear direction here of what the pathway would be if you were following this IT support specialist career. You can start off with an exam like the CompTIA A+ and this kind of shows you how to get to the next intermediate level, and the advanced level so you can walk through here and actually take the entire series of CompTIA certs if you want. It's very, very cool. Now let's talk about stackable certifications. This is kind of a new thing that's been out I think probably the last four or five years for CompTIA if I remember right. But CompTIA, if you achieve certain multiples, their certifications will give you a stacked cert denoting that you're capable of more than just what the individual assert themselves as obtained. So for instance, if you get the A+ and Network+, CompTIA will bestow upon you the specialist certification of CompTIA IT operations specialist. Pretty cool. Let's talk about the infrastructure and cybersecurity pathways. So we look here, we can see that CompTIA lists out a couple of core skill certifications that we need to take in order to actually diverge into one of those two paths. Whether it be an infrastructure like a network engineer or a systems admin, or whether it be the cybersecurity pathway where you get into pen testing and blue team versus red team and all that really neat cutting edge cybersecurity stuff. And you'll notice here that the first one is the IT fundamentals, but then we have our A+. And the great thing that I want to mention about these certifications that CompTIA does is, and I've taken pretty much all the ones you see here on the screen, they have a very natural overlap between them. So by taking the A+, there's a nice natural overlap into the Network+ for instance. It prepares you for a lot of those objectives on there. Now you might be wondering how CompTIA A+ stacks up against other similar certifications. And actually on CompTIA's website, if you take a look at it, they show you some common entry level certifications that measure up with the A+, and what to expect from each. So you can kind of get an idea of how many exams there are, how long each exam is, and any of the skills you need. Note here that it does says nine to 12 months experience, but I think that just hasn't been updated yet 'cause it is 12 months or more experience. So all that's remaining is to figure out how can we take the test.

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