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Are Free Certifications Helpful?
orangecat asks: "I just took the Linux Administration Certification test at brainbench.com, a company which provides free certification in many categories, both technical and non-technical. Would listing these free certifications on a resume be helpful, neutral, or a hindrance, particularly for someone with little or no relevant job experience, formal education, or "real" certifications? If so, are there any sites for free (or low cost) certification that are particularly recommended/respected?"
I really don't think they are respected that highly, or at all. A big problem is just that they aren't recognized by most employers. Most certifications aren't that expensive. Like the Microsoft certs, you don't have to get MCSE certified and spend $600-700 on the tests. Just take one or two. Or start on the SAIR certification. The Admin level is 2 tests and it increments up which lets you get something on paper and build up on it. More info is available on that at www.linuxcertification.com.
I personally feel certifications help in the job market when they are targeted or "fit" with where you are going. Anything that shows intent, ability or simple sticktoitiveness is worthwhile in my book... of course you have to be able tell your widgets from foo and bar.
I have interviewed grads, people with certificates and people with solely work experience. I think that people with certificates can be the best of both as they often times have experience, targeted training and they tend to be older with more real world experience.
It may be a good idea to have some materials with you upon interview that speak to the particular certificate or curriculum undertaken.
................................... Tom Tornado * Making things better since 1960 *
I dont think it will hurt. I interview people regularly for my department (unix admin) and I find the NT expereince people have useful, although given someone with equal or more unix experience I will take them any day. Be sure to get some good unix admin experience if you want to become a unix admin. I suggest taking a few sun classes after you are done with the mcse and that should help get you in the door somewhere to start. Most people in this industry dont care at all about certs (at least on the unix side). Experience experience experience is where it is at.
Mike
When I qualified for my CBE (Certified Banyan Engineer) 5 years ago it needed a lot of study, and the ability to think. You certainly couldn't pass this exam purely by regurgitating facts (or opinions, based on some of the MS sample questions I've seen). One exam consisted mainly of parsing sequences of protocol hex-dumps. Heck, most MCSEs I've met don't even know what hex is!
Nowadays anyone with enough money (or an employer with enough money), can obtain a certification.
Bill the Bastard has a lot to answer for.
HR people, and even techies doing the hiring tend to have certain checkboxes that they look for on a resume. If someone meets all or most of the boxes, they get put into a maybe pile. Otherwise, they get put into a round receptacle.
After that, someone will take a few more minutes to actually read the resume to see if there's anything good. So while certifications may help you make the first cut, they probably won't take you farther than that.
It also depends on whether or not the certification is meaningful to the reader. Chances are, no one has heard of or trusts the free ones. While it may impress the ignorant, it's not going to get you any farther than that. For example, I have Wilton's Level II certification. Sounds impressive? Maybe, but what does it mean? Nothing really, unless you're hiring cake decorators.
The real question you should ask yourself is "What job do I want to do?" Then find out what kinds of places are hiring for type of job, and then find out if the companies are looking certification (and if so, what kind) and THEN worry about getting certified.
If you want more job-seeking advice, you should check out Ask the HeadHunter. It takes a somewhat innovative, and very gutsy approach to job seeking, but to my mind, he makes a lot of sense.
...from my perspective, I only consider two "Certifications" worth anything:
Both have achieved the goals of a good certification system:
For obvious reasons, things such as an official Professional Engineer cert carry heavy weight.
However, I can't see how any certification is worth anything without some pre-existing experience to give it meaning.
My best advice to you is this: You're obviously looking for an entry-level position. You can list them on the resume, which won't hurt, and might actually help get you the interview (since HR still does some pre-screening of applications). However, it won't matter one little bit in the interview; what matters here is your ability to communicate what you do know, what the limits of your knowledge are (and BE HONEST), and your fit into their environment (fast learning ability? Steady work ethic? Dependable schedule? Coding Genius? Team player?)
In short, having those Certs might might add slightly to your chances of getting your foot in the door, but it's up to you to perform in the interview, which is what really determines whether you get an offer or not.
-Erik
There are always four sides to every story: your side, their side, the truth, and what really happened.
I'm in a bind. In a way I know it would be helpful for my future if I were to get this just to brighten my resume, but I'm also afraid it may hurt me considering I'd rather a job administrating Linux/UNIX serves rather then the disgusting NT.
Anyways, the training is free, so I'm in the process of doing it. Just figured I'd rant a tad...
Who's the black private dick, who's a sex machine for all the chicks?
My specific problem is that I'm apply to a place with a rather out of date application. It asks about a lot of stuff that just isn't all that relevant anymore (I know the technological level of this organization...it isn't because they don't have new technology available, it's because their HR department designed the application 8 years ago or so and doesn't realize it needs to be updated :), and doesn't ask about the more recent technology which I do have experience with. This application is then presumably evaluated on some quantitative basis, and I get tossed because my quantifiable knowledge doesn't add up to some score.
So the certifications would basically just be something quantifiable to put on the application to hopefully get my foot in the door. I have no illusions that they're going to help if I don't actually have the skills. But I feel that, if I could get an interview, I'd be able to show that I do know what I'm doing. I just need a chance to get that far.
I just took the Linux Administration Certification test at brainbench.com, a company which provides free certification in many categories, both technical and non-technical. Would listing these free certifications on a resume be helpful, neutral, or a hindrance, particularly for someone with little or no relevant job experience, formal education, or "real" certifications?
My suggestion to you is to pickup relevant experience on your own. If you are looking for a developer position; create your own app that shows of your skill (mine was an online survey that used Java servlets and an Oracle database). If you want to be a sysadmin, create a page that documents your skills and resurrect some old machines and manage a home network. Remember, the one thing employers value more than certificates and degrees, is an ability to work and a penchant for learning because the rest can always be bought later. After all several people who are being educated at the expense of their employers because of their potential. The key here is that you are trying to get a job with the certificates as your only source of legitimacy. Especially since it is trivial for one person to amass several certificates simply by scoring above average on an online multiple choice test. I suggest using online certificates simply as coating on the cake. If you have no relevant job experience or formal education I suggest scratching some of your personal itches. I'm currently working at a Fortune 500 company designing and implementing an extensible, regression testing framework for large B2B websites they plan to launch later this year. Besides getting a good salary my rent, cable and phone are paid for by them (because I'm an intern). The interesting thing is that the clincher that got me hired was work I had done on my own free time during spring break.