Your honest advice for a Nepalese re-entering industry after a year of career gap?

Honest observations please.

I am a recent graduate. Worked for 2+ years in corporate IT support.

Took a year gap.

Now I want to re-enter industry.

What can I learn?

Are RHCSA and RHCE certificates helpful?

What lands me job the fastest in the system/network/db admin space?

fastest need not be "tomorrow". It just needs to be the least resistive path.

Personally, I do not find certifications the best way to develop skills.

Certifications are a good way to spend money and contribute to other company's revenue targets.

If you want to develop skills, create a project, develop an idea, build useful utilities, contribute to open source projects, experiment with an interesting (to you) science or engineering application, etc

I think this is true for everyone, regardless of their physical, geographic location.

(Apologies for typos, etc...)
I agree with Neo...
In 1977 I had career change from military electronics to a completely different profession, it was only for 3 years then I returned to my original profession. In those days the electronic advancements were small so the relearning curve was very quick and easy.

Today however, inside 1 year the technological advancements in all of the STEM areas are so rapid that you will have to relearn some of your techniques...
Languages for example, have gotten so sophisticated that even in 1 year they will have been upgraded to suit current requirements that were probably not even thought of 12 months or so ago.

So to catch up that year loss, Neo's advice about developing skills is second to none...
I have always had a fetish for Oscilloscopes and Spectrum Analysers so that is where I put my learning curve for different languages.

My 5 pennoth from a mere amateur...

I would back Neo about certifications, they can help someone already in place in getting a promotion, the employer knows what skills he has, the certification shows he has all the required theoretical knowledge also... But very little help in this world where it is your practical skills that matters most.

wisecracker's thoughts are also true unfortunately, leaving you with very little choice and gamble:

As everything evolves so fast, you have no changes in being good at all things required, doesnt mean to not know, the approach, is what saved me a few times, know things just as if you were a analyst, OS? know what makes an OS, what challenges are behind when you talk implementation, that means be able to choose the right OS for the requirement ( best perfs-stability../cost...) etc, that means also know what is available on the market...

And now what makes you different and your gamble: like wisecracker/neo's advice: if still in eng/admin, choose a domain of the OS, a part of the Kernel, that you master, but really thoroughly, that shows you are a guru on the subject, most employers will believe with such mastery, you can adapt yourself to their requirements, meaning if you are not quite what they required, they believe you will learn, to match... at their expenses because you were chosen...

Once in place , beware, cruel world, stay up to date, because what I've seen, e.g. in banks, evolution is not necessarily in internal, or even more tricky, in internal with a new team, up to date with last tech etc... and you find yourself maintaining something that will be ported... and at the end, you are out of work, and out of date...

My, a bit more than 2 cents...

The concern here is explaining the gap not from mouth but from proof. There is where the certification comes into.

Proof of certification is not proof of operational skills.

Most of the most skillful people I know (included most of the top talent over the years at unix.com) have zero formal certifications.

Likewise, many of the quite unskillful people I have worked with over the years have many certifications.

On the other hand, if you have little to no skills, getting certified might fool some employers that you are skillful

There is one thing not mentioned at present.
A potential employer might consider your short stay at your previous engagement as an unreliable person to employ, as you might do the same to them after a couple of years or so, unless, you have a really good reason for your year off; and, even that might not be satisfactory enough after a potential interview.
Just a thought...

hmm..so getting referred is the only way you mean to get a job?

No. There are many ways to get a job.

Some build strong portfolios by creating and publishing software on GitHub. Others contribute to open source and establish credibility through consistent commits. Some write and publish papers in conferences or journals.

There are countless paths.

But the way you’re asking these questions, @Ihattaren, also creates an impression.

@Ihattaren
I am a complete amateur and code for pure fun, but, I have contributed masses of code recipes over my amateur coding lifetime, decades, and I mean a lot of code.
I have also done apps pertaining to my love of test equipment.
Some for fun, but one in particular of commercial quality at the time, but now as technology has raced away from that project has made it obsolete.
However this GIF animation was a large project for the stock Commodore Amiga A1200, floppy drive only.
It was uploaded to AMINET a 1/4 century ago.
As guys on this site know, I deliberately put tight restrictions on my projects...

1. It has to work on all world versions of the platform so that limited it to 320x200 NTSC.
2. The construction could not have an etched pcb, so dangerous chemicals were elimniated.
3. It had to be built in stages so a young lad or lass could do each stage at his/her leisure and keep the cost down.
4. It had to be able to use default AMIGA OS tools and require NO other SW to be able to build it.
   There were others but not important here.
   If I was going for a job at say Tektronix this is what I would use.
   I have literally NO formal qualifications in SW or IT but a Degree in Maths, and one in Electrical and Electronic Engineering and I code relatively naively.
   I also have 3 heads; literal, lateral, and orthogonal...
   If this site does not play of accept the GIF then it is here:-

…just received notice that this paper has been accepted for IAIT2026 following three-reviewer peer review (minor revisions requested).

All of this was first built and tested through several experimental Ruby on Rails implementations (all repos will be made public soon, most already public).

I currently have six papers in the 2026 publication pipeline, each backed by a corresponding GitHub repository (some public, some private).

Current 2025 conference and journal papers in pipeline:

And @Ihattaren — I’m fully retired, accept no commercial work, and do these projects as charity, aligned with an engineer’s obligation to contribute to society.

Some submissions will need minor revisions. Some will be rejected and resubmitted elsewhere. That’s normal. The point is not the outcome; it’s doing the work and applying your skills where they’re useful.

Spend less time chasing certifications and more time building things that actually help people and contribute to human civilization (science, math, engineering, software, computer science, medicine, etc)

Let me share my two cents.

In past decade or so the 'certification' industry as become ... well a money making industry evolved around itself.

Exams are often just boilerplates with 'braindumps' avail online for people just to memorize and rarely understand.

RedHat stuff is a bit better, where you have to do hands-on stuff on actual machines, but rot caught that one too.

Certs are mostly relevant for integrator companies, which apply for tenders, which in turn require company applying tp have at least certified experts to be eligible.

So if you aim that kind of work, certs would help or your employer should finance those certifications if required. Often with contractual obligation after e.g you cannot leave for N years or such without paying them back the cost.

Nothing can replace hands on experience.

Today i would value more a person that did stuff in VMs on their personal computer or cloud(s), documented it and made a nice pipeline to automate it, putting stuff on versioning systems.

And if asked to explain parts of it, they should be able to do so, since AI can generate stuff for you, and understanding things is more important today then ever.

With todays personal computers you can make complex architectures running on several vms or containers with zero cost, exploring software stacks and network setups.

Practice makes perfect as saying goes.

Regards

Peasant.