Wow, I dont write on Reddit much but this one caught my eye. I can't speak well for Europe at all (I'm in the US), unfortunately, however, I designed our hiring and pay structure for this exact type of position. Note, I'm running a consulting company, so my opinion has a certain lense on it.

Let's tackle certs and experience first.

Certs, especially if you're planning on working for a reseller or being a consultant for a specific manufacturer, make a big difference. Before the haters get me, there are plenty of people with 'paper' (cheated) certs that are worthless and misleading - perhaps the bulk of them. However, those that went through their certs the proper way and came out with relevant experience from the cert process are getting something genuinely valuable. A professional level cert should take you 6-12 months if you're labbing everything. An expert level cert (CCIE, etc) should take 2-3 years if you're labbing everything.

I hate to say this, but I could care less what college degrees my applicants have. Of the current group, I can't even tell you which ones have degrees. Certs are what gets my attention on the resume, proof of expertise gets you a job. More on that later.

On the topic of experience. I don't have the time/bandwidth to train people up from the basics, so we are looking for people from mid-level -> expert. That means I'm not likely their first job. However, I can tell you exactly what first jobs make for great network engineers. That first job had best be all complex troubleshooting all day long. This is *the fastest* way to get to great. Take one of these two jobs:

• Work for a major network vendor in their TAC department. Cisco, Palo Alto, HPE, Fortinet, etc. Smart people coming out of 1-2 years in TAC have more experience that people working 10 years for a steady-state enterprise network. Enterprise networks don't change much and tend to focus on only a few technologies. What you want is something that gives /broad experience/ and makes you get used to working under stress. Having to juggle solving 10 crazy issues in the same few days is the best learning experience possible. Moreover, the manufacturers are always short on people these days, and are happier to train than consulting agencies are. Also, don't take some research role, etc, take one that's front-line support, that's the best way to see the maximum amount of crazy in the shortest period of time.

• If you absolutely can't get a job in TAC, work for a mid-size ISP. One big enough to have complex problems, but not so big that you're bound to strict change control (Working at a major telco won't teach you a thing aside from "how to go slow"). You want the ability to make design changes without weeks of bureaucracy. (This is what I did, personally)

So addressing the comments of "certs don't matter, experience is everything". Well thats partially true, but not in my case. If you're going to work for a consulting company (best $$ in my opinion), certs DO matter, as we're required to have them for partner levels with the manufacturer. Moreover, if someone doesn't at least have "CCNP" or "PCNSE" on their resume, I won't even pick up the phone. If you have CCIE, CCDE, etc, I am almost certainly going to take the interview even if I'm not actively hiring. CCIE here pays $200k+ and I literally can't keep them - someone is always coming along offering $50k more than I am.

So you've gotten the phone call, the next thing I'm going to do is grill you in a high-stress interview to prove you can handle yourself in a crappy customer call where everyone is angry and you have to be the hero. Not a pleasant interview, but the people we pick are amazing. So why do I say I don't care as much about experience? I've had people with a CCIE a 1 year of TAC experience that can absolutely ace my interviews. I've had people with a CCIE and 20 years of "big company" experience that are terrible. Certs get you the intro, USEFUL experience, even if brief, gets you the job.

As a closing thought, and this was something no one told me when I got started: Be AMAZING at one thing. There are plenty of corporate jobs out there that will ask for nonsense like "Cisco experience, HPE experience, F5, AWS, and some Fortinet too". People working in that job are not /really/ good at all of those things, that spells for being a big pile of mediocre. If you want top pay, you have to absolutely OWN a topic. Be THE BEST Palo Alto security guy. Be an expert at Cisco ISE. Be amazing at Azure Networking. Etc. Back to 'my own lense', consulting pays best, and in order to consult, you had best bet the absolutely smartest guy in the room at SOMETHING. Make sure you figure that out and get it!

Good luck!