How much you remember from your MCSE

[Kitsune]

So i'm in my second year of the MCSE course i'm doing and i was just wondering, how much of this stuff are you expected to remember?
I dont remember too much from last year even though i got high marks for the exams.
How much are my future employers going to expect me to know, I mean after working for a short while things will come back to me but straight off how much would they expect from me?

[羽之助]

What's a MCSE?
I read it as 'mixi' first.
Master of Community Social Education?

[Kitsune]

What's a MCSE?
I read it as 'mixi' first.
Master of Community Social Education?

Microsoft Certified Systems Engineer

There's tonnes more that sound just like it.
Microsoft Certified Professional (MCP)
Microsoft Certified Systems Administrator (MCSA)
Microsoft Certified Professional + Site Building (MCP+SB)
Microsoft Certified Solutions Developer (MCSD)
Microsoft Certified Database Administrator (MCDBA)
Microsoft Certified Application Developer (MCAD)
Microsoft Certified Trainer (MCT)
Microsoft Office User Specialist(MOUS)
And the list goes on.

[setrict]

As an former employer, I can tell you what I expected. I expected people with certifications of any kind to know very well any general concepts, and be able to work out on their own anything else using the net or reference materials within a reasonable amount of time. I ran a small IT shop though, so we didn't have a lot of time to babysit.

On the other hand, a friend working in a much larger company (thousands of IT and developers) found that they didn't expect much initially, the first 2 months of the job was classroom training and teaching him pretty much exactly what he needed to know... and then he was assigned to an experienced team to learn the ropes.

I guess what I'm saying is it will depend a lot on the employer. Bigger companies tend to expect less initially, and spend a lot more time and money orienting new employees. Smaller companies don't have that luxury, so you might find them a little more difficult at first.

If your experience goes anything like mine, you'll find that the details from degrees and certifications make up a fairly small percentage of what you need to know on the job. You'll have to learn the rest as you go (and continually in the tech fields). I graduated college ten years ago, and thought I knew quite a bit... I didn't. I feel like I know 10x more now than I did right out of school... and I still feel like I don't know nearly enough a lot of the time. Thank god for google.

The Certs are there to indicate your ability to accomplish a goal, and insure you aren't totally clueless. No decent employer is going to expect miracles right off, they are usually happy as hell if you aren't an idiot, have a good attitude, and are willing and able to actually work and learn the job.