CAREER ADVISOR

“Your Career Advisor” is responding to the following:
"I am a telecom engineer, I have the chance to enroll in one of the following two course tracks: CISCO and ORACLE; which one would be more useful to my career ?"
All reasonable questions related to careers, skill development or employment related issues – sent to advisor@skill-link.com - would be addressed in this section every week.

Q1: I am a telecom engineer, should I go for a CISCO program or an ORACLE one ?

I am a telecommunications engineer and I will shortly be starting the Ministry of Communication & Information Technology / Allied Consultants 6-month course. The tracks of this course include among other areas, Cisco Networks and Oracle. first of all, I intended to choose the Cisco course, then i hesitated - why not Oracle, knowing that both are of great use.
The advise I need concerns what is the right choice based on Market Demand ? I want to change my career / field (currently I am a trainer in a non-related areas such as strategic planning, etc.) and I am keen to know the market and recruitment opportunities most available.

A. F. (Egypt)

Replying
Dear Mr. F,

As you are well aware both CISCO and ORACLE are useful skills to have anywhere and Egypt is included. Either way, you are enhancing your job value. The question you need to ask yourself is what do you want to do next ?

CISCO will better place you in the networking & technical support arena. On the other hand, ORACLE may allow you more access to a variety of IT functions: application development/support or DBA (database administrator). You should find out where you think you would be more interested and where you may excel.

Both skill sets are in demand, however - other things being equal - we tend to think that the ORACLE track would open up a wider range of opportunities for you.

If you long term objective is to become an IT Manager in a company or bank ; or alternatively an IT implementation consultant, then go for ORACLE. If you are more inclined towards an internal technical support role or a sales / customer service management position with a networking solutions provider then CISCO would be more useful (even if you end up with another brand later in your career).

Thus you should not concern yourself too much about market demand in this particular situation, they are both in demand, it is not like you are faced with a proprietary technology with limited use.
Hope the above information was useful.

Good Luck.

Note from the editor: 
Employer names and inquiry sender names were withheld for confidentiality

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