LAN/WAN Professional Cisco Certification/Internship Program

[monkey0506]

So I was recently looking on Yahoo!'s Hot Jobs for jobs in my area and I came across a company named LAN/WAN Professional (lanwanprofessional.com) which is currently seeking participants in a Cisco Certification/Internship program. There is no entry level requirements aside from a serious desire to pursue a career in technology information and fronting the cost of the preliminary certification tests (approx. $850, to be reimbursed).

It starts with a 2 week training program to determine eligibility for the internship as well as to get the Cisco Certification. Even if I am determined ineligible for the internship they will still help to place me (within 2-8 weeks of the training) into an entry level position starting at approximately $24,000 annually (more than I have to date ever made annually).

If I do qualify, the internship is paid and at the end of the 1 year internship I can expect to be placed in a job making between $72,000 and $90,000 annually. With 2 years further experience I can expect to make between $120,000 and $150,000 annually.

Somehow this doesn't sound too bad to me.

Now I just have to figure out where to come up with $850...

[Kweepa]

Do you really need two kidneys?
You can always buy another one in a couple of years.

[RickJ]

A salary of $150,000 for a network engineer with 2 years experience is not a credible statistic.  The figure  of $24k to $72k is more realistic.    It sounds like they are selling an $850 Cisco class.   My wife took the cisco router class at the community college.  It was an automated self study course that ran on a PC.   The information is presented and then you are asked perform related task via a simulator that is part of the course.   Periodically the class was given an examination which was monitored by the teacher.  After completing the course the students could then take the certification test.

Here is Cisco information about their certifications.
http://www.cisco.com/web/learning/le3/le2/le0/le9/learning_certification_type_home.html

In addition to community college there are various places that provide training and certification testing.  I have the opinion they are hyping the placement aspect to sell the training course.   The price of the training sounds a little steep to me.

You can  check out network engineering jo0b/salaries at http://dice.com, http://craigslist.com and other employment websites.   

[monkey0506]

That statistic may have been misquoted it looks like it should have been $100,000-$120,000, but that's not for a "network engineer". It's not just a "Cisco class". The $850 is actually reimbursed upon completion of the course and the 1 year paid internship is also a fast-track program to advance to the level of CCIE Consultant.

In any case even the $24k range is still higher than I've ever made in a year, so even the lowest range of the spectrum is still looking highly profitable to me.