I earned my CompTIA A+ certification in September 2020. Finding time to study for the exam was easy during the pandemic.
For those unaware, A+ is an entry-level IT certification aimed at computer technicians with approximately a year of on-the-job experience. Alongside CompTIA’s Network+ and Security+, these three certifications form the trifecta of basic IT certs. I am proud of earning my A+.
However, some people believe A+ is trivially easy. They are wrong. A coworker thought anybody could pass the exams if they knew how to open the Windows start menu, but that elementary level of knowledge is more akin to the CompTIA IT Fundamentals+ certification.
A+ consists of two challenging exams covering a huge range of topics. Few people are going to be knowledgeable on every topic based on their background. Someone who has built multiple PCs may be able to recognize most cable connectors but have no exposure to virtual machines or VPNs. Somebody who works at a company’s IT help desk may know basic networking concepts but have no idea what the difference is between an ATX and ITX motherboard. More than any of my other certifications, some serious time studying would be required if I had to take the A+ exam again tomorrow.
Unlike some certs, the questions on the A+ exams are genuinely well written1. None of the questions were confusingly worded. For a multiple choice test, the exam does a good job forcing you to apply your knowledge. Questions are often focused on troubleshooting scenarios rather than obscure technical details like the number of pins on a stick of DDR4 RAM. Other test providers could learn a lot from CompTIA.
Granted, the cert is expensive. Currently, taking both A+ exams will set you back roughly $500 total. If you are working a low-paying job and trying to break into IT, those costs can be prohibitive barriers of entry. At that price, recommending a certification that does not guarantee a job is a tough imposition.
The bigger problem though is not the cost but rather that there are so few entry-level IT opportunities now. Once upon a time, computer field technicians were commonplace, but nowadays most companies only have a handful of tier 1 help desk jobs, most of which have already been outsourced or automated. Furthermore, cloud computing has made data centers nonexistent for many companies and virtually eliminated another entry-level pathway.
My first IT role in 2020 was as a field tech for a grocery store chain, but those openings were extremely rare. I got extremely lucky and landed that role before earning my A+, so I cannot even say the cert got me my first job in the industry. Worse yet, most of the hardware knowledge tested on the A+ was professionally useless to me. Like so many companies, we would send broken point-of-sale systems and back office computers straight back to the manufacturer, swap in a new device, and re-image the OS. Getting tickets closed fast was more important than spending the time figuring out exactly what was broken inside the PC.
For those looking to break into the IT field, giving effective advice is difficult. A+ alone is insufficient. Right now, the hot “entry-level” IT jobs are cyber security analyst and cloud systems administrator, but those require far more than just Security+ or Azure Fundamentals certifications no matter what a tech influencer tells you. The best suggestions I can give to someone looking to break in are:
1. Work on tech in your free time. This is the most common, trite advice you always see, but that is because it is true. Work on whatever interests you the most—building a homelab, learning Python, or studying for a cert will all help you build important skills. Following your natural interests will keep you on the learning path far better than pursuing something that bores you but is ostensibly more “employable”.
2. Get good at customer service. Many prospective tech workers want to break into the industry to avoid interacting with people, but you are always going to have customers of some sort. Nobody likes dealing with the grumpy IT guy. At all my tech jobs, my customers were rarely interested in the technical details; they cared about how I interacted with them and the confidence I portrayed. Technical skills can be easily taught. The best way to grow your professional skills for tech is to put in the reps with customer service. Working retail or at a call center can be invaluable experience, but you have to actively put effort into getting better with your customer service skills, not just counting the hours away.
3. Earn your college degree. Breaking into IT without a college degree was once a well-trodden path. I have worked with dozens of high-level IT professionals who chose this career in part because of the opportunities available without taking a single undergraduate class, yet you do not tend to find too many young people with that background. Part of this may be due to self-selection; success skews older since those people have had more time to play the game. Fundamentally, however, those high school graduate entry-level roles have dried up.
About the only way to get into an “entry-level” role right now is to land a spot in a company’s new hire program for recent graduates. That is exactly how I got my start as a software developer with General Motors. With the bar being so high in the tech landscape currently, those new hire programs are one of the few developmental opportunities out there (and even they have been diminished post-2022 hiring surges.)
Needing to get a college degree is probably not what you want to hear. If you stumbled onto this essays, chances are significant that you have a nontraditional educational background. Fortunately, the proliferation of online education has made it more possible to earn an undergraduate degree in a subject like computer science or management information systems while also working full time and pursuing other projects and certifications. You just have to put in the effort.
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Outsourcing, layoffs, and AI have decimated the tech industry which has only further accelerated the devaluation of the A+ cert. This is incredibly depressing as getting that first tech job can be a life-changing event, both financially and for personal fulfillment.
But you never know what little detail is going to make your resume stand out and get that interview. When I asked my former boss at GM why he plucked my application out of the list of hundreds, he told me it was because I had PowerShell listed on my resume. The only reason I included that was because of a small professional project I wrote as a field tech to validate our in-store server statuses. That bullet point on my resume was a last second addition, and if I had left it off, my life would be completely different.
So even though A+ may not make sense in the modern tech landscape, I cannot discount it completely because it is a genuinely good introduction for all kinds of IT work.
Science fiction author Kevin J. Anderson has an interesting “popcorn kernel theory”. If you heat up a single kernel of popcorn in a pan, wait for it to cook, and then eat it, you will nearly starve to death and waste hours. Instead, you throw in a handful of kernels and wait to see what pops. The first kernel that pops also tends to bring with it an onslaught of activity.
Anderson brings up this theory in regards to creative work, but the concept has broader application. If you are trying to break into tech, you should be trying a variety of methods—certifications, personal projects, college classes, and anything else remotely applicable. Maybe an A+ certification will be the first kernel that pops for you.
- I still have nightmares about how pedantic some of the questions were on the Oracle Database SQL Certified Associate test. ↩︎
