A+, Network+, or nothing: which cert first
Short version for the impatient: aiming at helpdesk/desktop roles, get the A+ first, stop there until you're hired. Everyone else, read on.
For nine years I hired onto a 50-seat enterprise service desk, and I watched the cert market from the buyer's side. Here's the honest ledger.
What a cert actually does
A certification is not a skill; it's a signal that survives screening. It does two jobs: it gets your resume past keyword filters (real at most mid-size and larger companies) and it answers the lazy question "does this person know anything at all?" so the hiring manager can move on to the real questions. That's it. It gets you into the interview. It never does the job once you're in it.
This is why cert-stacking before your first job is such a common trap: the first cert does almost all of the signaling work of the first three. Three entry certs and no experience reads as "studying instead of applying."
The A+
Verdict: get it, if you're starting from zero and aiming at support roles. It's the entry HR filter recognizes, it forces genuinely useful breadth (hardware, OS troubleshooting, basic networking, printers, always printers), and hiring managers read it as "serious about the entry level." The two-exam format is annoying but standard.
Cheap way to do it: a video course, the official objectives list printed out, and two practice-exam books. Total study cost can be under $150 plus exam fees. Skip the $2,000+ bootcamps; the exam doesn't know what you paid.
Network+
Verdict: second, not first, and ideally once employed. Great content: the networking fundamentals it covers are the ones tier 1 techs use daily (IP, DNS, DHCP, VPN, why "the network's down" is usually one specific thing). But as a first cert it overshoots the entry filter, and many employers will pay for it once you're in the door. Ask in your first 90 days. The answer is yes more often than people expect.
Security+ and the rest
Security+ matters when you're moving into security-adjacent roles or government/contracting work, where it's a formal checkbox (DoD 8570). It's a fine third cert. As a first cert it's aimed at a different destination than the helpdesk on-ramp. Cloud certs (AWS/Azure fundamentals) are worth it when you can tie them to something hands-on. An AZ-900 with a real Azure free-tier account behind it says something; the badge alone says "watched videos."
When to skip certs entirely
If you have strong evidence of hands-on work (a year fixing machines at a repair shop, real MSP experience, a body of volunteer work), the cert adds little for the jobs you can already get. Small shops and MSPs hire on evidence, not filters. And contract-to-hire staffing agencies mostly care that you can start Monday.
The trap to avoid: paying for any course or program because it promises a job. The job market for entry-level IT doesn't respond to tuition; it responds to interviews, and interviews respond to resumes with evidence. Spend the money on the exam voucher and the $50 of practice material, and spend the saved time applying.
What I told every new hire
Get hired with the A+. In your first six months, find out what the company will reimburse (often a surprising list), and pick your second cert to match where you want to be in two years, not where the internet says the money is this quarter. The techs who moved up fastest on my desk were never the most-certified. They were the ones who documented, escalated well, and got promoted into the slots that opened. The certs were punctuation.