tyler, some additional "soft" skills that will help you distinguish yourself from others: - learn to write well: take some creative writing classes in addition to technical writing. being able to efficiently write clear, concise, and effective documentation is a skill that is necessary, and i daresay, required, especially for senior-level staff. - learn how to present/speak: join the local toastermasters. grok tufte's 'visual display of quantitative information' (or something similar -- this goes back to writing effective and concise documentation) - in addition to business and finance, learn negotiation techniques. 'getting to yes' is a good book; there are many others - learn time/task/project management: you should be able to accurately guage how long things take, task interdepence, and how to structure a (simple) project. try a few different methods to find one that works for you, and then build and rebuild your home lab using your project plan. this is also a good time to practise documentation ;) - get involved: join/start local users groups, go to a conference or two, subscribe to/read mailing lists on topics which interest you, or which are relevant to something you are studying/playing with - to reiterate what others have said: learn to troubleshoot. learn to troubleshoot. learn to troubleshoot. - develop an efficient, comprehensive methodology, and stick to it (a checklist can be helpful) - learn to take notes as you work through your procedure (what you did, what was the result: this will aid in writing both root-cause reports and operational procedures -- more documentation practise) - as you gain experience, re-evaluate and optimise, but be consistent in your approach - be able to explain and justify your procedure(s); teaching and learning from others makes you both better. mentoring will be an extremely valuable skill to your hiring manager/team (and will better position you for leadership roles) - learn how to use $favourite_search_engine in order to find answers you might also consider getting a juniper j-series box (or running bird on a *nix box, or three). a ccnp will teach you cisco's way, but most provider networks are heterogenous, and the ability to understand a non-cisco device (and moreover, a non-cisco-style cli/config), will benefit you long-term (imho). above all, have fun with what you are doing. this industry can be a lot of fun, but it is also stressful, and if you aren't enjoying what you are learning/doing, it might be time to re-evaluate your focus/priorities. hth /joshua