Hi Fellows:

My problem is that I've posted my resume on internet and responded to some job ads, but I'm not receiving any phone calls. Please could those of you who are in the front line and know what the employers are looking for narrate to me the things I suppose to know as junior systems admin. in order to make any head way because I know the job market is very competitive; I've got my certification on Solaris 10 but this is not enough. I'm still practising at home with my sparc machine. It's very frustrating when there's no phone call or recruiter making any contact through email. I would greatly appreciate your response.

Unfortunately the number 1 thing most employers look for is work experience. Since you talk about certification and home system it makes it sound as if you don't have much work experience.

You might ask the people who were offering the certification classes as they may have contacts.

Also you don't say WHERE you are. If you're in a fairly large city there may be a local UNIX user's group or at least a Linux User's group. Going to meetings for one of those might help you find some leads or least make contacts of your own. If you're in the U.S. posting on Monster.com will likely get you more hits than anything else.

Recruiters typically do keyword matching so you might want to think of a technologies resume if your work experience is light. e.g. List OpenSolaris (and Solaris by itself - some recruiters might not realize its the same thing). Also list hardware, applications, databases you may have been exposed to. (Note: Don't lie on the resume but do list things that are on OSes you've supported even if you're not an expert in the app or the database - some employers are looking for people who have supported similar environments.)

Also you might want to look into "Operator" positions especially for afternoon/night shifts which are harder to fill. While not true "Administrators" sometimes starting in such a position can put you in place for a true "Junior Admin" position down the road.