Gaining Experience with Volunteer Work

In this episode (number 7), I want to talk about using Volunteer work as a way to gain experience. Volunteer work has been a big part of my life, for anyone who knows me. I have been a volunteer at my local Fire Department and the local Rescue Squad. I joined the Fire Department when I was 13 years old because that was the minimum age. But I had been hanging around the Fire Department long before then because my father was a member. It honestly prepared me for my very first job. This was a non-IT job but the Fire Department gave me the experience of just working. Working not for the money but working to get a job done. So when I actually started working it didn’t really feel like work to me.

I bring this up in a SysAdmin podcast because I think everyone should try to donate some of their time. This is for a few reasons:

It looks good on a resume

I really like to see volunteer work on a candidate’s resume. Volunteer work shows me that they are willing to give back to their community. It also shows me that they are probably not selfish ad understand working towards a goal.

It can give you experience in multiple areas

This is one you may not see. Many volunteer organizations have a very wide range of volunteers with a wide range of backgrounds. So you never know who you may meet that could help you down the road.

While running Rescue Squad a new member joined my crew and in normal chit chat with him, I discovered his job was search engine optimization. I was super interested in search engine optimization at the time, so it was great to talk with him about it. At the time I gained some very valuable insight into search engine optimization. Now that was a long time ago so much of that is not relevant anymore. But you can see where I am going with this. You may meet someone who can become your mentor or help you get into a SysAdmin role.

It’s great to give back to your community

I have always believed that it is a good idea to give back to your community. Whether you believe in karma or not, I believe that you get back what you put out. This could be karma or this could be as simple as the fact that you put yourself out there to volunteer. When you do that you meet more people and are presented with more opportunities.

Gained Experience Designing Networks

At the age of 16 I “designed” the first network that my Fire Department had. Now I put “designed” in quotes because there was not much of a design to it. I put in an old school blue Linksys router. Then purchased about 500 feet of CAT 5 cable and ran it to different offices. I terminated the end of each cable with an RJ45 and that was it. Very simple very crude but this was back in 1999 or 2000 time frame. But I honestly learned a lot from this project. I didn’t 100% know what I was doing but I was able to figure it out and learn. The key things that I learned from this project were how to terminate RJ45 ends.

About 18 years later the Fire Department asked me if I could upgrade their network. During the discovery phase, I noticed that everything I had put in 18 years ago was still being used. Along with some add-ons people had done. I also discovered they were paying for two internet service providers. This upgrade involved purchasing a network rack, a UPS battery backup, a business level Cisco Switch, Cat6 cable, and patch panel, Wireless Access Point and building a router for them.

What did I learn?

Unlike my previous setup, I ran all of the cables through the walls and installed flush wall mount jacks. Everything this time was super professional. So that was the key take away from this project. That everything was done more professionally than I had done it 18 years ago. What I learned from this project is to perform more research on some of the equipment. I purchase a wireless access point for them from Aruba. This is a great access point however it was about half of my entire budget for the project. What I learned was that it was overkill for them to have that AP. There was much cheaper access points out there that perform just as well.

Gaining Experience with Another Upgrade

Not too long after upgrading the Fire Department network I was contacted by my Rescue Squad. They asked me what it would cost to do the same kind of upgrade there. They had a very similar setup as the Fire Department did and wires just hung from the ceiling. I priced it out using the gained experience I had from the Fire Department upgrade and purchased pretty much the same equipment. Except for the Wireless Access Points. Since I learned that they were a little overkill I purchased three Ubiquiti access points for the same price I purchased the Aruba access point. The Ubiquiti access points did require a controller to configure. But that controller was free software you could download. So it made the installation super simple and much less expensive.

Conclusion

This was a pretty non-technical post but I hope you see that volunteering can really be beneficial to not only your community but to you as well. By putting yourself out there and volunteering you will not only feel better about helping out. But you never know who you may meet and it is those connections and experience that will take you far.

So reach out to your local volunteer agencies or non-profits and see if they could use some help.

I would love to know what you think. So feel free to hit me up on twitter @MikeWalton1984 or leave a comment down below. Also check out the rest of my site at https://thesysadminschool.com.

If you want to build a home lab and gain experience at home check out my free ebook https://400dollarlab.com.