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I also will reiterate that experience is very important. Many times more important than certs. I have also reached a point in my career where my experience speaks louder than any cert. I haven't had any issues having companies interested in my services. Key is I stay hands on and have had exposure with a lot of different IT disciplines and doing architectural design (designed and deployed a new data center/campus infrastructure, migrated old infrastructure to new, and kept a couple of field locations up and running all at the same time). This experience was critical when I last interviewed with Cisco. I was placed in front of 5 CCIEs with one of them having multiple CCIE certs and was designated a fellow (meaning the company would have to dissolve or he leaves on his own accord before he loses his job there). After going through the gauntlet, I ended up with an offer and a thumbs up from all 5 technical interviewers. The fellow was the toughest as he drew up a building on a white board and then told me to design a campus data center with IP addressing, topology, and equipment to be used for both wired and wireless. After that I had to talk through the data center part and replication. All of that was thrown at me on the fly as he made things up in his head. It was probably the roughest 1.5 to 2 hour interview I've ever had.
Anyways, certs do come into play for some positions even if you do have experience. Many Federal jobs both staff and contracting positions will state certain certs are a requirement before being considered.
One thing you should keep in mind. Once you get into IT, you really need to constantly keep learning and staying up to date. You never stop learning if you want to be relevant...unless you get into some Federal position where you only do X for a few years. I'm in pre-sales now and what I've done to stay relevant is to acquire equipment to build out a home lab. Many networking professionals will also have their own lab setups to constantly practice and try new things.
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