Here’s one story that shows how certifications can boost a person’s career. Cisco got me in touch with Michael Crocker, a six-year human resources specialist who, feeling uninspired in his “paper-driven” job decided to take networking classes part-time and is now enjoying a shift lead position working on the Navy Marines Corps Intranet (NMCI) project.

Crocker says he was encouraged by others to change careers and to find something that better suited his enjoyment of solving problems and working with people. In 1999, he enrolled at the Tidewater Community College in Virginia where he spent the next four years studying for and obtaining various networking certifications.

First off was his CompTIA A+ certification, followed by the Certified Novell Engineer and the Microsoft Certified Professional designations. When the college began offering Cisco’s networking curriculum as a Cisco Networking Academy, Crocker became a Cisco Certified Network Associate in 2001 and passed his Cisco Certified Network Professional exams (all four tracks) in 2003.

After passing his CCNA exams, Crocker was offered a part-time post at the college teaching networking classes. He also spent two semesters working as an intern for the college’s networking department, where he was later taken on as a part-time employee working on TCC’s LAN and WAN. Crocker says that experience was invaluable. “I was able to work on switches and learn things that you wouldn’t learn in a classroom – like shortcuts.”

In 2003, he was contacted by Wamnet (now Multimax), a technology contractor that is involved in the NMCI project, described as the second largest network in the world after the Internet. “They liked what I did at TCC and liked that I was a certified instructor with the [Cisco] academy. They were having trouble finding CCNPs at the time,” Crocker says.

He joined as a support engineer – Level II, based in Norfolk, Va., supporting the Navy side of the NMCI’s LAN and broad-area network. His responsibilities included repairing network outages, updating routers and updating the access control lists for the virtual LANs.

Last year, Crocker was promoted to senior engineer/shift lead, which is one level below the operations manager in charge of the shift. Although the shift is 12 hours long, Crocker says he enjoys the challenge of supporting the NMCI network. His goal now is to complete the practical part of the Cisco Certified Internetwork Expert exams.

Jon Brodkin is senior writer at Network World.