It depends on the specialism. For network engineers: CCNA at minimum, CCNP for senior roles. For cloud roles: AWS Solutions Architect Associate is the most universally valued, followed by Azure Administrator for Microsoft-heavy environments. For IT support and service management: CompTIA A+ and Network+ as entry points, ITIL v4 Foundation for service management. For security: CompTIA Security+ for a starting point, then specialize into CISSP or CISM for senior security roles. The most important principle: pursue certifications in the technology stack of the companies and roles you are actually targeting, not the certifications you think sound impressive.
Yes, as an entry point to IT support and helpdesk roles. CompTIA A+ demonstrates foundational knowledge of hardware, software troubleshooting, networking basics, and operating systems. It is recognized by major employers, including managed service providers, and it signals vendor-neutral IT competence. Its primary value is at the start of a career; once you have 3 or more years of hands-on experience and more advanced certifications, A+ becomes less relevant and can be deprioritised or removed from your CV. The progression is typically A+ to Network+ to Security+ to specialized cloud or Cisco certifications.
Name the specific services you have worked with, not only the platform. "AWS (EC2, RDS, S3, VPC, CloudWatch, Lambda)" is far more useful to a hiring manager than "AWS experience." Include the scale where relevant (500TB of data migrated, infrastructure serving 10,000 daily users). If you have completed a migration project, describe it with before-state, your contribution, and the outcome. Certifications are valuable corroborating evidence but do not replace demonstrated experience; both together are significantly stronger than either alone.
Only if they are evidenced. "Good communicator" and "team player" without supporting context add nothing to a technical CV. However, evidenced soft skills are genuinely valuable in IT: "explained a P1 incident and its business impact to board-level stakeholders during the resolution process" shows communication under pressure. "Wrote technical documentation used to onboard 8 new engineers" shows knowledge transfer. "Presented the infrastructure roadmap to the CTO and secured budget approval for a 3-year investment" shows commercial awareness. The skill statement and the evidence belong together in a single bullet point.
A network engineer designs, builds, and maintains the network infrastructure (routers, switches, firewalls, WAN/LAN, VPN, SD-WAN). A systems administrator manages the server infrastructure and the software running on it (Windows Server, Linux, Active Directory, virtualisation platforms like VMware or Hyper-V). In practice, smaller organizations often combine both roles into a single generalist IT engineer or IT manager role. On a CV, be precise about which you are: if you do both, describe them separately to make both skill sets visible to an ATS and to the hiring manager.