I am a linux professional looking for my next devops/sysadmin etc roles. I am tired of applying and getting my resume rejected. For a few days though since I tuned my resume, I am starting to get calls for interview. But I get rejected in interview as my knowledge probably isn't as good as those with 10 years of experience.<p>Now, a RHCSA certification would make me do linux administration on my sleep. But having a small lab over my spare laptop(I only have office laptop at this moment) would help me crack the job given I get till interview. However, a red hat cert will get me towards the interview.<p>My monthly saving is very low (Near about 80$) and I'd need 3-5 months of savings to afford a certification.
Have you considered using a cloud VM? Oracle Cloud Infrastructure gives them for free for personal use: <a href="https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/" rel="nofollow">https://www.oracle.com/cloud/free/</a><p>Oracle Linux is basically RHEL (rebranded) under the hood.<p>Could you practice your RHEL sysadmin skills on an Oracle Linux cloud VM?
Homelab over certification, easily. The best engineers I know never held a cert. Some hiring managers consider it a negative signal. It's the same problem with bootcamp coders - it's a signal that you need to be explicitly instructed to learn, versus being able to self-start and learn organically.