A Career in Linux is What You Should Be Pursuing In 2014

With large firms making attempts to equip themselves better with the latest technology so as to maintain their edge over the competition; this seems to be a good time to be a technology professional. However, it’s even a better time to be into Linux system administration. How? We will see it here.

Linux Career in 2014

2014 is a good year for technology professionals. With every business increasingly becoming data driven, hiring managers across different spectrums are looking to strengthen their tech teams. And Linux professionals hold an advantage here. This is the view presented by a latest survey conducted by Dice and The Linux Foundation, where it took a holistic view of the thriving Linux jobs landscape. According to the report 77% of hiring managers have set their eyes on recruiting Linux professionals in 2014, which is 7% up from a year ago.

This reveals that more than nine in ten hiring managers have their intentions to hire Linux talent in the coming six months. The other key finding of the report directly suggest that Linux is the dominant choice of the current technology infrastructure as 86% of Linux professionals have admitted that the knowledge of Linux has given them more career opportunities.

How to go about a career in Linux System Administration? Part I: Getting Started

With there being enough evidence of Linux being the flavour of the season, the next question that arises in its all obviousness is that how one should go about a career in Linux system administration. You should have a thing for computers, that’s for sure. That can have a wide variety of meaning, right from knowing how to tweaking your internet network settings to breaking into a neighbour’s Wi-Fi network.

However, the thing is, to get a hotshot job in a good company you need solid educational credentials to show up in your resume, which brings us to the next part.

Part II: Certifications

According to Linux Foundation’s survey in 2013, Linux is becoming a more dominant platform for business infrastructures, outpacing the Microsoft-based servers with a very high margin. 80% of the respondents mentioned that they plan to add more Linux-based servers to their business infrastructure within the next five years, while only 20% plan to add additional Microsoft-based servers.

Therefore a certification would obviously make more sense from an employability perspective. So, which are the best certification courses?

The good news is that interested candidates have an array of choices of courses to choose from, such as Red Hat and Fedora, OS virtualization, or designing applications for Linux Platforms such as Java, AJAX and Android. If Linux system administration is what you are interested in then also one is presented with a number of choices, such as Novell Certified Linux Administrator (NCLA) and Novell Certified Linux Engineer (NCLE) amongst others. Pursuing these courses will make the candidate aware of the minute details of Linux that such as shell-scripting, a necessity for pursuing advanced level R&D and product enhancement.

Part III: Interviews

A candidate with certification certainly has better chances of excelling at interviews as the recruiter knows the candidate has been through hours of hands-on training and practical work in lab and will require less moulding before being assigned for a project. Interviews are in fact the most crucial part of getting hired for any job. Keeping the basic right and going through lists of most commonly asked questions in Linux interviews will certainly be of great help. The key to giving most correct answers will obviously depend on how attentive you were during your classes.

Part IV: The Job Responsibilities

Depending on your specialization and the path that you have chosen to pursue in Linux job, your schedule for the day could vary from another Linux talent. As a Linux administrator you will be required to diagnose, troubleshoot and resolve hardware & UNIX/LINUX OS problems, replace the defective network components , watch for loopholes and bugs in security infrastructure, work with database and network administrator or writing automating scripts.