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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particular language or platform; and given the speed at which technology evolves, most are at risk of becoming quickly outdated.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?
I would never ever hire a programmer because of their certifications. I hire because of expertise, period. Certifications are a rip-off.
no, I don't have a sig
You are always selling yourself, your plans, and your ideas, no matter what business environment you are in - self-employed or corporate. Certifications can be a tool for that - and even a vital tool if you're dealing with HR drones that don't understand anything else.
That being said, I have no formal certs and have done extremely well for myself - but I also have very good sales skills. It's the one thing I encourage to everyone that asks me for career advice - learn to sell. It doesn't matter what you do in life, but you will always be selling something (assuming your work is of any sort of significance).
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I'd only trust a certified certifications expert to answer that question.
Don't waste your vote! Vote for whoever you want, unless you live in a swing state it won't matter anyways
they're your admission "ticket" to get the interview.
For sysadmin / devops / network admin / desktop support and maybe a little into the infosec side, certs are probably a good idea.
For programmers (etc), certs really don't make any sense.
Like making copywriters hit the obstacle course for time before hiring them.
I'll still look at a candidate, but I generally assume the person is covering incompetency in skill with a paid for affirmation.
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 want a job anywhere near project management, you need the PMP certification. Do a job search for "project management" and check the first ten results. Every one of them will say PMP required or preferred.
No. Now fuck off Dice.
...than a dice "insights" spam.
Having conducted probably 500 software developer interviews, I can tell you that seeing Certificates listed on a candidate's Resume is typically a red flag that indicates they will not be a good candidate. It doesn't mean they will absolutely be bad, just an indication that they probably aren't right for the sorts of positions I hire for. Kind of like seeing "Microsoft Office" listed prominently under their "Skills" section.
If you are an engeener in service providing company your certification level is essential for HR of this company. Be it Cisco, Microsoft, Oracle, IBM, Citrix, VMware or whatever - the company providing services (like implementation) usually needs to have certified employers to reach certain partner level (like Gold, Platinium and what-the-fuck-they-had-invented-recently). It is just a business for these companies to sell certifications for their products.
Is it important to have certifications? Well just look at the policies FOR EMPLOYERS that the vendors in your area of interest are providing.
Getting a college degree, you actually learn something.
I've run into more than a few people who have made it through college quite uncontaminated by knowledge.
...on the job. A colleague of mine with 30+ years of experience was recently turned down for a job because he didn't have a 4-year University certification. Many of the Program Management jobs I've seen require a PMP certification. Same with some IT jobs who want a CCNE or something along those lines.
Certifications are like grade points. They are precisely as important as the interviewer thinks they are. And that's it.
2 resumes, both have equal work time in IT, one has several certs one doesn't.
Which would you hire?
The one that interviews better most likely.
I actually give -2 for certification. That's right, certification will, in my book, nullify the positive impact of an engineering degree *and* one relevant job. Why? Because it is, more often than not, a means of hiding shortcomings behind the veneer of something that seems official.
That's a load of crap. I have a graduate degrees in both business and engineering plus I hold an accounting certification. You would discount my entire education because I hold an accounting certification? NOBODY would even interview me for an accounting job if I didn't have that certification.
Certificates are sometimes a helpful way to signal that the person has some talent. Taking the accounting certification didn't mean I knew more accounting than before the test but it did give me a way to provide evidence to potential clients/employers that I do actually know what I am doing.
I am mostly a startup guy, but I have also worked at Google. Google actually conducted a large survey of all their applicants' resumes and cross-referenced the words they contain with how "successful" those people were at the company (I do not know how they defined that). There were no sure-fire words indicating success. But there was one that predicted the opposite: that's right, "certification."
What works at Google is not necessarily applicable in the rest of the world. Perhaps people with certifications tend not to succeed at Google. That does not mean that they don't succeed elsewhere. It only means they didn't succeed at Google - nothing more. In fact there are many professions where you won't even get considered for an interview without a certification.
The problem with certifications is that brain dumps are a big business.
Alot of folks believe that Certifications will enhance their chances of getting a job.
Hence, they brain dump the exam and pass.
For the folks who actually take the time and learn the material the certification is testing for, and pass the exam honestly, the certification process is a boon.
Unfortunately, we live in an on-demand society, so interviewers often see many more of the former than the latter.
I'm on the interview panel for my team. And I see an awful lot of paper tigers. Given that I also have an alphabet soup of certs, I know the skill levels those exams test for, and I tailor my interview questions to things that they should be able to answer, as well as any other technology they put on their resume. If it's on the resume, the candidate should be able to speak to it
Within 5 questions, I can almost always determine the persons actual skill level and whether or not they dumped the exam. And unfortunately, there are *alot*. To add to that, there are also some recruiters who actually encourage the candidates to add certain keywords to their resumes. I actually got one guy to admit during the interview that he'd just added it, after I started asking questions on it.
We have gotten a few folks with a good amount of certs that actually knew their stuff. We even hired a few of them. The ones we didn't hire, I knew we weren't going to be able to pay them what they'd be looking for, so they turned down the job.
In my opinion though, it's worth it to wade through the dross and take the time to make sure you get the right person. If you're careless in your hiring practices, you'll just be right back on the merry-go-round
Not to judge, but as someone with a PE that does a lot of hiring of PEs, maybe you should take a close look at why you are having trouble. There are a number of things that can pose challenges, including location at one extreme and personality at another. It might help to go to IEEE meetings and try to get some help networking, reviewing your resume, and identifying what your specific challenges are, and how to work around them.
I also have some on my resume, from various vendors. Other than the Oracle Certified Professional, they were all paid for by employers. It may help get me in the door in some places. As a hiring manager, I wouldn't put much faith in them as anybody could basically get a certification just by studying, having never actually done the work. In some cases, doing the work is a detriment to getting the certification. I know that I have gotten some certifications just to get them, having never worked in the position (PMP, for example). So since anybody can put a small amount of effort in and get a certification, I don't put a lot of faith in them.
If you are not allowed to question your government then the government has answered your question.
Maybe we should get rid of *all* formal credentials? Get rid of all licenses, and degrees, along with certs.
A drivers license does not prove you know how to drive. A teaching credential does not prove you are a competent teacher. Does a college degree prove you even know how to read?
And so on, right down the line.
Or, maybe a more intelligent way to look at is: a credential is what it is. It prove you know enough about something to pass the test. No test is ever perfect.
Tech credentials leave a lot to be desired. But, from my experience they are far superior to interview test questions. I have had interview tests from interviewers who were dead wrong. I have had interviewers ask questions that were insane. Besides, what if the interviewing does not like you? Maybe the interviewer does not like your race, gender, nationality, or age - in that case you would be sure to fail. At least certs have a certain objectivity.
Sort of. The CCIE just requires you to pass the Written to recertify every 2 years, and it can be any Written, not for the track you passed the Lab exam in.
Passing any Cisco exam recertifies everything at the level it's at and everything below it.
So for example, lets say I have CCNP Routing and Switching, CCNA Routing and Switching, CCNA Security, and..... CCNA Service Provider.
All I need to do in order to recertify all of that is to pass one Professional level exam (maybe I take one exam for CCNP Security), and everything is recertified.
Or, I pass the CCIE Written exam instead. That qualifies me for the Lab Exam, and renews every cert at the Professional and Associate levels.
If I pass the Lab Exam, then I just need to pass a CCIE Written every two years in order to recertify the whole shebang.
So Cisco recert policies don't actually do much to keep you current on the technology you're certified for. What they do is keep you taking Cisco exams so that you can keep listing everything you've earned on your resume. This is incentive to avoid letting things expire, because if you do, then you have to retake everything.
Looks like someone decided we were overdue for the annual certifications debate. This question will still be popping up ten years from now and they will not be going away any time soon, simply because there is no cut and dry yes or no answer. It all depends on the person, the cert, the situation, and your perspective.
Personally? I still have them and I'm currently studying for others. I'm not even job searching right now; I'm perfectly happy where I'm at. Certifications simply give me a template of what I need to study for the skills I want to learn, and give me goals/benchmarks to aim for. They're like achievements in a game, only more tangible. The vanity of having another cert to post on my Linkedin profile adds more incentive to push myself further. I'm not worried about the material becoming outdated because most of them expire; and if I haven't pushed myself to the next level up by the time they do, it means I'm dragging my ass. I plan on getting CCNP before my CCNA expires, for instance.
The "certs just prove you can pass tests" argument doesn't really apply in my case, because I suck at tests. I suck at academics in general. I barely made it through high school because I am all but incapable of learning things 'theoretically'. So why bother with the certs, you ask? Because I cannot pass an exam unless I actually know the material. Plenty of guys with less than half of my experience could probably finish the exams I am working on in a fraction of the time, but it wouldn't mean as much in their case.
Lastly, certifications do help open doors, especially for those who get stuck in the catch-22 hell that is trying to get experience when everyone expects you to pop out of a cabbage patch with at least 5 years of it under your belt. I'm sure certifications are very easy to disparage from the perspective of someone who is FAR removed from such a scenario with decades of experience and countless connections. I suppose the better discussion would be: How valuable are certifications compared to degrees?
I actually give -2 for certification. That's right, certification will, in my book, nullify the positive impact of an engineering degree *and* one relevant job. Why? Because it is, more often than not, a means of hiding shortcomings behind the veneer of something that seems official.
This is an absurd point of view. While it surely has SOME basis in reality, you are ignoring a large number of reasons people may have those certs:
Government work requires certifications. 8570.1 talks about certifications you must have in order to log in to a government network. The more responsibility your position has, the more certs you need. Would you reject someone merely because they were forced to get certs to be hired in a previous job?
Freelancers. Certs help them to get noticed. Small business owners want some sort of assurance that you are not just person who thought they would try and freelance with no skills. Do the certs really mean what the small business owners think those certs mean? No. It does not matter. When a freelancer is selling themselves, the only thing that matters is perception. There are some absolutely fantastic freelancers out there. Would you deny them a job?
Look at why they have a cert before you reject them for having a cert. You may find some gems.
"Someone needs to talk to the tree of liberty about its ghoulish drinking problem." by ohnocitizen
I have a few certifications myself (Agile, CEH, DoD Acquisition...strangely, I don't have a PMP, but I've seriously considered it), and while I could tell you that those are bare-minimum and not worth nearly as much as I paid for them, I'm not going to say they don't have their uses.
Some companies, particularly ones aligned with the Government, DO require them rather strictly. It's not fair, and frankly, I think a lot of those bare-minimum ones shouldn't be considered worthwhile as "resume" material because they're so basic (they're really like saying you went to high school when you're presenting yourself as the holder of a Bachelor's Degree...the implication of learning the basics is pretty much built-in).
That said, there are intangible things that they do offer, like networking or getting you out of the office for a week or two, maybe teaching you something new or something you didn't consider before. If the cert isn't something that you were necessarily inclined to do in the first place, it may give you a new perspective on how to deal with people (as stated, I considered taking the PMP because I'm not a strong communicator when it comes to management; spending time around more "managerial" types may actually help me).
That also said, a lot of these companies know for a fact that it's a bare-minimum requirement, so organizations like PMI, DAU and EC-Council that have a foot in the door with the Government have curricula that basically writes them a blank check. It's obscene, in some respects, since a lot of the learning should really be on-the-job training as part of orientation to the internal culture of a place. I get the idea of an across-the-board minimum standard, and that's fine, but it shouldn't be used as a substitute for internal training.
Some people don't believe in fairies. I don't believe in The Patriarchy.