- Nov 20 2013
- IT Career Lab, Workforce
- 0
“IT Career Lab Gave Me a Place to Start.”
November 20, 2013 IT Career Lab, Workforce 0

“I had long contemplated a career in technology. In high school, I was preparing for a military career. The Air Force Academy had interest in recruiting me and I also received a full Army ROTC scholarship to pursue computer science. The stage was set, but after years of visiting military bases and the academy, I decided against joining the military and thus decided to try something other than computers since my options were wide open.
For my education I ultimately ended up at the University of Hawai’i where I got my degree in anthropology. I was successful in my coursework and landed a job in cultural resource management, but this field did not prove adequate in security and compensation to meet my personal and professional goals. I moved to Chicago with my wife for her job opportunities, and I worked in retail and freelance art as I set to the hard task of starting over with a new career change. That is where IT Career Lab found me—back at the beginning so to speak.
My experience with IT Career Lab has been a positive one. With the general knowledge of computers I brought to the table through a lifetime of personal use which included gaming and digital art & design, the Cisco Academy coursework expanded on this and gave me an additional knowledge base for setting up and maintaining a professional network. I learned best practices as well as actual interface commands for manipulating routers and switches, and I was able to demonstrate this ability through the Cisco certification exams. With attention to the instruction and many hours of hard studying, I was able to earn both my CCENT and CCNA and get an internship with National Able Network. That is what is so great about IT Career Lab: it gave me a place to start. Now I have that crucial education and initial work experience to move forward in the information technology field.”
-Jeff Oleniacz