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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 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.