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Are Certifications Worth the Time and Money?
Nerval's Lobster writes: Having one or more certifications sounds pretty sensible in today's world, doesn't it? Many jobs demand proof that you've mastered a particular technology. But is the argument for spending lots of time and money to earn a certification as ironclad as it seems? In a new column, developer David Bolton argues 'no.' Most certifications just prove you can pass tests, he argues, not mastery of a particular language or platform; and given the speed at which technology evolves, most are at risk of becoming quickly outdated. Plus they aren't the sole determiner of whether you can actually land a job: 'Recruiters sometimes have trouble determining a developer's degree of technical experience, and so insist upon certificates or tests to judge abilities. If you manage to get past them to the job interview, the interviewer (provided they're also a developer) can usually get a good feel for your actual programming ability and whether you'll fit well with the group.' Are certifications mostly a rip-off, or are some (especially the advanced ones) actually useful, as many people insist?
Having gone through the hiring process a couple of times in the last couple of years, HR and recruiters are the biggest hinderance to companies hiring talented individuals. For a tech position, HR has become a gatekeeper to the hiring manager. Unfortunately they have no knowledge of the position or the technologies.
Certificates get you past this gatekeeper. They are fairly useless otherwise, but since HR has wedged themselves between the candidate and the hiring manager, they become a bit of a necessary evil.
- (c) 2018 Hank Zimmerman
if you have no experience or are from a 3rd world country, sure.
if you have experience, certs are usually a waste of time. I would actually hire people who did NOT bother with certs.
I run into folks from india all the time (bay area resident, fact of life here) and more often than not, they are filled with degrees and certs and lots of memorization. still, with all that 'stuff' the output from many indians is sub-par. they don't THINK, they just have amassed lots of DATA in their heads.
sadly, those are the folks who are now, almost completely in control of the hiring. indian bosses, indian co-workers, indian ceo's. they think their methods of learning is great and they hire from their own culture, ignoring (blatantly) the locals who grew up here and who did NOT spend their time swallowing textbooks and memorizing algorithms.
not much more to say about the subject. oh, right - cheating - LOTS and lots of cheating on tests in india. its documented and known. and so, what good are certs if the culture encourages and allows cheating?
certs are useless. less than useless, in fact. give me someone who can think and that's most of an engineering job; not rote data storage in greymatter.
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"It is now safe to switch off your computer."
However to filter out on the fact they don't have a certificate (or degree) means to lose out on some of the better programmers.
I've had a pretty bad experience using certificates as a filter. Instead I take the time to read through and see what technologies they may have worked with. There is no easy answer to "how to filter", with certs I've seen _a lot_ of bait and switch. So yeah, when going through a large stack of resumes, I first filter out who doesn't seem to have the majority of skills I'm looking for (and they are local), then that takes it down to 20-30. That is a much more manageable list. But I'm also more often looking at people with experience so my starting set tends to be smaller.
WTF Slashdot, why do I have to login 50 times to post?
Any time you use a filter you run the risk of missing a better candidate.
Certificates are an easy filter because any qualified candidate can get them with minimal time/expense.
Are you going to refuse to send in a resume for your dream job just because they require a certain certification to be considered? Or are you going to go to the testing facility and get that certification?