If working in a Microsoft Azure Job is your goal, then you have come to the right place. Our guide is your one-stop shop to getting your dream employment and working with Microsoft Azure!
That being said, we are not saying you are going to be working for Microsoft. But by following our advice, you will have the best chance of getting employed in the Microsoft Azure field.
Get Certified!
Before you start applying for jobs, get certified in Azure! but easier said than done right? well not really… Microsoft has loads of initiatives for you to skill up and certify and a lot of the initiatives offer heavy discounts or even allow you to take an exam for free!
How do I take an exam for free?
Now there are many ways to take a Microsoft exam for free. Start by looking at our post:
>> How to get free Microsoft exam certification <<
In the above post, we detail 5 different ways you can take a Microsoft exam for free or at least, HEAVILY discounted.
Which Azure Exam should I take?
This part is fairly simple, but there are some facts you should know. The answer to this question really depends on the role you are applying for. If you are applying for a position that is primarily managing Azure identities, the SC-300: Microsoft Identity and Access Administrator may be best for you, for example.
But take this with a pinch of salt, job descriptions are manipulative at best these days, so you could reach out to people who work at some desired places of employment to ask what their day to day looks like.
Let’s take a look at what the standard study path looks like:
- AZ-900 (Azure Fundamentals) – Beginner
- AZ-104 (Azure Administrator) – Intermediate
- SC-300 (Identity and Access Administrator) – Intermediate
- AZ-500 (Azure Security Engineer) – Hard
- AZ-700 (Azure Networking Engineer) – Hard
- AZ-305 (Azure Architect) – Expert
How to study for Azure Exams?
All Azure exams have a skills outline, the skills outline is provided in PDF form on the exam information page on Microsoft learn. The skills outline defines each topic covered in the exam and should be used to evaluate your knowledge prior to booking the exam.
One our Azure study guides here at ourcloudnetwork.com we use the skills outline and provide a link to the official Microsoft documentation for each topic. As well as this we collate all the Microsoft Learning paths, which provide self-paced study, direct from Microsoft for each topic.
All of our Azure study guides can be found >> Here <<
Get Real Experience Working with With Azure
Writing down your experience with Azure on your AC is key to standing out to a potential employer. You have done the easy bit above, which is to get certified (which will help you get noticed by recruiters). But now you need to stand out once the recruiters have your CV in their hand.
So how do I get real experience with Azure?
This is an easy question to answer. Azure Labs!
Azure Labs are real scenarios, played out in non-production environments, enabling you to get real hands-on experience working with Azure.
Start with reading our post: >>Use these Azure labs for hands-on learning <<
The post covers a list of different Azure lab providers and how you can do the labs for free. To summarise though…
To get free access to labs you can either use the Microsoft Learn sandboxes provided for free from Microsoft. Or you can create multiple free Azure trails for 12 months and $200 work of access in Azure. As for the actual labs, Microsoft learn contains free step by steps labs or you can use Github to implement many custom and free Azure labs.
Where To Find Azure Job Adverts Online
Starting from my most recommended place to search for Azure jobs, here are my 3 top best places to find Azure job adverts online.
LinkedIn is hot right now for Azure jobs. Almost every job I have interviewed for in the last 2 years has come from LinkedIn. But be careful, LinkedIn is filled with recruiters, both solo recruiters and big corporations, they are sneaky, but we will get back to them shortly…
There are 2 different ways you should use LinkedIn to look for Azure Jobs. Firstly, you can select the jobs tabs from the top menu, this will allow you to search and filter for published jobs.
Secondly, you can use the search function, found in the screenshot above to search for people with the job title of ‘recruiter’ in the field of your choice, in our case, ‘cloud/Azure’. Many recruiters on LinkedIn have built large connection networks and do not go through the hassle of creating job adverts for every job they are advertising, it simply would not be advantageous for them.
Indeed
The second best place to look is on Indeed. They are a global job search engine and you can easily find some great opportunities. Simply head to indeed.com or uk.indeed.com and search for ‘Azure’. You can opt to search within a specific location or select ‘remote’ to find remote jobs. Please bear in mind if you are searching for jobs in other countries to factor in any time differences.
It is good to know that when you search for a phrase, it also pulls out jobs with Azure in the job descriptions, so hopefully, you will find quite a range of positions in different sectors.
Google Job Search
This last one might seem kind of obvious, but it is definitely underutilised and often forgotten about. Simply by searching for the job you want in the Google search engine, Google will collate recent jobs directly into the search feed that you can easily view and apply for.
Above I have searched for ‘Azure Jobs’ and immediately found many similar jobs within my area.
Azure Jobs CV Tips
Apart from probably your LinkedIn profile, your CV is one of the first things a recruiter is going to read to find out who you are and if they want you to join their company. Here was have some top do’s and don’ts for your cv!
Let us start with the don’ts!
- Don’t focus on your technical accreditations. Maybe this is counterproductive to what I have written at the top of this post. But that is to get your CV in front of the recruiter, now they are reading your CV, they need to know how they are going to benefit from hiring you.
- Don’t worry about the length of your CV! I hear some people saying they like their CV to fit on a single page. But don’t sacrifice valuable information that may get you hired by shortening your CV.
- Don’t put Curriculum Vitae at the top of your CV. This should not need to be explained.
- Don’t put a picture of yourself, full address or gender on your CV, it is not relevant.
- Don’t make your CV fancy and colourful. Stick with black text on a white background.
Now the dos!
- Firstly, when submitting your CV, do so as a Word document, not PDF!
- Spell check AND sanity check. Have someone else read your CV! Spell check alone will not fix any non-sense that has been written in your CV.
- When writing your job duties, include some achievements where you could apply the same benefits to a new employer. For Example: “I lifted and shifted physical infrastructure to Azure Cloud, minimising capital costs and saving the company over £15,000 over the next 3 years”.
- Use tactical keywords! Recruiters and even AI-based CV analytic software will search for important keywords in your CV. Game the system by placing important keywords tactically into your CV. Use the job description for the role you are applying for to decide which keywords to use.
Summary
Thank you for taking the time to read my post. Hopefully, now you are at the end of this post, you are more prepared than ever to apply for that dream job in Azure.
