My 5 Years in IT
By: Ilyes Bekaddour
Tags: Computer Science, Job Search, Careers, Information Technology

My 5 Years in IT

In the third chapter, I discussed my beginnings in the master’s degree, my continuity with UDev Community, and how I’ve decided to focus more on Cisco certification.

This chapter will cover my preparation for the Cisco Certified Network Associate exam, the exam itself, and my beginnings in the job application process.

Cisco CCNA R&S Exam

After finishing my four levels of Cisco certification training, the last step that remained was to take the exam. To prepare very well, I took a full month in the summer to review all the courses that I’ve been studying for 2 years using online training, labs, and questions samples for practicing. The exam’s topics were about Network Fundamentals, LAN Switching Technologies, WAN Technologies, Infrastructure Services, Infrastructure Security, and Infrastructure Management.

It was an online exam, in English, and I had 120 minutes to complete it. There were many types of questions such as multiple-choice questions, drag-and-drop, fill-in-the-blank, and simulations.

After completing the exam, the result directly popped-up, and unfortunately it was a fail with a score of 786/1000, while the passing score was 810. Despite that I was disappointed with the result, I still wanted to go for a second attempt as it was my main goal to be Cisco certified and carrying on my path. One week later, I went back to the test center being more stressed than the first attempt, but fortunately, it was a happy ending as I succeeded with a score of 915/1000, and I’ve finally become officially Cisco CCNA certified.

Job Application Process

The role I was applying for a lot was Network Engineer, which suits the skills that I acquired during my Cisco journey, and I’ve always wanted to have my first work experience abroad, so I was mainly applying to many countries, and my very first application was for a one-year internship in Canada as a Network Specialist. One week later, I haven’t received any response from the company, so I’ve started to increase my applications to other companies around Europe and Asia with the same role.

At first, I never thought it would be that hard to land a job abroad, I was always optimistic and excited to receive a positive return from a recruiter, but unfortunately, they were all negatives. As I was applying for companies based abroad, I was always requiring visa sponsorship, and later on, I could understand that it would be a little bit complicated for them to provide such support. However, this wasn’t slowing me down from applying hundreds of times, and I always believed that a skilled candidate could make it through this step and move forward with the application.

My first positive return was from a multinational technology and consulting company based in Hong-Kong, and I had to complete first an Information Processing Aptitude Test, which is designed to assess an individual’s ability to reason numerically with information under time pressure conditions and, in particular, analyze and solve problems. The test was challenging and I did complete it, however, I haven’t received a follow-up from the company.

Through this application process, I was always learning new things about the professional world and how applications are treated by recruiters. For instance, once a resume is sent, it has to go through a “CV Screening”, which is generally a software that can either match the applicant with the job description or not and can automatically send an email about both cases. The next step following the screening is a human review, followed by a phone or online interview, then ending with an offer.

My second positive return was a call from a multinational computer technology company based in France. The required skills were matching my background, such as networking and most importantly the French language. After passing the phone interview step, the next was a technical assessment to test my knowledge and how well I could do. Sad to say, the assessment did not take place, by asking the talent acquisition specialist about my application if it was still active or not, it has been said that the company had to hire a candidate who was near the job location, which was completely understandable since for my case it has to go through an administrative process.

After several attempts, I’ve decided to take a break to review my skills in order to strengthen my resume in the hope of a favorable response. So, I started first by taking training on network programmability and automation where I had a theoretical and practical introduction to Python programming language, Linux, Ansible for configuration management, and Continuous Integration (CI).

2 years after serving UDev Community, I’ve decided to leave my seat to the new generation, but I couldn’t leave without one last contribution. That’s why I’ve organized an internal workshop about a basic introduction to networking, and how to analyze network traffic using the open-source packet analyzer Wireshark

I taught the members how does a basic network communication work by introducing them to the seven layers of the OSI Model, TCP/IP Model, TCP & UDP protocols, and practices on Wireshark with ICMP, DHCP, HTTP, and ARP protocols.

It was a good opportunity for me to put into practice what I’ve learned by sharing my knowledge with the members, and it was as well a good experience for them to learn new technologies.

Months after taking a break from the job search process, and updating my resume, I’ve restarted applying for opportunities, and this time I was mentally very well and I received an interesting offer for an internship in Brazil as a Network Analyst, but as the country wasn’t part of my top countries to work in, I had to decline it and keep looking for more opportunities as there was finally hope.

One month later, I applied for an internship in Turkey as a Computer Science instructor in a technological private high-school, and few days following the interview with the school’s Chief Executive Officer (CEO), the internship has been offered to me and I’ve accepted to move forward with it.

It was strange for me to land a teaching role after eight months of applying for an engineering role, and at this moment I realized that sometimes, we ignore the existence of something until one day we find out it has been destined for us.

In the next and final chapter, I will discuss my first experience abroad, where I will cover my internship, how I was handling in an international environment, and finally how we could manage work during the Covid-19 pandemic.