[chaos]

I work in networking and haven't had a problem getting a full time position sicne I got out of the military. I was in the same situation as you, I prefer networking but do have some sys admin experience. These days, if you don't have the Cisco certs people generally will not take you seriously unless you have some very impressive experience. Either that or they will try and lowball you with the money. For me stability is the most important thing, but the money is also important. If you do not understand how much you are worth these companies will have no mercy on you.

Also, it depends where you want to get a job. I'm in the DC area and I get offers left and right, the contract jobs are plentiful but I have not had a problem finding a full time contractor position. Put your resume out on all the websites (monster, clearancejobs, dice, militaryhire, etc etc) and with that clearance you will get a ton of offers from all different kinds of jobs.

Before you get out get a copy of your SF-86 if you don't already have one. IMO you should make the CCNA a priority, if you go for your MCSE you will find that you are only going to get sys admin type jobs, which means help desk, which sucks. Also, get your Security +. I can't stress that enough to anyone who will be working in any kind of government contracting or for a government contractor. You HAVE to have it, or the CISSP,in order to get any job above helpdesk level (at the helpdesk level they will normally accept A+ or N+ but security + is considered mid level, read up on the DoD reg). It's not very hard, especially with a cleared background a lot of the information you already know is similar, and once you have it you do not have to recert.