(upbeat music) - My upbringing was kind of from my dad.

He built my first computer and I was around 10.

And then when I was 12 I was like, I wanna build my own.

So for Christmas that year, him and I build a computer together.

And when I got into high school, I heard about Miami Valley Career Technology Center.

I saw they had a network engineering program there.

All high school, I was learning about network engineering got me this crazy headstart.

And as soon as I got out of high school, I just applied somewhere and got a job at Veolia, started working there and then going to college.

Then was working two part time jobs and then eventually got a little tired of that, got this job here at DataYard.

And ever since I started here I went back to college, and I don't really have any plans of going back to college at the moment.

(upbeat music) - CTC has expanded their programs quite a bit, I didn't even know they had an IT field.

And you can pretty much graduate CTC with a CCNA, which is basically a Certified Computer Network Engineer, and CTC pays for it.

So they have some great programs that you can just get into the work field and you can just go and do your thing.

Plus you have all the work experience.

And that's key, work experience is key.

And that's what CTC gives in all their fields is work experience.

(upbeat music) - We've been in business for 25 years.

We do computer consulting, internet consulting primarily, we do high end cloud hosting and internet access for our business customers.

The way that we found works best here is on the job training.

And DataYard's fortunate we've got some really great team members that help job shadow that'll show you how to do things that's on the job instruction with real world stuff.

But we also do have a tuition reimbursement program, which also applies to certification.

So if someone wants to pursue a certification and get it.

Yeah, we fully support that people who use their time on the clock.

If they're not working with the direct customer, they use that time to study for and acquire new certs.

Most people without a lot of experience start out at the technician level, which is helpdesk typically.

And from there, they move into an administrative role.

And administrators have more depth than a technician but yet they're not really architecting new solutions, then you get to the engineer level.

Those are the people you go to when you have problems and you don't know how to solve them.

So Tommy's right now at that administrator level.

And as he gets additional certifications and more job experience, he'll move up into that engineer level.

Technicians generally start out 15 to $20 an hour, and then by the time you get up to like top level engineer, you're in six figures.

So there's a lot of growth potential.

- When I was 18, working out Veolia I was making like 30,000 a year.

And then now I'm 20 working at DataYard, I'm making 55,000 a year.

It's hard to explain a typical day here.

It changes every day, which is why I love this job.

Usually I'll come in the morning and check my email, respond to customers.

And then, if I'm on call that week, I'll look at our monitoring system and look at what servers are having issues and take care of those.

We do Windows and Linux.

And then usually I'll spend the day, recently I've been writing some proposals.

I've been doing some wireless designs.

We use a program called Ekahau which is a really cool like wireless emulation.

- We're not looking for somebody who knows everything on day one, we're looking for someone who has curiosity, tenacity, meaning they don't give up easy, flexibility, because technology is ever changing, and grit.

I think the CTC graduates tend to have more real world experience versus the book learning.

The book learning is great, the theoretical stuff is great.

But as anybody who's taken a certification test knows that test rarely reflects the real world.

And what really matters is what have you experienced in the field and how well have you mastered that technology in the real world?

- My experience at MVCTC was definitely invaluable.

The amount of information I got from there is insane.

So the building blocks and the fundamentals are something that you have to use every day in our field, the OSI model, the basics of TCP/IP.

An employer will want you because you know the fundamentals.

(bright upbeat music)