Author: Ben

Preface

To be one extraordinary professional in such competitive IT industry with rapid change, you must depend on your own various external conditions, such as education, work experience, specialty certification, foreign language ability and project management experience. So you have to understand the necessary demand of enterprise recruitment via mastering the trend of IT industry. You can arrange your career plan via evaluating your own merits from the workplace experience and, most importantly, encourage your potential energy via continuous learning to improve your competitive advantage. As a result, competitive advantage improvement becomes the key point in career achievement.

Many hard-working IT initiates often neglect the importance of further education so that they finally regret that their IT specialty has fallen behind very much when they’re over 35 years old. Additionally, as the trend of IT industry internationalization gradually becomes normal in these years, one day you will find your opponents are not limited in your own country. For instance, in terms of overseas migration of Taiwan industry, if your company institutes an operation base in Mainland China or even the whole corporation migrates overseas, you may immediately face the competition with the opponents of other countries, such as Indians, Mainland Chinese, Korean, Japanese or American. At that time you will deeply experience the further education importance once you are insufficient of IT specialty and foreign language ability.

The direction of further studying arrangement can be divided into two categories: IT specialty and non-IT ability. Details are demonstrated as follows.

IT specialty

IT specialty comprises five major categories: networking, system, database, programming and information security. The popular international authorized certifications of these five fields are listed in the following figure:

1.Network

1. Cisco Network Engineering:
   Basic - CCNA(Cisco Certificated Network Associate)
   Intermediate – CCNP(Cisco Certificated Network Professional)
   Advanced – CCIE(Cisco Certificated Internetwork Expert)
2. Cisco Network Design:
   Basic - CCDA(Cisco Certificated Design Associate)
   Intermediate – CCDP(Cisco Certificated Design Professional)
   Advanced – CCIE(Cisco Certificated Internet workExpert)
3. High Availability: F5 or Radware original manufacturer authorized certification

2.System

1. Windows: MCSE(Microsoft Certificated System Engineer)
2. Linux: LPI(Linux Professional Institute)，RHCE(RedHa tCertificated Engineer), NCLP
3. Unix: Sun authorized Solaris certification: CSA (Certificated System Administrator) and CAN (Certificated Network Administrator), IBM authorized AIX certification, HP authorized HP-UX certification.

3.Security

1. Network Security: CCSP (Cisco Certificated Security Professional), mainly on network security
2. Information Security: CISSP, mainly on information security technique
3. Policy-based Security: BS7799, mainly on information security policy

4.Database

1. Oracle:
   Basic – OCA(Oracle Certificated Associate)
   Intermediate – OCP(Oracle Certificated Professional)
   Advanced – OCM(Oracle Certificated Master)
2. MS-SQL: MCDBA(Microsoft Certificated Database Administration)
3. My-SQL: No international authorized certification currently

5.Programming

1. Java:
   Basic - SCJA(Sun Certificated Java Associate)
   Intermediate – SCJP(Sun Certificated Java Professional)
   J2SE advanced certification:
   
   SCJD (Sun Certificated Java Developer), J2SE local program development
   SCWCD (Sun Certificated Web Component Developer), J2EEJSP & Servlet development
   SCBCD (Sun Certificated Business Component Developer), J2EEEJB(Enterprise Java Bean)
   SCDJWS (Sun Certificated Developer for Java Web Services), J2EE Web application
   SCMAD (Sun Certificated Mobile Application Developer), J2ME development
   Advanced - SCEA(Sun Certificated Enterprise Architect), Java in enterprise architect
2. Shell Script: LPI Level2
3. Perl: No international authorized certification currently
4. VB (Visual Basic) & ASP(Active Server Page)：MCSD (Microsoft Certificated System Developer)
5. C category (C, C++ or C#)：Microsoft, .NET
6. PHP: No international authorized certification currently

Non-IT ability

You can earn related education and international authorized certification from the following four main categories via the evaluation of your own interest and requirement in improving your other competitive advantages:

1. Language
   (1)English: GEPT, TOEIC, TOFEL
   (2)Japanese: JLPT
2. Management
   (1)Project Management: PMP+ (Project Management Professional plus)
   (2)EMBA
   (3)Information Management: undergraduate or M.A.
   (4)Technology Management: M.A.
3. Business
   (1)Connection: Dale Carnegie Training, mainly on communication & negotiation
   (2)MBA
   (3)Marketing
4. Computing
   (1)Computer Engineering: undergraduate or M.A.
   (2)Computer Science: undergraduate or M.A.