I'll be 54 in October and decided to pursue a CompTIA certification (IT Fundamentals). CompTIA is changing this to Tech+ later this year. Now I'm wondering if I should continue working on the certification or hold off for a while.

maybe it would help if you gave more context. What is your role, what are your trying to do, and why this particular cert and not others?

CapCity12thMan said:

---

maybe it would help if you gave more context. What is your role, what are your trying to do, and why this particular cert and not others?

---

Career change. I have experience working with Shopify and that coupled with a certification would make for an IT person for a small to medium sized business.

Do you have a gig lined up, or are you looking to start fresh? Gonna be hard finding a starting IT roll at that age, I would think. Are you looking for a job as in-house IT for a company or working for an MSP?

ETA: As far as I am aware, the IT Fundamentals is the basics of IT. You would need to get the A+ cert before you have something you can put next to your name for hiring purposes. Perhaps someone else can provide some insight to the marketability of the various certs. I just didn't think you get an actual cert with IT Fundamentals.

Don't forget to check at local Public School ISDs to see what IT jobs may be out there.
May want to see what they are asking for also.

I would suggest finding an MSP (Managed Service Provider) and start there. If you already have a decent level of experience you could bypass the certs for now and possibly get your employer to foot the bill for them later.

Typically as an IT person for a school, city, smb you are going to start at the help desk. You will be setting up email accounts etc. At an MSP you will be doing a little bit of everything and getting a larger amount of experience at a much faster pace.

Also, at an MSP they are going to have you get certs with their vendors so that they can get discounted pricing on products. This is another way that you can get training paid for, and paid to do it! Most of the vendor certs can be knocked out in a day or two...unless its CISCO, Fortinet, or Palo Alto - those take a bit longer.

If you have a high level of knowledge already and really want to learn something that would give you a high value in this market, learn Terraform...but man that one is a bear!