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?"

Comments

What would the little kid say?

[nokilli]

Do not try to understand the point -- that's impossible. Instead, only try to realize the truth.

What truth?

There is no point.
--
You didn't know.

Re:What would the little kid say?

[HTTP Error 403 403.9]

How about IT certification is an attempt to create a barrier to entry in order to create scarcity and subsequently higher wages and professional prestige (i.e. chicks).

Re:What would the little kid say?

[SatanicPuppy]

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.

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 .Net or Linux certifications.

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.

Re:What would the little kid say?

[tambo]

The point is that certification has become dissociated from the actual abilities, and hence, the evaluation becomes useless.

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

Re:What would the little kid say?

[Analogy Man]

I think that you hit the nail on the head. The value of most certifications begins and ends in the HR department.

My previous employer pushed for certifications. I observed that the worst project managers were PMP certified, the least infrastructure savvy admins were MS certified...

If I am hiring a person, I want to know their ability to solve problems. I would not trust an HR department to ask the right sort of questions to determine that.

In one interview I conducted a person explain at length the previous 3 projects they had led that never made it to production. He was very proud of the 18 months and thousands of pages of training materials that the customer never deployed. I understand that sometimes projects go south, but this guy started his career on the Titanic and more recently move from sea to air in the Hindenburg ....

Re:What would the little kid say?

[Miguelito]

How about IT certification is an attempt to create a barrier to entry in order to create scarcity and subsequently higher wages and professional prestige (i.e. chicks).

Bwah ha ha... what a laugh. As someone that is an admin, and interviews people for positions now and then, I can tell you that I (and everyone else in our group that interviews as well) see(s) certs as useless. Far too many people have gone to those quickie schools like MicroSkills and just learned how to pass a cert test without actually understanding the underlying technology.

In fact, if someone really stresses their certs in the resume and/or while talking.. that tends to be a big negative. You can talk to your knowledge, telling me you have a cert isn't the answer to the question, and yes.. people have done that.

It's actually almost scary how hard it is to find really good admins now. Putting up a job opening will result in tons of responses, but 99% of them seem to be people who think that since they were able to install Fedora at home, they're qualified to be a sysadmin.

The Point is Simple

[dsginter]

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.

A Few Thoughts:

[TripMaster Monkey]

Fact: You can have the knowledge without having to pay to be Certified when it comes to computers.

This was exactly my situation before I learned (to my chagrin) that most employers simply won't take you seriously unless you throw the alphabet soup at them.

Another fact: Just because you have the certification does not mean you actually know the material as well as someone who is not certified.

Again, something I'm uncomfortably familiar with, having to work with more than one 'paper MCSE' in the past...

So what is the point of getting IT Certifications? To have a piece of paper?

You got it. Unfortunately, that piece of paper is the only way non-technically-minded individuals have to gauge your technical prowes, so they tend to attach unreasonable worth to them.
This isn't a problem...it's an opportunity. "Turn the problem on its head...that's what the Bishop always said..." (apologies to Harry Harrison).
Most people in the IT field are good test takers...if you don't think of yourself as a good test taker, you probbly haven't worked hard enough at it. In a world where you will be judged all too often by your alphabet soup, test taking is a skill you must master. Myself, I've only studied for exams from books, rather than take expensive classes, commonly take about 20 minutes to finish a certification exam, and I haven't failed one yet. Am I that much of a genius? Heck no...I just test well, that's all.

To my mind, the key to testing well (as well as actually coming away with knowledge you can useon the job), is to actually understand the material, rather than simply know the answers by rote. When you can answer the practice questions without looking at the multiple choice answers, and understand why your answer is correct, you're ready.

Re:A Few Thoughts:

[Bonhamme Richard]

I actually recently had an economics professor explain to me why a college degree is worth something. I know that if I really wanted to understand a subject, I probably wouldn't go to a school of any kind to learn about it. I would buy a bunch of books, sit down, and read until I understood it. If it was something like programming I would code until I got it, if it was physics I'd build catapults and other toys to figure it all out.

I would probably end up understanding my subject really well, but no one else would know that. My degree is going to say that Mellon believes I know enough about ECE to set me lose upon the world with its reputation attached to my name. So a potential employer knows that CMU trusts my skills, and he will too. While I don't know much about IT certification, I'll assume it has a similar idea behind it.

Basically, a college degree is the economic equivalent of a warranty for a car. The university loses something (its reputation) if the produce (me) doesn't perform as expected. Is the reputation of a IT institute worth much? Probably not. That means that the warranty (the degree) is probably worth about the same.

I always thought of IT institutes as a kind of community college for CS students. I would say that if you have no work record, no college degree, and a passion for CS, the IT institutes sound like a good idea. If you have a strong work record or good degree, just look for an employer who knows what to look for.

Just my thoughts.

I saved this from a previous slashdot article.

[Vodalian]

When a shop requires certifications (MCSE, Cisco, Novell, Solaris... don't care which), you can count on the following:

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.

Re:There is no point unless...

[VoidWraith]

I agree about the last statement. As part of a class I was taking in high school, we took the A+ certification, and CompTIA (the company behind it) screwed up my name, and treated me like NStar (an abysmal power company) does when I tried to fix it: poorly written demands for additional verification that I couldn't provide ("please fax a copy of your driver's license" but I had neither a driver's license nor a fax machine) and not even sending me the certification with the right name on it (that would cost me another $15, so I didn't bother).

Now, for a high school student, I think that the certification makes sense, because most people will just disregard any teenager as uneducated and inexperienced. The inexperience is, of course, still an issue, but with a certification, a teenager can prove that he's actually got the know-how to do the job, and there's a lot less of a risk in hiring him.

Re:There is no point unless...

[ellem]

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.

The truth?

[deviantphil]

What truth?

There are FOUR lights

Just paper

[QMO]

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.

Re:There is no point unless...

[jersey_emt]

I agree 100%. It's one thing to not bother with obtaining certifications, or not requiring certifications when you hire someone. But to not give someone an interview, or not hire someone just on the basis that they *have* a certification in the field is asinine.

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.

Re:There is no point unless...

[tha_mink]

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.

Re:DUH!

[Ruprecht the Monkeyb]

Not funny, too true.

I've worked in places where I didn't get to vet the resumes or write the classified ad. The most HR would let me do was reject the subset of resumes they deemed worthy and ask them to set up interviews with those that remained. It's quite interesting when they post ads asking for experts in 'Windows 97' or 'Novel Netwear'.

A telling point

[Wingchild]

I recall a job interview I attended in 1999. The job itself was a pseudo-network-engineer position with heavy client interaction; I would have worked out of a co-location facility and managed equipment for a tiny list of clients. The position was quite junior. This particular job required an MCSE, which I possessed.

My interview was multi-stage, including a technical process. The questions they asked were laughable; "What is TCP/IP" and "What is DNS" and so forth. I pointed out that I was, in fact, an MCSE. They replied "We know - that's why we're asking."

Re:There is no point unless...

[harlows_monkeys]

Finally, as a person in a hiring position, I do not consider them at all, and am definitely prejudiced against someone who puts them on their resume

So, the answer to the original question, then, would be that having a certification helps avoid getting a job under a stupid boss.

Re:There is no point unless...

[Harodotus]

Not the only shining light, I too find my CISSP certification useful.

I am a highly qualified consultant of 15+ years experience. I live and die by recruiters deciding whether or not to pass my resume on to my actual customers.

Before my certification, I had to go into great length about how my semi-directly related experience matched what the job requirements. Now I can say "oh I'm certified in that specifically and have done similar things in the past".

Admittedly it doesn't speak to whether I'm really qualified, but if it gets me past a semi-clueless recruiter to actually speak with the hiring customer/manager, then it was worth but the time and money to get it.

Just be careful that you don't have too many certifications or list any lame/negative ones and it'll help you find work.

For those already employed, it looks great on a performance review and can help the justification for position or pay rate increases.

The point of certification is cheaper labor

[tmoertel]

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.