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About Jobs in UK for young foreigners

vlad.vlaicu
Level 1
Level 1

Hello all!

I am young networking enthusiast. I am relatively new in the business with CCNA and CCNA Voice certifications. My plan for 2 years is to take Comptia Linux+, CCNP and hopefully CCIP or other small related certifications. After this period, I am planning to move to UK to work in the field.

Is there anyone here who can give us young professionals some tips on this issue. Such as, what are the chances for foreigners to get a job in the UK, what are the most requested certifications there and so on.

Any ideas or comments are well appreciated.

Have an excellent day,

Vlad (Romania)

5 Replies 5

James Hawkins
Level 8
Level 8

Hi Vlad,

The UK job market is very open to foreign nationals but competition can be fierce. If you want to work for a Cisco partner then having Cisco certifications may get you an interview but you will need to show that you have good experience and communications skills (verbal and written) as well to succeed.

Re. certifications to pursue I think CCNP would be good and then CCVP rather than CCIP as there are probably more jobs needing voice skills than the CCIP skills.

Initially you would probably be best looking at jobs working in a support role and then maybe look to move to a design or implementation role once you have some experience of working in the UK.

James, thank you for your reply. It was exactly the kind of answer I was hoping for. I am expecting the competition to be fierce, but one of the things i was afraid of was not being offered a fair chance. Now that I know this, I can go on with my plans I am currently working as a Test Engineer on WiMax devices. What do you think about the wireless field in UK. Is it worth pursuing wireless certifications ? Or yet better security?

Vlad

Just to add to James's answer. Where in the UK were you planning to move ? Be aware that in the UK Cisco jobs are very heavily based in London. That is not to say you can't find jobs outside of London but you will have many more to choose from if you do base yourself in the capital.

As for which certs to to go for, have a look at www.jobserve.co.uk for a start. This usually has a lot of networking jobs and you will be able to enter the cert and see how many jobs there are. You will also notice, as mentioned above, just how many of them are in London.

In a few of my past jobs i used to do interviews for hiring people into the team and personally i can tell you, as long as you are fine with the language (which you seem to be) you would have had as good a chance as anybody and it would have been based on your fit into the team and obviously your technical knowledge. Whether or not you were from outside of the UK would not have come into it.

Jon

Hi Jon! Thank you for your answer too. I haven't really figured where exactly I will go. London sounds really good but from what I've heard there are some downsides, such as high rents. However, I'm thinking that a job in London is also paid well enough so this shouldn't be an issue. I guess the place to go is still an open topic.

Jon, you said that you did some interviews for hiring people. Were any of them online on Skype for example or one must be there for the interview?

London is expensive to live in but bear in mind it has the best transport links in the country ie. trains/buses and of course the tube so you can live further out and commute into London.

I did phone interviews for some people but this was to narrow down the selection. We still wanted to see the actual candidates who made it through the phone interviews. Others may do it differently but it's often important to actually meet the person face to face because it's not just about their technical knowledge, it's just as important to see how the interact with other people.

Jon

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