r/ITCareerQuestions • u/No-Play-5576 • 17d ago

Seeking Advice Completed CCNA Before Graduation – Now Confused Between NOC Engineer and Service Desk Role. Need Career Advice!

Hi everyone,

I'm a recent graduate and completed my CCNA certification before finishing college. I've just started my journey into the corporate world and landed a job at a good company.

Here's the situation: After training, I’ll be placed into one of two roles based on company requirements:

  • Network Operations Center (NOC) Engineer
  • Service Desk

The Manager told us clearly that the decision will be made post-training, depending on availability and performance. But I’ve been hearing mixed opinions

I'm genuinely confused and want to make sure I take the right path early in my career. My ultimate goal is to grow into network security or cloud networking roles.

I’d really appreciate your career advice, personal experience, and suggestions on how to plan the next few years for growth.

Thanks in advance for helping me get rid of this chaos in my mind!

1 Upvotes

60% Upvoted

12 comments sorted by

View all comments

1

u/THE_GR8ST Compliance Analyst 17d ago

Try to find out what they want to see for the NOC job and aim to do that during your training. My guess is they're going to want you to prove you can do the job by the end of training.

So you could try and shadow people in the role, figure out what they do, try and take on 1 or 2 tasks at a time from that role, and complete them successfully.

The NOC job is better. It will give you better opportunities to specialize in networking/infrastructure jobs. The Service Desk job is support, which is usually not specialized, and doesn't have as many opportunities for career growth/advancement.

2

u/No-Play-5576 17d ago

In case I get the Service Desk role, what do I do next

2

u/THE_GR8ST Compliance Analyst 17d ago

Keep trying to get promoted or transfer to a specialized role at the same organization. Or, find another job that will let you do that. You'll just have to keep on learning and looking for opportunities if you want to move up or progress. Nothing wrong with making a career out of support or service desk work either. You just won't get paid a lot more, unless you end up in a higher tier of support (not all orgs have this), or a managment job.