HVTA [cnttbachkhoa]

Question: How difficult would it be to get a CCNA with no real cisco experience? Hard? Impossible? Easy? I don't know what a CCNA means jobwise when people see that on your resume.

Answer: It isn't that hard to get a CCNA without cisco experience as long as you study/lab well. How hard will it be to leverage that CCNA to get you a job is a different story.

Let me add something to this. Having the CCNA cert and being a CCNA are two different things. Getting the CCNA test was somewhat difficult but putting those things into practice on a set up that cost 10s of 1000s of dollars is much more difficult. Getting past that intimidation and fear that comes with being a noob making changes to a companies network only comes with experience and that's why exp is important. There are many people who are CCNA certified who pretty much should be network+ certified, because their CCNA means nothing. There are people who use the CCNA to round out their networking knowledge and that's ok. Then their are CCNAs who really know Cisco stuff. I've worked with all 3 and let me tell you it is much harder to be the latter.

So in short, find a noc, find a helpdesk that touches cisco gear, work in a community college's lab. Do something to let you touch Cisco gear because you want to not only have the CCNA you want to be a CCNA.