A piece of
paper with a
photocopy of
Bill Gates John Henry and some
superfluous words and letters. An
acronym standing for
Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer, which in some states is
illegal to have on a
business card (according to them there are only certain types of
engineers such as
railroad)
Often a person attaining an
MCSE is
green to the
IT industry and has little experience to apply their knowledge, often the MCSE is a
career change.
As an MCSE, i had to pass certain
tests through
Sylvan Prometric (
Bought by Microsoft), computer based setup. I prepared for these with
Transcender practice exams and
Exam-Cram books. To acheive the MCSE one must successfully complete the
core and
elective tests. The core being
NT Workstation,
NT Server and
Networking Essentials, as electives i took
TCP/IP and
Exchange Server 5.5.
Since i had no intention of being a
Paper MCSE (or
Wanker for that matter) I spent 7 months learning and building a
knowledge base in my head
from scratch. (I had little
networking knowledge prior.. to this i am not ashamed)
MCSE does not automatically denote a lack of experience however, since it is a
marketing tool used by
job searchers to enhance their
contract remuneration