> So what do you consider the skills and knowledge needed by a new system
> admin graduate?

Some skills/knowledge I acquired through university that turned out to be 
useful:

- The ability to listen and understand (From a lecture figure out the few 
things that we were going to be tested on)

- Be able to cheat/take shortcuts.  No, I don't mean bring notes into an exam.  
If you can use someone else's code (giving them credit) use it.
- Able to work the system.  What do you really have to get done to pass the 
course.
- Broad coverage of technology.  How things work. (DB's, programming, UNIX, 
system design, TCP packets, Networks, etc). This was also useful to identify 
areas of interest for career options.  Knowing how to write PASCAL code was not 
useful.  Knowing the technique was though.  

- Work with a team (even when you were supposed to work on your own).  Others 
in your team brought strengths and could explain concepts.  Some groups had 
dead-weight.  You had to deal with that too.
- A degree gets your first job.  After that experience counts.

- Work experience before you graduate.
- Problem solving.  Break the problem into small parts.  Understand their 
relationships.

- Job Interview skills


Other things that would be useful.

Be able to write technical documentation
Troubleshooting techniques
Understand that when you graduate you really don't know that much about 
computing. (That was taught to me during my first 2 weeks on the job)
Statistics for sysadmins


Overall I would say "How things work" is critical.  The more things the better.

If you want your graduate to be marketable, maybe one or two specific current 
technologies that are in demand.  i.e. windows admin/linux admin/etc


You can be sent to training courses by your employer to learn specific things 
they need.

Craig
_______________________________________________
Discuss mailing list
[email protected]
https://lists.lopsa.org/cgi-bin/mailman/listinfo/discuss
This list provided by the League of Professional System Administrators
 http://lopsa.org/

Reply via email to