Slashdot Mirror
What's the Point of IT Certifications?
erica_ann asks: "Fact: You can have the knowledge without having to pay to be Certified when it
comes to computers. Another fact: Just because you have the certification does not mean you actually
know the material as well as someone who is not certified. You might just be good at taking tests.
So what is the point of getting IT Certifications? To have a piece of paper?"
"I have had this conversation with many friends and co workers. One thing I like
out of all the conversations is getting more than just one point of view. I know
my standpoint on it. I
rambled on it for quite a while. But, what I would like to ask of everyone on Slashdot, is what is your opinion? Do you have certifications? Was it worth getting certified? How do employers, employees and management feel about them? Do you pay for them? Does the company pay for them? Is it worth being certified if you do not get a pay raise for it? What certifications bring more
than others? Are specialized more employable than general certifications?
I think many people would benefit from hearing more than one side of the controversy. Maybe it will encourage more employers to reward for certifications. Maybe it will help the next person attain the career he or she wants. Is there such thing as being TOO certified for a job?
Or is the whole idea of getting alphabet soup behind your name just certifiably insane?"
I think many people would benefit from hearing more than one side of the controversy. Maybe it will encourage more employers to reward for certifications. Maybe it will help the next person attain the career he or she wants. Is there such thing as being TOO certified for a job?
Or is the whole idea of getting alphabet soup behind your name just certifiably insane?"
The point of a cert is the same as a degree - it demonstrates to a complete stranger that one posesses a certain skillset and dedication. Certainly, we all know that genious who is a high school or college dropout but if you hadn't known this person for longer than a few minutes, just how do you go about figuring out if they have certain qualifications?
Yes - it is possible to do some quick testing in some cases. In other cases, certs are the only tool.
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1. You will have a pointy haired boss. This person will be a "manager", and have little technical skill. He/She will not be able to actually evaluate your work at a technical level. He/She will use "industry standard" metrics to evaluate your performance. The fact that you have a $CERTIFICATE makes you a safe bet for them to hire, since they probably can't tell the difference between someone walking in off the street and lying their ass off, and a seasoned 10 year IT vet.
2. You will make roughly "industry standard" wage, since your boss will really have no idea what you may or may not be worth.
3. Your chances of getting promoted to management are close to nil. After all, you can't go promoting the people that do all the work. They're too hard to find!
4. Your shop will get dragged, kicking and screaming into new technologies, since these likely have no certifications, and therefore no way for management to evaluate their worth. Your positive opinion towards new technologies will be considered an attempt to fill your resume in a vain attempt at escape or promotion.
Get certified... Work for the clueless.
Students with the 4.0GPAs with CS degrees might come out of school and not know jack about shit, while the self-taught guy with a 2.8 in Liberal Arts might code rings around the former. That's a fact.
I am in the process of getting certified and I would relish the opportunity to go back to school and get a CS degree. But the cert is a notch on my resume and a clear win in the short term. Once I'm in the door I know I can do well.
It's all about getting the toe in the door. Get the "piece of paper".
I do not consider them at all, and am definitely prejudiced against someone who puts them on their resume.
Let's forget for a a minute that that is illegal.
This is a stupid way to think. Having a Cert doesn't make a candidate any worse than having a Cert makes them good.
A Cert, if nothing else, tells you the person WANTS to be in IT.
This
Certifications are just paper and don't guarantee any knowledge or skill.
College degrees are just paper and don't guarantee any knowledge or skill.
The trouble is that experience on a resume is just paper too, and doesn't guarantee any knowledge of skill either.
If you're hiring, how do you tell the difference between paper knowledge/skill and real knowledge/skill?
Until everyone's completely honest (and probably after too) hiring will always be a lot of guess-and-check.
Exam 4/C again. Maybe I'll do better this time.
Up until I read that one comment, I was thinking 'Hey this guy is right. What's the point of certs?'
And then you made yourself look like a fool in my eyes.
My spoon is too big.
I have never gotten any certification, nor has any employer seriously asked me for one.
You've never applied for a job that had a bachelors, associates or masters degree in the requirements?
That's what a degree is - a certification.
Certifications are entirely useful if they are configured properly. For example, lets assume that I am out of town with all of my geek friends and my wife's laptop breaks. She needs it fixed immediately. Who do I trust to fix it?
Right now, there really isn't a certification that I trust. I took the A+ and passed it in all of 20 minutes - it is a joke, although you do have to memorize some arcane knowledge (which doesn't prove useful in the real world). The MCDST is looking better, in this respect. But even this one doesn't throw a tech into a room full of parts (some of them non-functional) and ask him/her to build a product to specification (or repair an existing one).
When the certs require real-world knowledge, we'll have real-world use for them. In a pinch, however, if I were running a business, the cert is a good way of filtering out those who can't even pass a simple test. This Ask Slashdot should have read:
Dear Slashdot, I can't seem to pass the [insert any cert here] tests, why do we need them anyway?
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I call shenanigans.
HR does not write the screening requirements for a job posting, I do. And I can guarantee you that I have never put "A Random certificate from a body that has no credibility" as a requirement, so that shoots your to be interviewed pile argument all to hell. Especially since step two of the screening process is discard all resumes with the letters MCSE on them
I call bullshit on you. Certificates are really helpful when you get your employment through headhunters. They love them some certificates. Having said that, I thought I knew it all, or enough of it all anyways, until I got myself into some cert courses. Low and behold, I learned a whole bunch of helpful stuff that I didn't know before the courses. Worth the money? Probably not but the certs I got definitly got me my present job. Nothing wrong with being qualified AND certified.
You'll have that sometimes...
Just my opinion, but any hiring manager that openly states a prejudice against candidates who show that they are continuing their education via certification in a field is not worth their salt as a hiring manager. Every resume should have education and experience listed on it and the certification process is a good example that people are willing to continue their education and better themselves through certifications. I am not saying that in every case people with certifications will be better than those without, but in the same respect people with degrees are not always better than those without as well? What you are seeing is someone who potentially may be a good candidate and has some specific areas of talent that can be looked at during the hiring process. I also am surprised that you have had no experience with any company willing to pay for a certification for you in what you know because I have had the exact opposite. It seems fairly commonplace now in our realm to have companies give financial aid for certification as it is beneficial for the employee and the company (especially beneficial in the contractor realm...) Not trying to be a troll, but I can't take someone seriously who frowns upon further education?
News Reporters Make Tasty Polar Bear Treats!
So, the answer to the original question, then, would be that having a certification helps avoid getting a job under a stupid boss.
Oooo, yea, replace one 500 dollar test with MANY 500 dollar tests! Easy profit for the testing companies, but does it benefit anyone else? No.
.Net or Linux certifications.
Anyway, that's pretty much how they do it anyway, except you'll find that there are many levels of certification, so you can get 4 or 5 different
The whole idea of certifications is flawed, because the testing companies have a stake in putting as many people through their classes as possible. Theoretically they get paid the same if someone bombs the test, but that person goes back and tells all his friends that he just dropped 3000 on a whole lotta nothing, and they all cancel their classes with that company.
I had a guy ask me once if I was A+ certified, and I replied, "No, but I've taught A+ certification classes." It blew his mind. How could I ever have learned enough to teach such a mind-stretching class without actually getting certified? Whereas I was still reeling from the fact that someone would ask that question to an applicant for a mid-level solaris administration job.
The bottom line is, HR loves because it gives them an easy metric to measure candidates. And the testing companies love it because its a big business. And IT professionals buy into it because its a hell of a lot easier than trying to convey a complex skillset to someone who doesn't understand, doesn't want to understand, and couldn't really give a damn on top of it all.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
It's not nearly as dissociated as the OP suggested. You can't pass an XML web services exam unless you know something about XML web services. A passing score doesn't guarantee expertise, but it does indicate a minimum level of competence.
Generally: Certifications are hoops. They have the same purpose as any other career hoop: jumping through them demonstrates that you're more motivated than your competitors who don't jump through them. As a job candidate, you can consider it a safety measure: you might get rejected for not having it, but you probably won't get rejected for having it.
IT has become too broad to be evaluated in a single test.
It's rarely a single test. Exams are pretty specific to a particular topic: web services, domain administration, configuring BizTalk server, etc. Even the A+ cert, which is pretty superficial, has one part for "hardware" and one for "software."
- David Stein
Computer over. Virus = very yes.
Also, I think I know what this guy means. It's one thing if someone has some small note in this resume listing some certifications, but I've seen people who'll put an insignia right at the top, bigger than anything else: A+ certified, MCSE. In my experience, good techs rarely value their MCSE very much (even if they have it).
It's easy to verify a cert as being legit. So what it tells you is the person had enough knowledge to pass the test and enough drive to go and actually do so. Is that a guarantee of skills? Of course not, but it does tell you SOMETHING at least. If someone has an MCSE and they've got a few years of Windows support experience on their resume, you can be reasonably certian that they actually know what they are talking about, when it comes to Windows. Again, no guarantee, but more so than if they just listed a job with nothing to back it up.
Certification programs exist largely to commoditize platform-specific labor. They benefit vendors, such as Sun and Microsoft, that sell infrastructure technologies ("platforms") to large corporate clients. These vendors want to assure potential clients that their platforms are supported by legions of inexpensive, largely interchangeable laborers.
The certification programs are the means by which these assurances are made real. They define the minimal skill sets necessary to be considered competent in a particular platform. What makes the programs effective tools for driving down the cost of programming labor is that most certifications are easier for unskilled and offshore laborers to obtain than more traditional means of qualification, such as four-year degrees and on-the-job experience.
Whether certifications are good or bad depends on where you stand. If you don't have technical skills or experience and want to get into a market where certifications are prominent, go for the certification. On the other hand, if you have excellent skills and a track record that sets you apart, avoid markets where certification programs are rife because your abilities probably won't be appreciated. You should realize, however, that much of the work in the industry is going the way of commoditization, and it will be increasingly difficult to find corporate clients willing to pay much more than what the typical certification-holding employee is paid. For this reason, if you have the ability, you might want to start your own business or join a startup.
Easy, automatic testing for Perl.
Of course, that doesn't work, because a couple of holier-than-thou HR trolls consider certs as negative points.
Damned if you do, damned if you don't... I wonder if it's permissible to say "Certs: I have passed relevant certification tests, but I prefer to stand on my own qualifications instead, as listed elsewhere in this resume. Contact me if you would like to see my certificates."