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IT Certification Less Important Now?
lpq writes "IT certifications, popular after the dot-com bust, seem to be hurting careers now according to this article in the current Eweek.com issue. Guess employers are getting hip to the idea that those who don't have experience or can't "do", get certified..."
I've been on the hiring end of the stick a few times, just enough to decide that it's in my best interest to toss away any resumes that have nothing but certifications listed in the education section.
I think most people who've done a few rounds of hiring will easily note that people in that category simply don't have the required knowledge. Nor do they have the work ethic. A university degree certainly doesn't guarantee intelligence, but it does guarantee you that a person can make it through four continuous years of hard work.
Another point of note is that I once worked at a testing center where they administered many of the popular IT certification exams. It became obvious very quickly that those certifications are designed merely as a money making tool for the companies that produce them. They give you an idea that the person you're hiring can memorize screens and their uses, along with a few technical concepts, and their applications, but that's all they do. (It's also fairly common to find bootleg copies of the exams on the internet).
In the future if I see a long list of certs I'll probably just toss the resume away without going any further. There's no shortage of people out there, but there aren't that many good people, just more and more people with certifications and educations from silly little diploma farm colleges.
I know that I'm not the only who thinks this way too... so yeah I'd say it could hurt.
Funny story. Once, at a job interview, I was actually asked if I was "A+ Certified"
My response was, "No, but I don't really think that matters."
They asked immediately (and in a snippy tone of voice), "Why not?"
I shrugged and said, "I used to teach the course."
If anyone asks for A+ for anything other than a simple benchtech position, they obviously have no idea what they need.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
I've run into some problems with people who throw out resumes because of certifications. It's true that many certified people don't really know anything at all, but it's not good to make blanket decisions based on whether or not you're MS certified...
I, for one, had no certifications three years into being an IT manager for a telecommunications company, and none of our staff was certified either. However, part of the requirements for some business deals we were making at the time called for there to be someone on staff who held certain certs. I hammered out the MCSE, CCNA, and CCNP certs in a couple of months and voila, the deals were made.
At the time, I figured it couldn't hurt to have those certifications on my resume, especially with my work experience, but I couldn't have been more wrong. I had such a terrible time trying to get as much as an interview until I took the certifications off my resume. After that, I found a job in no time. I think the policy of dismissing resumes because of certifications is silly, but it is telling.
"`Ford, you're turning into a penguin. Stop it.'" -Douglas Adams, THHGTTG
Many times just the presence of a degree at all is good enough to not get your application tossed right away. If you feel you are already qualified for the job, the best thing you can do is write a quality resume and cover letter. In your cover letter, try and connect somehow with the reader. For example, if you think your employer is looking for a 15 year employee, you can possibly make reference to settling down and wanting long term employement. Also, make it very clear you are not only _willing_ to be trained in new technology, but that it excites you and something you love. It's very rare a given employee is an exact fit, and you want to make it clear to the reader that any areas in which you are lacking you will learn.
If you need training as well, admin and tech positions are possibly the worst to train for. This is by far the most competitve market out there. Why? Because it mostly involves training and not that much critical thinking. Before anyone gets offended, I'm not saying admins are dumb. I do admin work all the time. I also do a million other things. I can tell you, being an admin is by far the most mindless part of my day. That, and tech work.
The part of the day that I have to think the most is by far programming. If you feel that's a path you can take, go for an acclerated AS degree at a community college. You'll pretty much be guaranteed work in the US as a programmer. It's not hip or sexy anymore and there's a severe shortage of good programmers in the states. If you want a middle ground, go for some sort of AS degree in networking. It's harder to configure a Cisco router than being a windows admin, but not as difficult as programming.
If an officer ever threatens to taze you, say you have a pacemaker.
I would be careful: "Knowing UNIX" and "Memorizing a bunch of inane specific trivia" are two very different things. Assuming your memory is finite, why would you waste it on memorizing how to do "a", "b" or "c" in a shell?
Given the wealth of resources and reference information made available by the internet I think anyone with a basic understanding of a UNIX environment can get the job done on any OS/shell with the proper motivation; how can you be sure you're actually testing what you *think* you're testing? I think the problem with your approach is that it isn't designed to handle candidates who may be specialized in a particular distribution (AIX, Solars, HP-UX, AIX, RedHat, SuSE) or shell (csh, tsh, ksh, bash), especially considering that no one *I know* who "Knows UNIX" uses a default shell that someone would open for them at a interview. You're also probably filtering candidates who may be stronger in terms of problem-solving abilities rather than trivia (which may ultimately be more valuable to your company).
My guess is that you're simply skewing your results to decrease the number of "false positives" at the cost of increased "false negatives". While that may still allow you to reach your goal (you'll get a "positive" match or a hire) it might be at the cost of filtering out candidates who truly are more qualified.
Rishi Chopra
www.rishichopra.org
When I first decided to get certs, I was a college dropout. I had reached mid-junior level in a CompSci track, and taken a local developer job. I was working at a local company doing web application development. This was in the same small town (50k pop) in which I went to school, and was looking to be a well paid fish in a bigger pond. My route was the MCSD (Microsoft Certified Solution Developer) track. In 1999, that meant doing a track with 5 tests, two of which would be VB or C++ centric, a couple of electives, and the two hour "solutions architecture" test. Since I had done of ton of C++ in college but no MS C++, and had a lot of VB and ASP experience, I went the VB route. After passing all of the tests (self study), I soon found a well paying job out of state and took it. I was told that my certs got my foot in the door, and my interview and technical skills I demonstrated got me the job.
Now it is 2006, and I have almost 9 years of professional software development experience under my belt. I take pride in the fact that I have continued my self education sans BS CompSci. Recently, things got craptacular at work and I decided I needed to look for new employment. I pulled the old .doc resume files out, and seriously thought about removing all of the old MCSD crap. However, I left it in. And it worked really well for me. I found that recruiters still look for this stuff. I cannot believe how many interviews started with questions or comments on my certs. It got my foot in the door, again.
In the end, I am more than certain that it was my experience and my answers to some tough technical questions that got me my new job. However, I would recommend certs to anyone looking to prove their technical merit.
Great ideas often receive violent opposition from mediocre minds. - Albert Einstein
http://testking.com/
You can download most any current Cisco exam, cram it, and become a 'professional'. I got my CCNP and CCDP the old fashion way - worked, studied, worked, studied, worked, worked, worked, recertified, completed three of four exams for the CCIP, worked some more. Now you can just download 'em. Cisco resellers are required to have people with certain levels of different things and most jobs I see wanting Cisco qualify the position based on the ticket you need to have to get it.
I've taken my first halting steps towards studying for the CCIE. Those words are in italics because I feel like I've just typed arranging a circle jerk every time I use them. There are so many guys six months into the process with no real skills and none of the talent needed who are circle jerking on their theoretical CCIE. Or worse, the guys who are six years into it, they've got their whole self esteem invested in getting those four letters after their names, and they just don't have what it takes. Its sad to see.
Whatever the case, CCIE still has value, and my job puts me in front of everything on the exam except multicast and I'm slutting about taking multicasting jobs at half of market rate just so I can tune up for that area.
I am very easy to get along with, but I don't have time to waste being nice to people who are being stupid. -Theo
I have BS in accounting, but after 6 years in that field, realized that I love computers. I've been building them since the mid 90's, but due to personal reasons switched my major in college from EE to accounting. It was the biggest mistake of my life.
So I'm starting over. But how do I get into the IT when I have the knowledge, but don't have the "resume-able" experience besides a college co-op at GE? While I know I could sell myself once I got an interview, I CAN'T get an interview because I don't have anyway to sell myself.
So I'm getting the easiest cert I can so I can get my foot in the door. The A+ . Is this a bad idea? I don't know, but I do know I'm miserable at my job, and I hope that getting this cert will be enough to help me get my career in the direction I want it too.
I'm taking the Test on Thursday... wish me luck
Oh certs do have a use. They are worth something, but not the ones you and I have.
I got the MCSE NT4 years ago and it was easy. I mean REAL easy. MCSE2003 is not and is in demand.
Ask any CCIE+CISSP the worth of certs, even better, ask them their income. Especially the highschool dropout ones.
"Give orange me give eat orange me eat orange give me eat orange give me you." -Nim Chimpsky
#!/usr/bin/perl
/etc/passwd | cut -d: -f1,3 | awk '\$1 ~ /\:[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]+/ {print \$0}' | cut -d: -f1`);
/home/$user/Maildir | awk '{print \$9}'`;
/quick and dirty
//pretty simple really....
///Unix admin
# this presumes your UID's are greater than 1000
my $yourtimespec = "20";
chomp(my @users = `cat
foreach $user (@users) {
chomp($user);
my @files = `ls -l
foreach $file (@files) {
chomp($file);
if ( (-M $file) >= $yourtimespec) {
unlink("/home/$user/Maildir/$file");
}
}
}
It was ranked in the top 25 when I was there. My senior project is still in the top ten for longest and most complicated things I've ever coded, and I've been in the field for almost a decade. Four people were on my programming team for the final project. Two of them were in another core class with me, and made every effort to mooch my code for both classes. First project for the second class I got the third highest grade in my section of 250...It was a 58. Class average? 6. 300 level class.
But, by all means, go on believing that it's just an isolated incident, and that nearly all people with a CS BS are top notch programmers. Experience tells me that most people who come out of school are mediocre coders at best, simply because of lack of experience...Apparently in your world, that's not the case...I can only assume you work in HR.
ad logicam Claiming a proposition is false because it was presented as the conclusion of a fallacious argument.
"Of course, there's always the chance that you're not as good as you think you are... in which case, I advise that you refrain, if only to preserve your sense of superiority :)"
*cackle*
No, no. Don't get me wrong, I even mentioned specifically hardware/network-related certs being more needed/respected in that industry (at least from what I know or at least have heard from friends regarding the CNE/verious cisco certs.) I am mostly talking about software/programming sorts of certs that really don't *tell* you much about anyone. Application-wise, knowing how to pass a syntax test doesn't tell me much about the applicant when *I* am the one hiring. Knowing that, I am sure that in a technical interview it wouldn't mean much to the guy interviewing me. At least in my industry. It seems to me that those certs have a lot more foundational applied sorts of knowledge than the certs I have passed.
You can quote me canned answers in java/informatica/whatever all day long. But if you can't set me up a good application architecture or even basic sorts of project structure in any of those... I am saying letters in your resume' don't mean much.
Also, fwiw, my firm wasn't willing to put forth the cash for the tests (or even training materials) for these things (esp post-bubble.) So with my experience and knowhow.. it just doesn't seem like it is worth even a trivial amount of money/time for me to bother paying for it myself to get it done, ya know? If (as in your example) they would be happy to pay for at least the costs much less my time.. I completely agree. Why not? It isn't like it could hurt. But if it is coming out of my pocket and I am not seeing any benefits from it.. meh. Now down the road if I was out of a job and it was required? You're damn right I'd be in the line taking those monkeytests. *(:=
Cheers,
-bw
chomp(my @users = `cat /etc/passwd | cut -d: -f1,3 | awk '\$1 ~ /\:[0-9][0-9][0-9][0-9]+/ {print \$0}' | cut -d: -f1`);
What? Ahahahaha, oh man, that's fucking funny.
$ man getent
A number of years ago I was placed on a MCSE boot camp, the company was thoughtful enough to negotiate a cut price with the training company as a result of not including the actual certification but just sticking me on the course. At the time I was the Systems Administrator, 6 months prior I had migrated the Netware data centre to Windows 2000 as a result of political pressure. I wasn't too keen on attending the courses as I had numerous other projects running at the time but thought that it would be an opportunity. On my arrival I was greeted by three members of middle (non-tech) management from my organisation and a large group of Helpdesk operatives from an outsourcing company. The course bored me to tears and fortunately or unfortunately I was removed after 3 days to oversee an impromptu acquisition back at the ranch.
Two weeks later the middle management returned, all having been certified. Upon questioning the certification I was told "It is not in the companies benefit to invest in your certification, you can do the job without the certification. Why should we invest in something you can already do?" The individuals who recieved the certification shot up the management chain and after a number of months left the organisation. I wouldn't have employed them to defrag a disk, yet their CV's were certainly much rosier than mine. From that point on I have always questioned certification, not one member of my current team is certified but they all have a proven track record and a degree...
In large corporations, HR doesn't give a crap about the facts; they want the documentation that protects the corporation from lawsuits. Legal protection is HR's sole contribution to the effort. Once that's satisfied, they'll let someone else (engineering department, IT department, etc.) worry about whether the person can actually do the job.
In smaller companies (what's the limit now?--less than 25 folks?), significantly less restrictive employment reuglations apply. There's usually not an "HR" department because it's not necessary. Folks making hiring decisions can use more practical criteria, if they choose.
If anyone beyond HR actually looks at the piece of paper, they'll be looking it as a promise. Whatever you present--degree, certification, license, etc. sets expectations.
If you don't fulfill the expectations that your piece of paper sets, there's going to be disappointment.
Once you're in, nobody cares if you satisfied the hiring requirements.
Once you're in, nobody cares that the job is not what was advertised.
In a technical field, once you show up, you just do the job. If you fail that, you can usually milk it for a year or two, by which time you'll have more experience to put on your resume (another piece of paper), and get hired by the next sucker.
And, yeah, I know lots of guys that play that game, too.
"Reality is that which, when you stop believing in it, it doesn't go away." - Philip K. Dick
Just one question - surely if you're using an Ethernet switch, and the switch is at one end of the wire, and the computer at the other - where do the collisions come from? How would a token-based network be superior to a switch based network? You don't lose the cost of the switch - IBM Token Ring still had a 'concentrator' in the middle so you wound up with a physical star, just like with switched ethernet (and was significantly more prone to breakage should a card go on the fritz and stop passing the token).
On a server I have that sees plenty of network traffic over switched ethernet, I still have '0' in the interface's collision column.
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