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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.
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.
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
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...