Kevin Aspell ⋅ Scotch Plains, NJ OPUS Consulting Services ⋅ 15 years experience

Cisco itself has a good Military Recruitment Program http://csr.cisco.com/casestudy/veterans-program.
I previously worked at Cisco and established a program for my organization focused on military hiring. The program was a significant success.
Pls go to the web site I just gave you and open the link to the software package developed by Futures Inc. Get registered and get your resume in that system. It provides many employers the opportunity to see potential new hires. Also includes MOS translation and other services.
Previous comments had some strong opinions on Cisco certifications and the quality of their partners. CCIE is the flagship certification and certainly will drive hiring attention. The other certs you mentioned are valuable for both the end user customer community as well as working for Cisco Partners. Your CCNA in data center is relevant given the marketplace focus on cloud technology.
Cisco delivers most of its solutions through these partners and they do great planning, design, implementation, operation, and optimization of Cisco based business solutions. They could also be a great place to work.
Cisco also has a Employee Resource Group for their military employees.
http://www.cisco.com/web/about/ac49/ac55/ero/vets/index.html#~Resources
Check out the site, I believe they are programs supported by this team to facilitate veteran hiring both at Cisco and with other customers/partners. Check out the Mentoring Program where Veterans who are now employees can provide some support in your job search.
Let me know if I can provide any other assistance.

Mark Russell ⋅ Altamonte Springs, FL Hewlett Packard ⋅ 20 years experience

I would be happy to review your resume and offer some advice. My teams are often in need of Cisco talent and cross functionality with other gear. I agree that learning the larger NX data center targeted switches and core routing equipment is the way to go.

Ted Mittelstaedt ⋅ Portland, OR Portlandia IT LLC ⋅ 20 years experience

In my experience the only Cisco certification worth anything is the CCIE. The rest of them are mainly intended for lower-level guys at Cisco Resellers to get with a fairly easy amount of study and a low cost so that the Reseller can meet the Cisco requirements of having multiple Cisco certified people on staff to be able to obtain the deep discounts that are only granted to Gold resellers.

With all of that said, the entire vendor certification program from ANY vendor is simply not really of much interest to anyone outside of resellers. To put it bluntly, if I was hiring for a network engineer and someone with a lot of vendor certifications came in the door, and someone else with a 2 year associates degree in Computer Information Systems with a specialty in networking came in the door, I'd look at the associates degree person first.

Resellers are desperate for certified people but a general purpose degree is a much better indicator (in my view) that the candidate is really intending to make a career in the industry. The certified people seem mainly interested in getting in, making a quick buck, then jumping to the next high tech fad when it comes around. Of course, Resellers are also mainly interested in getting in, making a quick buck, then jumping to the next fad, so they go together quite well with the vendor certification programs.

I personally have made a career out of coming into businesses and cleaning up after Resellers who have sold expensive packages to the business and collected the 60% margins on the gear then vanished when the customer started wanting them to spend the time needed to actually integrate the gear into the business operations. I've done Cisco routers up to and including the 72xx VXR series, Cisco Catalyst switches, and Cisco PIX and ASA firewall installations, my largest PIX network was 57 sites tied together via VPN.

And I have zero Cisco certifications.

This is NOT to say that the knowledge gained in a vendor-certification program is useless. However, it IS restricted to that vendor's products and these days most company networks are broad-based with many different components from different vendors.

You also need to keep in mind that the only Cisco product that is worth spending time with is the high end product like the 2800/2900 3500 series routers and switches and Enterprise gear. The Cisco SOHO gear (like for example the RV320) is no better quality than it's competition - Netgears and such - and at least 50% of the businesses out there are small businesses and they will never buy the high end Cisco product unless there is simply no other option, due to the expense. You don't need vendor certifications to install a $150 SOHO router or $300 SOHO switch from Cisco or the equivalent product from Netgear, so if your leading off in an interview with the Cisco certifications you have already priced yourself out of any of the smaller businesses you may be interviewing with.

Essentially you have 2 options open to you, in my view. Either you continue on the Cisco certification path and get your CCIE and go to work either for Cisco or for a large reseller or Fortune 500, or you abandon your focus of working on a single vendor's products (ie: Cisco) and work at finding a job as a system admin or network admin, and emphasize your networking knowledge. Check out your local community college Computer Information Systems program and take classes on anything you don't immediately understand after reading the course description.

But, trying to respond to network admin job openings with "I'm Mr. Cisco" isn't going to work.

Good luck!

Neil Serafin ⋅ Easthampton, MA Telecommunications ⋅ 40 years experience

Nearby is Cox Cable and Time Warner Cable, they need guys like you. Try I heart radio...they are server -rich. While I am an OS 1 and 2 level guy..
Contact me direct for more info.

Terria Wheeler ⋅ Norcross, GA U.S. Army, Sergeant ⋅ 4 years served

Joshua, go to www.careeronestop.org. Click job search, type in technology (in keyword box) and the zip code. Then on the bottom left corner you need to filter all the job opening within the last 3 days.

It also has a BUSINESS FINDER tab that will let you search for all technology business specifically for what you are looking for. It will list there website, phone number and point of contact. Use this information on your cover letter.
http://www.careeronestop.org/toolkit/jobs/find-businesses.aspx?keyword=Technology&ajax=0&location=VIRGINIA

Last It also has a VETERAN FINDER tab. This can be your plan B. Type your military occupation and zip code.

http://www.careeronestop.org/toolkit/jobs/find-veteran-jobs.aspx?location=VIRGINIA&persist=true&ajax=0