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Are IT Certifications Meaningless?
superflippy writes "In his article Hiding Behind Certification, MIT's Michael Schrage argues that CIOs who rely too heavily on certifications as a measure of an employee or sub-contractor's abilities are wasting their companies' money."
here here! by the time you have gone through the hoops and mastered their little quizzes, much has become irrelevant and you are out of touch with the issues in your particular workplace. what ever happened to being able to give a decent discussion to determine what is important in an employee? have management become so out of touch that they no longer know what questions to ask?
There's no certification for being able to handle an akward system administrator who throws a hissy fit every time you misunderstand him but whom you still rely on to gt your job done. It's the people skills that count for a lot more in many ways. Any old eejit could learn how to fix as network. Not everyone can influence the powers that be to get it done when they're not motivated to do so.
Drill baby drill - on Mars
IAALS.
As I am sure many will agree (and say here), MSCE consists mainly of buying the books and decent memorization skills.
As far as I'm concerned the only thing a certification will get you is a job. It looks good to bosses on your resume. But if you're boss was smart enough, they'd know what to look for... which in my opinion would render most certifications meaningless.
||| I still can't believe Parkay's not butter.
But they certainly aren't sufficient credentials in the absence of any other experience or education.
Any employer who hires someone based on some single, simple criteria, whether that be just a degree, just a certification, or some other buzzword of the week is nearly always going to get less than they bargained for.
Too many people (employees and employers) use things like certificates because they're too lazy to actually do the work needed to either advance their *real* skills or hire someone with real skills.
Nunc Tutus Exitus Computarus.
That unless you have bags and bags of experience and a lengthy CV, your resume is rarely indicative of your true employable skills. The 8-year old Indian kid who got his MCSE is easy proof of this.
I find some cert courses are good for teaching the fundamentals, rather than proving expertise. I'm studying for a CCNA right now, and while I doubt it'll prove practical for a low level sysadmin job, it is certainly giving me the base networking knowledge required to further pursue a career in network technology...
------- "From bored to fanboy in 3.8 asian girls" ----------
Organization certification such as that with ISO 9000 or SEI's Capability Maturity Model forces you into a role where projects you take on affect your certification. I recall one subcontractor who had a CMM level 5 rating; the company produced absolute garbage, but goodness, did they ever produce it so well. They had level 5.
What was especially telling was when we let them go. Their only defense? "But we're CMM Level 5!" They had no idea that process quality was completely separate from product quality.
I am a high school student and took a course through a vocational center for Network+ and iNet+ certification. I received 900 on both exams (perfect score), yet don't feel as if I know much about networking at all beyond the basic "this is a Cat5 cable" and "this is how to configure a network interface in Windows." The fact that anyone can get a perfect score, let alone a teenager like myself who does computer stuff as a hobby, shows how meaningless these certifications really are.
...I can attest to the fact that some clients DO place too much weight on certs. I'll be the first to tell you that some of my certs are valuable and backed by years of experience (VCP - Veritas Certified Pro) while some are the result of cram/pass (CCNA 2.0) or somewhere in between (RHCE).
I've found that being up-front and honest about which of your certs fall into which catagories lends a high level of credability to yourself in the eyes of a potential client/employer. When asked about a specific cert that falls in the cram/pass catagory, I'm brutally honest: "Well, I am certified and I have worked on the equipment in a lab environment; however, the certification was required by my employer so we could resell a particular product line. I can get it up and running solidly, but not off the top of my head..." This was especially true when I used to work in the "channel" (ISVs, resellers, SIs).
I would not fall into the poor attitude of "all certs suck and are worthless"! Proper certs AND documented real-world experience can be a powerful weapon as you try to sell yourself. They can also be a way to get around the gatekeepers to access the real decision makers.
This one gang kept wanting me to join cause I'm pretty good with a bo staff.
In one aspect, we can all thank Microsoft for this one with their MCSE mills which turned out a bunch of talentless mouse jockeys. Mind you, not ALL are talentless...but a lot I knew from the boom were. This had the unfortunate effect of taining a bunch of people who really didn't care about much more than dollar signs.
Now, I know a lot of people who have, as a result of articles such as this, let their certifications expire...which I think is a bad idea in some cases.
The problem with certifications is that in many cases they have been overvalued by the people who get burned by hiring the talentless paper monkeys. Unfortunately, certifications are still required in many cases to get through the HR vortex.
However, if certification is used as a minimum baseline of knowledge, it can at least determine a minimum amount of knowledge required. It should be part of a set of tools used to gauge the quality of a candidate, and leveraged by the employer as part of a further interview process.
I'm standing in defense of certifications, partly because I renewed my CCDP and am working on my Solaris 9 certs. Exciting? Not really, but there is still a minimum amount of knowledge required, at least conceptually. To me, it's a validation of my experience that I can at least still learn something. At a minimum, I'm trainable...and familiar with concepts that the application/hardware vendor wants me to know.
Now, for the other tools...it depends on who really controls the interviews. Awhile ago in the network analysis team where I used to work, there was one particularly brilliant hardass. His only interview question was to hand the candidate a dry-erase marker and draw out their home network and explain how it worked, was addressed, and protected. As far as he was concerned, the group needed a net geek, and someone who didn't have their own network at home wouldn't be interested in the job enough to excel. Anyways, I digress...
The hardest test I've taken to date was the CWNA, which really threw me for a loop...and I dread the CWSP which I want to take by the end of the summer.
Take three candidates with roughly the same experience: one has nothing more than a high school diploma, another a college degree, and the other has a 4-year degree and some certifications...HR is likely going to pick the third candidate. Sorry folks...that's just how it is in the business world.
(CCNP - CCDP - CWNA - A+/Net+)
// Agent Green (Ian / IU7 / KB1JQO)
// IEEE 802.3: All 10base Are Belong To Us
Meh. That is a load of garbage. If you know what you are doing and you have a degree from a good school, you will get a job. I have had no problem finding employment ever, even while being in school during the last few years. In fact, I am current working at a temporary summer position making ~45k/year as computed using the hourly wage they are paying me at 40hrs/week. I have one semester left before receiving my master's degree. All of my friends that graduated last semester found employment. Most had many offers. The reality is most of the cert. only people are not worth anything. How could you ever think a certification is even close to earning a quality degree from a good school? The guy that has that degree destroyed the cert. guy in high school academically, and that is why they went to the quality university.
While a certification may get you a job it will be your hard work and knowledge that lets you keep it an gain the experience.
True, many people with certifications don't know what the should. That's when you show up with the same cert, do a good job and make them look bad. Your employer (or consulting firm, in my case) will that much more impressed with you.
Who do you think they'll call for the next contact.
*Note* Would those who have gotten certs only for the money please change careers. You're degrading the value of certifications. Thanks.
I think I think, therefore I think I am.
I see a bunch of folks in this thread talking about how certifications and education are worthless, because they're quickly obsoleted in the fast paced, quickly changing world of IT. I call bullshit. Most certifications are worthless because the cert's exam questions become compromised rendering the test invalid. The people running the GMAT manage to put out a new test every thirty days, I don't understand why MS, Novell, and Cisco can't do the same thing.
For that matter, I've never understood why people are happy to post their "braindumps" of memorized exam questions on the Internet. The people you're feeding answers to are the same people you're going to be competing with for jobs. You're flooding the same market you want to compete in!
I've been in the fast, quickly changing world of IT since 1993, and for all that's changed, many "tried and true" tricks still work. They might need to be updated, but the concepts are similar. For example, suppose back in 1994 I had a bunch of identical machines I wanted to configure quickly. I'd pull out the old laplink cables, pull out my special floppy that would copy the disk from my working configured "master" to the "clones". In 2003, I use a network and Ghost software, but it's pretty much the same. In 1996, I made a firewall with a floppy disk and an old 386. I needed a router in a pinch a few weeks ago, and I made one with a bootable linux CD.
In IT, understanding a few basic concepts will get you a long way. Until earlier this year, I'd never touched Windows XP - we hadn't used it at work, and I have Macs at home. But when a few Windows XP computers showed up in the office and on customer's desktops during support sessions, did I throw my hands up and whine, "Omigod! The fast pace of the quickly changing field of IT has obsoleted my skills and left me behind!" No, I didn't - I applied what I'd learned from previous Microsoft operating systems and *I* *figured* *it* *out*.
If you took someone off the street and taught him Windows NT 4.0 inside and out, then gave him a computer with XP or Server 2003 on it, it's not like he's going to be completely lost because the tech blew right past him. He can take the skills he's already picked up, and apply them as he learns a new system. Same thing with certifications. If I've been using and am certified on Netware 4 (and I mean CNE-level, not a CNA), then I'll probably be able to get the hang of Netware 5 pretty quickly, even if my certificate doesn't say so.
A certification, or any sort of technical training is valuable if you learn its main lesson - how to think when looking at a particular manufacturer's products. If you think the goal of the certification process is the piece of paper, you've missed the whole point. The problem with most technical cetification testing programs is how easily they can be "gamed". Someone who's learned what's really supposed to be taught by the certification process is invaluable. Someone who's memorized the answers off a few dozen braindump sites will be near useless.
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Those that can learn on their own
And those that must be trained and tested.
You, unfortunately, fall into the later, and THAT is whats wrong with certifications. As you yourself articulated, the hardest interview you ever had was what those in the former category would consider the EASIEST. If you truly are an IT person, you don't need some silly piece of paper to prove your skill - you can simply convey it by talking about yourself, and showing that you learn on your OWN. If you are another of these papermill creations, that has to be sent through training to learn your IT skills you are of NO USE. The market and technology changes too fast to accomodate people with certs that need to be trained, and that is what the author of the article was really dancing around.
We live in a time when its not enough just be someone that can be taught how to run a Cisco box, how to configure a sun or install patches on a Windows box - you have to be someone that learns extremely fast and enjoys the process of change. Ergo, the interview that you dredded, show me your home network, is possibly the best way to know if someone is truly qualified for any IT position. No certification on earth can prove that someone has genuine raw talent and enthusiasm for their work. At its best, it just shows you can take a test. Whoopie. Show me what you can DO and how well you do it.
Certifications are a joke. As the old saying goes, what do you call a doctor that graduated from the worst medical school on earth at the bottom of his class?
Doctor.
Would you want that highly certified doctor working on you if you had a choice?
I have several certifications and I am (was) a certified trainer for Novell and Microsoft.
The key to usefull people is experience and certification. There were two things I saw with self-taught technical people:
first, there were gaps in their knowledge that came from being able to do things without understanding exactly what they're doing or the underlying technology. I did this to myself when i first hooked up two windows nt machines together and wondered why they didn't see each other. They would be properly setup but i couldn't browse to the other. i would get disgusted and go get something to eat (or do *something* else). when i would get back, presto, it worked! later when i was reading the microsoft courseware I came to understand the timing of the Browswer server and how it worked. So *training* helps fill in the gaps of knowledge. *testing* demonstrates that you have been paying attention at least a little. and *certification* demonstratates persistance.
The second thing that I noticed was that self taught people could not see their lack of knowledge. If there was one thing that I started out all classes with it was this: I can teach you what's in this book, but the most important thing to learn is where this book takes you after the last page. I could tell pretty early who my good students were because they took what was handed to them and pursued it farther.
I have passed about 70 of these test (most needed to teach a class), and have sat a large number of classes as a student. One of the things that I am proud to say is that there were very few useless classes (or test) that I studied for. There have been an amazing number of times where little details in a novell, microsoft, or cisco course have helped me fill in the blanks to solve a problem.
eric
If an applicant shows you his/her certifications first, move on to the next person. If you have to ASK them what certifications they've received, move them to the top of the list, because they're not relying upon their alphabet soup to get them hired!
I was amazed that candidates with networking-related certs couldn't adequately answer basic questions like the difference between shared and switched Ethernet, or the purpose of a subnet mask. Eventually it got to the point that I was less likely to consider a resume that had certs listed prominently compared to a resume that had no certs at all.
There are two attributes that I found were most likely to result in a successful, productive hire:
- Good interpersonal skills. Sounds trite, I know, by in my view IT is a customer service position. You should enjoy helping people, not get riled easily, and be able to talk to them on their technical level without being condescending. Candidates with successful experience in front-line retail sales (department stores, automotive shops, etc) often downplayed this element of their work history, but I found it to be a positive indicator of a "customer service" mindset.
- Self-motivated technical experience. Many people find it hard to break into the IT industry; that's fine - what did you do in the meantime? Build a home network? Put together a PC from components? Try other operating systems? Do volunteer IT work for schools, libraries, churches, friends & family? Great. Write some software of your own, esp. OSS? Even better! I found that the candidates who explored and learned new technologies just because they thought it was cool made the most capable employees when it came to integrating diverse systems and solving odd problems.
So are certs a waste of time? Not necessarily. My perspective is specific to a startup environment, where everyone needs to be able to do a lot of different things. Large companies often use certs as a filter, though, and if you don't have them you might not even get in the door.Plastering your certification logos across the top of your resume is unlikely to impress anyone who is competent technically. You can still mention them, but make sure to have plenty of evidence of actual doing in addition, even if it's not formal job experience.
As the old saying goes, what do you call a doctor that graduated from the worst medical school on earth at the bottom of his class?
Doctor.
There is also another saying... If the bare minimum wasn't the bare minimum, then it wouldn't be the bare minimum.
Would an employer rather have a network ace than a trained guy for the same price? Absolutely--of course he would. Would that same employer keep a trained guy on the payroll that returns his worth in pay? Again, absolutely--your assumption is that every employer has unrestricted access to a bunch of talented net geeks.
I'm not saying I'm disagreeing w/ all of your post, but to say that all certs is a "joke" is a gross overstatement.
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For your standpoint to be true, the people that do the interview has to have at /least/ the same level of knowledge in the field as you do.
In allmost all the interviews I've been called to or been assisting at, the one who actually decides doesn't have this knowledge. It's not his area of proffession, so he doesn't need it.
So he looks at the persons certificates and see that this person *should* have the required knowledge, talks to him/her to see if he/she has had any previous experience, etc, and to see if he/she fit into the corporate culture. If the position requires knowledge in, say, compaq fibrechannel solutions, a person who isn't a certified compaq fibrechannel technician isn't even called to an interview.
So, no, a certification doesn't show your knowledge, but it is essential it you want a qualified work.
Even if you're the worlds best surgion, you won't do one damnded operation, legally, if you haven't got an exam.
/.Mattsson - My native language is not English, so please don't whine over linguistic errors. (That's lame anyway...)
Fortune 500 companies are run like you say, full of HR staff who can't tell a valid candidate from their ass, so they latch onto some kind of meaningless benchmark like a piece of paper which, in all reality, means that individual spent a crapload of money to get that piece of paper. In other words, they're hiring out of the good ol' boy network. New money, old money, you're hiring the upper crust.
This isn't the complete picture. I have a friend who works in HR at a very large corporation. I commented on their "scoring" system that weeds out a lot of people simply based on experience-based questions for each position (ie. "do you have a bachelors in ____, do you have experience with SAP"). I told her a lot of very good people probably won't score in the top 10% that they actually look at.
She said that of course, N*ke wants the very best person for the job. But each position may have a between 100 and 1000 applicants. Even if they simply cut the bottom 90% based on their score, they feel reasonably certain that they'll still get someone who be able to do the job very well... even if the best person was in that 90% they didn't consider.
It's kind of the like the decision-making problem of "value of perfect information". When making a decision, you try to evaluate "what would the outcome be if we had 'perfect information' that would give us the absolute best outcome". You then figure that you'll have a certain probability of a "good outcome" and determine the cost for that. The difference in return between your reasonably assured "good outcome" and the "very best" outcome is the most you should be willing to pay for better information.
In the case of hiring, you could get near-perfect information by individually interviewing all 1000 applicants. But that would cost quite a bit more than interviewing only the top 10%. If you interview the entire field, what are the chances that someone not in that top 10% will bring enough value to the company to compensate for the much higher costs from interviewing more people?
It's a gamble, and a successful company finds the right balance.
At least for any long term career. Contractors will probably need them because they often work short jobs with companies who don't know them well enough and can't wait for them to learn something. But for everyone else, certifications are absolutely, positively, meaningless.
Certifications are narrow, and rarely test genuine problem solving skills. They're a marketting tool more than anything else. They sell you the study guide, the test, and once you've invested so much into getting the certification you've just gotta recommend their products in the workplace, otherwise, why did you just go through all that work of getting certified?
The most important skills are a lot more general than any piece of software you apply them to, and can't be easily verified with a certification. If you can learn on demand, quickly, solve any problem, and have a working understand of good design practices, that's more important than proving you know how to use a piece of software.
But what do I know? I have no certifications. Never needed or wanted one.
"If I had gone to university and attained a bachelor's in CS, I would've graduated in 1992. State of the art technology in 1992 is largely irrelevant today, and the only thing that would have been proven by that degree is that I could finish what I started."
Yea, because all those things like algorithms, O notation, principles of optimization, etc, have all changed completely and totally in the past 12 years!
Zing Perhaps you'd have a better appreciation of what you don't know if you took the time to learn about the depth of knowledge that exists in a CS course. Yes, some people can slack through, but there's a reason someone who goes to University will be paid more -- they also happen to know more.
--
Internet Explorer (n): Another bug -- that is, a feature that can't be turned off -- in Windows.
I think there are two points to make here:
Of course, it costs more to employ someone Really Good(TM), so that's quite a big if in the second point there.
If you disagree, post your argument. (-1, Overrated) isn't your personal censorship tool for views you don't like.
I'd rather see a picture of what tech books are on a candidate's bookshelf rather than any certification. If the only book there is a test prep for a certification, I don't want him. If it's loaded with coffee-stained and tattered OS, networking, programming language, database, and other types of technical tomes I'm interested. Especially if I see older and updated editions 'cause he cares enough to keep current.
If a company's management chain is so weak that they need to use certifications to determine employee skill, you can be sure that working there will be a bureaucratic nightmare.
Can You Say Linux? I Knew That You Could.