A bit of career help

[Top Gun]

I posted this on another forum I frequent, but I figured I'd try it here too, to try to get some additional feedback. My current job search isn't producing much in the way of either results or motivation, so I'm thinking that it's time to expand my horizons a bit and consider some more options. I have some interest in seeing what's out there in the IT field, and what really spurred it was a mailing from our local community college that included a bunch of courses for various IT certifications. These include a number of Microsoft Certified IT Professional designations, from Windows 7 to various server architecture packages, Cisco networking certificates, A+ and other "plus" general IT tests, along with the usual array of basic instructive courses. If any of you guys happen to be in that field at the moment, or were in the past, do you have any recommendations as to what sort of certifications would be the most valuable to have? I'm almost certainly going to take some sort of course, but I could definitely use the help in pinning down which one.

[CDN_Merlin]

I work in IT in the Federal Gov't and the best certs to have are CISCO, Linux, MS Servers, Exchange, Active Directory, Scripting, and security.

[Heretic]

Comptia Has some of the certifications they even have an online training. I got my A+ Network+ security+ you can all so look up Professor Messer on youtube for free A+ training. he also has security+ and Network+ training videos. He may also have MCITP training videos. You could also pickup All in One books by Mike Meyers for your A+ and Network+ and All In One security+ by Greg White and WM. Arthur Conklin for security.

That way I explain above can save you tons cash if you can study on your own.

[Top Gun]

Thanks for the advice. I figured there were some sort of online tutorials out there, and I'll be sure to give those a look. The only issue I have with going the full self-study route is that, quite frankly, I don't know that I trust myself to be completely disciplined and stick with it. I'm not the most self-motivated individual out there, so having an external driving force like a regularly-meeting class that would keep me on the right page would be a big help. I'll have to take another look at the course listings and figure out which way I want to go.

[Capm]

I'm going through a CCNA course through the SCTE ( http://www.scte.org ) Members get a discount on the course, and the scte site itself has a Huge amount of material on it.