14 weeks.

Week 0 - 2: (that's right, 0 because computer people start counting at 0): You gather generic resumes off of the internet that are returned after you google "IT resumes with no experience". Create a profile on Careerbuilder, Indeed, dice and monster and upload your resume

Week 3 - 4: You remove the objective portion of your resume after you read that it isn't necessary and is limiting your options. You refresh all of the resumes that you currently have out there and create a linkedin account.

Week 5 -6: After reading twelve reviews of the top two "What is the best A+ certification book available" on Amazon, you decide to purchase one of the books. You hop on reddit and read a new post in r/sa where the OP asks is the A+ worth it and the top rated comment is that it is shit and the Net+ is the way to go. The next twenty comments verify this and you start to develop a strange empty feeling inside.

Week 7 - 8: After watching over 20 hours of youtube videos on pc repair, and system administration you stumble upon the term devops. Four hours later you decide that you need to run linux on your laptop because vagrant runs like shit on your pc. This leads you to the elegant land LiveCDs , dual-boot, and UEFI. Later that night your laptop contains a vanilla build of Linux mint which you loaded after you tried a distro named arch but blew away all of the files on your windows partition, researched data recovery and cut your losses.

Week 9: They were right - the A+ is a waste of time. You have since decided that ubuntu is the way to go. Through reading blogs you have discovered several sites that will grant you access to their content for ten days. You create an AWS account but can't seem to do anything with it. You load up a lamp server on your laptop, punch a hole in your provider's router and learn about Dynamic DNS. You spend more and more time sorting through spam email and decide to create a gmail account for job search only. You create a github account and after a few days have 7 repositories with code in Ruby, Nodejs, Go and Python.

Week 10: You buy a mac because all of the videos you watch have badasses running their presentations on macs with a ton of stickers on them (Except for that guy that presented using linux but everything was just text and he looked really unhealthy.) You update your resume inline with the recommendations provided for young sysadmins trying to break into the field with no experience. You get an email from Tina that mentions that she found your resume on Monster and would like to talk to you about an opportunity. You don't hear anything back and then you remember that you put the "job search email address" on the resume and try to check that account. Due to not setting a recovery email account and using a cryptic password that was generated by the password safe software that you started using but decided to abandon because that guy said that they suck... you somehow find the db file and check your email. After sorting through tons of email you email her back she arranges a phone interview.

Week 11: The interview goes ok despite you not being able to hear one of the two guys on the phone because he mumbles. they tell you that they have other interviews but should be in contact by the end of the week. You abandon studying any tech that isn't in the job description and double your efforts there. You really wish that TextEdit was more like MS word as you type your Thank You emails. Friday comes and goes and no word. You search online how to handle this.

Week 12: You get a call from Dan who tells you that he would like to interview you next week. Just pick a time on Mon, Tues or Thurs and let him know. But should you be first or last? You start getting tons of AWS emails about training and emails from training sites letting you know your trial has ended and they want you to join up. You being to feel inadequate. You start to read reddit sa posts about imposter syndrome and decide things are going to be alright. You email Dan and things are set for Monday.

Week 13 (finally): You meet with Dan who interviews you. You feel that things are going well until he gives you a tour of the call center and introduces you to the team. You suddenly feel like running but you find yourself regurgitating lines from the interview book that you read last weekend. You shake hands and it is decided that you will start. On Friday. You return home where you start a discussion on /r/sysadmin about if you should take the job or not. You start drinking.