Network professionals - a few questions?

Question

I'm trying to improve my overall understanding of networking, as well as understand things that I should be focusing on to hopefully get a job as a network engineer. I do PC repair and I'm working on a CCNA certification, but I'm starting to see that many professionals don't consider someone with a certification to be qualified. So-

- What are considered the essential skills that everyone in networking should have?

- When you're evaluating/looking for an employee, what attributes do you look for?

- Are there any essential degrees or certifications?

- Are there any trade publications, blogs, websites, etc that I should be looking at?

- Where or how can someone without experience gain some?

- What would be a typical career path for a network engineer?

- What changes are coming- what will network engineers be working on in 5-10 years?

Answer 1

In my experience, there are very few entry-level positions for pure network engineers.  By network engineer, I mean someone whose job is mostly installation, configuration, and maintenance of network infrastructure equipment (routers, switches, firewalls, access points, etc).  Every person I know who has a lot of knowledge in these areas developed it on the job as a systems engineer (i.e. server stuff) who also had to deal with the network infrastucture.  So my advice would be to go ahead and finish the CCNA, but don't expect that to do much for your career.  Get into some kind of organization doing computer support (help desk or whatever) and make it known that you want to get into the systems/network end eventually.  Offer to help with systems upgrades or other general systems work, even if (or maybe expecially if) it's after hours and you don't get paid extra.

Now if you had your CCIE and little experience, that might change things, but I'm betting you won't be testing for the CCIE soon.  

Essential skills: natural problem solver, excellent understanding of routing/switching

Attributes:someone who is a quick learner, can put two sentences together without sounding like a moron, technically sound.

Answer 2

Go to this site and it will get you a starting knowledge...Go to the Learning Center