Are IT Certifications Meaningless? 489
superflippy writes "In his article Hiding Behind Certification, MIT's Michael Schrage argues that CIOs who rely too heavily on certifications as a measure of an employee or sub-contractor's abilities are wasting their companies' money."
o but yes (Score:5, Insightful)
here here! by the time you have gone through the hoops and mastered their little quizzes, much has become irrelevant and you are out of touch with the issues in your particular workplace. what ever happened to being able to give a decent discussion to determine what is important in an employee? have management become so out of touch that they no longer know what questions to ask?
Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:5, Insightful)
Now, I know a lot of people who have, as a result of articles such as this, let their certifications expire...which I think is a bad idea in some cases.
The problem with certifications is that in many cases they have been overvalued by the people who get burned by hiring the talentless paper monkeys. Unfortunately, certifications are still required in many cases to get through the HR vortex.
However, if certification is used as a minimum baseline of knowledge, it can at least determine a minimum amount of knowledge required. It should be part of a set of tools used to gauge the quality of a candidate, and leveraged by the employer as part of a further interview process.
I'm standing in defense of certifications, partly because I renewed my CCDP and am working on my Solaris 9 certs. Exciting? Not really, but there is still a minimum amount of knowledge required, at least conceptually. To me, it's a validation of my experience that I can at least still learn something. At a minimum, I'm trainable...and familiar with concepts that the application/hardware vendor wants me to know.
Now, for the other tools...it depends on who really controls the interviews. Awhile ago in the network analysis team where I used to work, there was one particularly brilliant hardass. His only interview question was to hand the candidate a dry-erase marker and draw out their home network and explain how it worked, was addressed, and protected. As far as he was concerned, the group needed a net geek, and someone who didn't have their own network at home wouldn't be interested in the job enough to excel. Anyways, I digress...
The hardest test I've taken to date was the CWNA, which really threw me for a loop...and I dread the CWSP which I want to take by the end of the summer.
Take three candidates with roughly the same experience: one has nothing more than a high school diploma, another a college degree, and the other has a 4-year degree and some certifications...HR is likely going to pick the third candidate. Sorry folks...that's just how it is in the business world.
(CCNP - CCDP - CWNA - A+/Net+)
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:5, Interesting)
I use certifications for personal goals now. By the end of this year, I want to get MCSE:Security, CCNA, Foundry's baseline cert (can't recall it right now, but we are a wholly-Foundry shop), and start in on GSEC, and eventually I plan on having a few others, including CISSP. I'm not using them for pay boosts (well, not primarily), but as guideposts, and the material I have from work does a good job of structuring things in layers so that I learn it all the way through.
I already know that I know more than the certified people at work. Most of the people there that really know their stuff are CCIEs -- and anyone with that gets my respect. There's one guy that's a CCNA, CNA, and MCSE+I (I actually had to look that one up to find out the Microsoft still allows it to be used), among other things, and he's a dimwit who gets a lot of really basic things wrong and is a constant source of annoyance to many of us. One day, my alphabet soup will not only be thicker than his, but I'll actually have real responsibilities, unlike him.
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:5, Interesting)
I did this by drawing my solution on the whiteboard and then later coding a bit of it on a piece of paper. I walked through the psuedocode part and then explained/justifyed each line of the actual code. It was very grueling experience, and at the end the director told me what he liked and did not like about it. The next day, I did a follow-up email to the interview, filled in the holes in my earlier solution, and the director called me back almost immediately after I sent the email, telling me that it was an awesome solution to the problem.
A few days after that I was told I had that job...
Lesson learned - Experience, certifications, and schooling can get you in the door, but be ready to be put on the spot once you are in there.
I have seen people bs their way into technical jobs and on the strength of their certs/degrees, but I don't think that really works anymore. Companies run lean and mean these days, so they try and get the most for their money.
Anyone else have a different recent experience?
You were lucky (Score:5, Interesting)
Many companies won't consider candidates without certs, even though they know they get certified deadwood more often than they get talent.
I have met a grand total of two MCSE's in almost 5 years who had any skills whatsoever. Both of them were good before they took the certs -- the certs were just so they could get their foot in the door for contracts.
I have never asked anyone about their certs in an interview. I have never hired anyone who thought their certs should impress me, nor recommended that anyone be hired on basis of their certs.
In fact, I specifically prefer to recommend those who've bootstrapped their skills by learning on their own. They'll be far better able to deal with learning the business environment than someone who can memorize the right answers for a cert, but who has never learned how to think about the use of technology.
Re:You were lucky (Score:4, Interesting)
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:5, Interesting)
Fortune 500 companies are run like you say, full of HR staff who can't tell a valid candidate from their ass, so they latch onto some kind of meaningless benchmark like a piece of paper which, in all reality, means that individual spent a crapload of money to get that piece of paper. In other words, they're hiring out of the good ol' boy network. New money, old money, you're hiring the upper crust.
Small companies can't afford to have that band of incompetant fratboys running things, they need their employees to actually get work done. They can't afford to hire the George Bushes of the world, otherwise they'll be out of business in no time.
This is, IMHO, often why small companies go under - either they start out strong and then a fratboy manages to get in a position of power who calls in a bunch of his fratboy friends and they drown the company (unfortunately not by holding keggers, all joy left their hearts a long, long time ago), or they start out with the wrong mindset, hire a bunch of these boobs, and then go under, - and quick.
Me, I'm in the games industry. Aside from EA and one or two others, there's nothing approaching an HR department like you speak of. HR usually equals a single person, and if they're even smaller (usually the case), hires are directly handled by the CEO, or if they're a little bigger, department heads. These people rarely have a Harvard degrees and has learned their lessons the hard way about who can pull their own weight.
Or, at least, these people do at the places I get jobs at. The past is littered with companies run by boobs who went out of business by hiring more boobs (John Romero's side of Ion Storm, f'instance, had it's share of boobs - and I don't solely mean that one Level Designer / Romero Squeeze / Plastic Surgery Test Monkey).
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:5, Insightful)
This isn't the complete picture. I have a friend who works in HR at a very large corporation. I commented on their "scoring" system that weeds out a lot of people simply based on experience-based questions for each position (ie. "do you have a bachelors in ____, do you have experience with SAP"). I told her a lot of very good people probably won't score in the top 10% that they actually look at.
She said that of course, N*ke wants the very best person for the job. But each position may have a between 100 and 1000 applicants. Even if they simply cut the bottom 90% based on their score, they feel reasonably certain that they'll still get someone who be able to do the job very well... even if the best person was in that 90% they didn't consider.
It's kind of the like the decision-making problem of "value of perfect information". When making a decision, you try to evaluate "what would the outcome be if we had 'perfect information' that would give us the absolute best outcome". You then figure that you'll have a certain probability of a "good outcome" and determine the cost for that. The difference in return between your reasonably assured "good outcome" and the "very best" outcome is the most you should be willing to pay for better information.
In the case of hiring, you could get near-perfect information by individually interviewing all 1000 applicants. But that would cost quite a bit more than interviewing only the top 10%. If you interview the entire field, what are the chances that someone not in that top 10% will bring enough value to the company to compensate for the much higher costs from interviewing more people?
It's a gamble, and a successful company finds the right balance.
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:5, Insightful)
I think there are two points to make here:
Of course, it costs more to employ someone Really Good(TM), so that's quite a big if in the second point there.
How technical HR should work, IMHO (Score:4, Interesting)
If you want 50 out of 900, you probably just pick all the comprehensible and not obviously lying CVs you've got, and you're done. :-)
But seriously... Of course you have to filter, but HR drones who do it with tick-boxes and don't know what the job actually involves are the worst kind of counterproductive. In particular, they frequently fail to understand the relationships between different-sounding skills in IT, and consequently can't gauge how well an applicant's skill set really matches up to the requirements of the job (assuming they even understand the latter).
Basically, HR tend to look for all the direct matches, but you'll be very lucky to find a perfect match for both the technical skills and the context you'll use them in. Usually the difficult -- but more important -- part is looking at the supporting skills. Has this person used the right technical skills in other contexts (and if so, how close are those contexts to yours)? Have they used related technical skills in the right context, so they have experience of that problem domain and its quirks? What is their breadth of related skills overall; how adaptable is this candidate in practice?
To give a concrete example, suppose you need an intermediate-level programmer for a particular development project, which is written in Java. Most HR people I've encountered will look at a CV, look for experience using Java, and just bin those with the fewest years of experience or something equally black and white. A significant number would fail to appreciate that any J2SE or J2EE mentioned on the CV is Java work, and give it no credit at all.
Now, someone who understood would be looking for what parts of Java were used. There's a world of difference between writing end-user apps with Swing and writing back-end J2EE code! They'd be looking for whether the previous uses had been in related contexts or not, and they'd be looking for general experience with things like OO programming languages, distributed systems, use of Java-related tools or other programming languages with similar characteristics, etc.
Of course, as well as technical skills, you're also looking for any useful soft skills: is this candidate used to working in a large/small team; do they have any management/leadership experience that might be relevant to this position; do they have "customer-facing" experience? Often these will be far more important distinctions between similarly technically qualified candidates than an extra year using this or that specific tool.
The thing that always gets me is that a lot of HR people claim this is all too difficult to do in practice, and with 900 candidates you have to shortlist before you can look at this level of detail. What I don't understand is what value the HR people add at all, if they're just going to run the CVs through an automated system without giving them even a minute of informed personal attention each to get the right people on the shortlist. You pay your HR people to facilitate getting the right people into your organisation. Giving each potential candidate that minute or two during shortlisting, so the more technically knowledgable people can then interview the best directly, is exactly what a good HR department is for.
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:5, Funny)
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:5, Insightful)
Those that can learn on their own
And those that must be trained and tested.
You, unfortunately, fall into the later, and THAT is whats wrong with certifications. As you yourself articulated, the hardest interview you ever had was what those in the former category would consider the EASIEST. If you truly are an IT person, you don't need some silly piece of paper to prove your skill - you can simply convey it by talking about yourself, and showing that you learn on your OWN. If you are another of these papermill creations, that has to be sent through training to learn your IT skills you are of NO USE. The market and technology changes too fast to accomodate people with certs that need to be trained, and that is what the author of the article was really dancing around.
We live in a time when its not enough just be someone that can be taught how to run a Cisco box, how to configure a sun or install patches on a Windows box - you have to be someone that learns extremely fast and enjoys the process of change. Ergo, the interview that you dredded, show me your home network, is possibly the best way to know if someone is truly qualified for any IT position. No certification on earth can prove that someone has genuine raw talent and enthusiasm for their work. At its best, it just shows you can take a test. Whoopie. Show me what you can DO and how well you do it.
Certifications are a joke. As the old saying goes, what do you call a doctor that graduated from the worst medical school on earth at the bottom of his class?
Doctor.
Would you want that highly certified doctor working on you if you had a choice?
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:5, Insightful)
Doctor.
There is also another saying... If the bare minimum wasn't the bare minimum, then it wouldn't be the bare minimum.
Would an employer rather have a network ace than a trained guy for the same price? Absolutely--of course he would. Would that same employer keep a trained guy on the payroll that returns his worth in pay? Again, absolutely--your assumption is that every employer has unrestricted access to a bunch of talented net geeks.
I'm not saying I'm disagreeing w/ all of your post, but to say that all certs is a "joke" is a gross overstatement.
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:4, Insightful)
This, my friend, is life.
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:3, Informative)
I am about to be part of the procurement of a big outsourced project - and you can bet your bottom dollar that it will go to a company that has the (demonstrable) skills and not those with the best sales guys/credentials/BS
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:3, Interesting)
If the idiots doing the hiring are basing it on certs and not skills then you really don't want to work there. Who wants to work with a bunch of talentless hacks?
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:4, Insightful)
In allmost all the interviews I've been called to or been assisting at, the one who actually decides doesn't have this knowledge. It's not his area of proffession, so he doesn't need it.
So he looks at the persons certificates and see that this person *should* have the required knowledge, talks to him/her to see if he/she has had any previous experience, etc, and to see if he/she fit into the corporate culture. If the position requires knowledge in, say, compaq fibrechannel solutions, a person who isn't a certified compaq fibrechannel technician isn't even called to an interview.
So, no, a certification doesn't show your knowledge, but it is essential it you want a qualified work.
Even if you're the worlds best surgion, you won't do one damnded operation, legally, if you haven't got an exam.
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:3, Interesting)
You misread the original post. This person never stated that he had trouble taking that test. He specifically said the hardest test he had ever taken was <insert weird acronym here>.
This person even agreed with you when he said that that guy was "particularly brilliant". If you're going to work in the software world without even being able to read an interpret a <100 line slashdot post correctly, how do you expect that people will allow you to work in >100.000 lines of code programmes?
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:5, Interesting)
I took a crappy first-level phone support job and began taking cert exams. Lots of them. I passed all the NT4 MCSE exams in 2 months (while working, no classes) and then started on Cisco and Compaq ASE.
They served to get my foot in the door for the interviews until my resume filled out a little more. Once you're in there, they don't mean diddly. Only good communication skills and experience will get you the job offer. I think they are sometimes more important than any degree or cert you can put on your resume. After all these years I've still never been to an interview where they didn't offer me a position.
Now that I have 3 director-level posistions on my CV, and am running my own company, they're less important. I've let most of them expire simply because it's not worth the time invested to keep taking exams to prove that I haven't forgotten every thing that I know. When asked I simply say "I am or have previously been certified in "Blah Blah" and that's usually sufficient.
And for all of you who are in my position, having good skills and experience, but no sheepskin - I explain it this way:
I graduated high school in 1988. If I had gone to university and attained a bachelor's in CS, I would've graduated in 1992. State of the art technology in 1992 is largely irrelevant today, and the only thing that would have been proven by that degree is that I could finish what I started.
Most PHB's who have heard that have agreed and I have even been told that having the confidence to say that was one of the factors that lead to the offer.
Just my $0.02.
What the fuck?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Yea, because all those things like algorithms, O notation, principles of optimization, etc, have all changed completely and totally in the past 12 years!
Zing Perhaps you'd have a better appreciation of what you don't know if you took the time to learn about the depth of knowledge that exists in a CS course. Yes, some people can slack through, but there's a reason someone who goes to University will be paid more -- they also happen to know more.
Re:What the fuck?! (Score:4, Insightful)
Actually, I am a programmer. None of these things is really all that important anymore -- not as important as getting the program churned out as quickly as possible. You don't write the hash algorithm, you call new Hashtable(). You don't worry about the Big O of operations, you just write them and then rewrite them when they get slow. I guarantee you, knowing how to track down a speedbump in a profiler is far more worthwhile a skill than being able to identify the PRINCIPLE behing a certain segment of code. These are the kind of things that seem so important in school...the things that the instructors get very serious about. And in the real world, they're recalled by veterans over beer as a waste of goddamn time.
In fact, I dropped out of the CS program early when I realized that everything I was learning I already knew, most of my time was spent writing bullshit lab write ups for other people and the stuff I didn't know could be looked up on the Internet and learned in roughly ten minutes. The SCIENCE of computers is laregely academic in the real world, and those parts that aren't academic are best learned on demand.
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:3, Interesting)
Last time I checked, there were 2 required tests within the MCSE, then you had to take a couple tests from a menu of several, and then a couple from an even larger menu.
This leads to freshly-stamped MCSE's knowing Exchange or SQL Server or security or IIS, and so on. Need someone who knows Exchange inside
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:3, Informative)
I have a cheap, 5 dollar low end SCSI card here that proves your point.
I have a friend who spent 2 years at Computer Education Institute. or CEI for short. After graduation, she decided to build a server to put her knowledge to use. After going to the 2nd hand parts store(Gotta love Computer Renaissance
Re:Not entirely useless... (Re:o but yes) (Score:5, Interesting)
this sums up the whole discussion, as far as I'm concerned.
personal anecdote: I majored in cognitive psychology because it interested me at the time. I worked as a paralegal then taught English in Prague. after travelling, loafing and eventually running out of money, I took a job as a "web developer" with no formal training whatsoever. in the ensuing 8 years I've taught myself html, javascript, css, xml, java, sql, jstl/el, become an expert in configuring apache (mod_rewrite in particular), struts, tiles, the http protocol, content management systems, release engineering and software configuration management... etc.
In this 8-year career so far I've never been out of a job, I've earned a healthy paycheck, I've done extra well-paying consulting work on the side, had as many as 8 people reporting to me in a technical managment role, carved out my own career path and currently work from home as many hours/days per week as I like (I find 1/2-time is the right balance for me). On the whole I've been very happy with my career and my choices. And this is without a technical degree, without a certificate of any sort. I read, I do, I learn.
When I interview candidates I often ask them to solve technical problems for me on the spot, or to tell me their thoughts on web standards, or simply to defend their choice of browser. One thing I *never* do is ask about certification.
granted this is a rambling anecdote, and there may be certain cases where a cert. helps open the door... but not in my experience.
ok enough.
g'night all.
Standing in line in a Taco Bell.... (Score:5, Interesting)
As a hiring manager at the time, I remembered that and didn't make it a requirement when evaluating candidates. I was more interested if they'd done a similar type of work and what their approach to solving different types of problems might be.
Ironically enough, I'm now in search of a job - and even as a former manager type - can't get past the door without the 'certs.
Just amazing.
"Your customer service skills and commitment to service really don't matter.... if you're not an MCSE or MCP, etc." - words directly from an HR person here in SF.
How to tell if the interviewer is clueless (Score:4, Interesting)
- Where do you see yourself in five years?
- What are your greatest strengths/weaknesses?
- Why do you want to work here?
How can you tell if the interviewer knows what she/he is doing? If you get a form of the following question:Q.E.D.
Re:How to tell if the interviewer is clueless (Score:5, Funny)
Well, let's see, it's 11 A.M. I guess that means I'd be getting out of the shower to refill my beer mug.
KFG
assisting in interviews.... (Score:3, Interesting)
One the high end we had a gentleman that had services F16s in the airforce. I had to explain to the store manager that while we were
Re:assisting in interviews.... (Score:3, Insightful)
Repairing a 40-year old Russian boiler successfully has got to be tougher than following the pretty flowchart in the manual for swapping out bad-for-good using a warehouse full of milspec parts.
I've had fun watching some military types (AF, usually) get comple
Re:o but yes (Score:3, Funny)
Re:o but yes (Score:5, Insightful)
I might have been extreamly lucky but if i can do it then most everyone else could. I'm not a racket scientist or anythign remotly close. I do however have a good sence of reasoning when problem solving so my guesses might have been a little more logical then others. My first interview for a job after that had a question that i didn't know, instead of guessing at it I decided to tell her the truth that I didn't know but i was willing to look it up. Needless to say i got the job. Not because of my mcse but because of my truthfulness and willingness to check before just doing the wrong thing. I quite that job about 2 years after and followed the manager (that hired me) to another location that pays almost double what i was making.
OOoo, finally some hope! (Score:5, Funny)
Wow, this article finally affirms what I've always known -- that I'm uber-qualified. I have no certifications, degrees, or qualifications of any sort. I am totally 733T! Thank god, I had almost started to believe the nay-sayers.
Oh, and you know how Einstein got bad grades in school? Yeah, well mine are even worse!
Re:OOoo, finally some hope! (Score:2)
Re:OOoo, finally some hope! (Score:3, Funny)
Experience is worth a lot more (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Experience is worth a lot more (Score:5, Insightful)
As stated in the parent post, people skills count. I've learned this the hard way. For a while, the only type of work I was getting was contract work, but when the contracts ended, I had to start all over again. I submitted applications and resumes to nearly every company in Central Georgia that was hiring IT folks. Received a lot of rejection letters in the mail and didn't quite make the impression I needed to make during the interviews that I was given. Thankfully, a local non-profit media production house decided to take me on as their webmaster for several months full-time so that I can save money to pay bills while I continued to look for something permanent. Many times, it's who you know and who you encounter while job hunting coupled with the impression you leave on them during the interview that will get you your opportunity. Both the job with the media production house and my present job with a consulting firm were given to me from people who referred me to the hiring managers who both interviewed me on the spot, and presented me with offers to start on the first day of the next pay period. The wages weren't what I was looking for, but that will change as I gain more experience and perform well in front of the supervisors.
Re:Experience is worth a lot more (Score:5, Funny)
-Ralph Bonnell - CISSP, LPIC-2, CCSI, CCSE+, CCNA, RSA/CSE, CSFE, eSCE, PCIA, ACIA, STAR, MIPS-I, MIPS-E, SCP, BSPE, SSE, MCSE 2000 - http://ralph.cx/resume/
Re:Experience is worth a lot more (Score:3, Insightful)
Most certifications(indeed a lot of diplomas) are not independant assessments, they don't all certify the same things to the same level, and accessing just what is certified is not always obvious. That means certifications remove a lot
Pretty much (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Pretty much (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Pretty much (Score:3, Interesting)
I actually did something similar when I was recently interviewing junior programmer candidates. When I noticed that they had "Masters Degree" written all over their resume, I decided to put them through the wringer and ask about various data structures and search algorithms. (Note: I never got a degree myself. Too b
Re:Pretty much (Score:3, Insightful)
The bottom line for CIOs hiring is to look for experience first, but to also look for certification. If someone is serious about their IT career, and wants to make a living in it, I think they'd be serious enough to go and get the certs. Whil
Use Certifications? (Score:3, Funny)
MSCE (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:MSCE (Score:5, Funny)
Do you also let the FBI pick up your garbage instead of the BFI?
cut the fat (Score:2, Interesting)
Are IT Certifications Meaningless? (Score:4, Funny)
"If you gotta' ask, you ain't never gonna' know"
Re:Are IT Certifications Meaningless? (Score:3, Insightful)
Re: (Score:3, Insightful)
There is too much technology to get ceritied (Score:4, Insightful)
As far as I'm concerned the only thing a certification will get you is a job. It looks good to bosses on your resume. But if you're boss was smart enough, they'd know what to look for... which in my opinion would render most certifications meaningless.
I wouldn't say that they're meaningless ... (Score:4, Insightful)
Any employer who hires someone based on some single, simple criteria, whether that be just a degree, just a certification, or some other buzzword of the week is nearly always going to get less than they bargained for.
Too many people (employees and employers) use things like certificates because they're too lazy to actually do the work needed to either advance their *real* skills or hire someone with real skills.
Re:I wouldn't say that they're meaningless ... (Score:3, Insightful)
The Vice Pres at my company needed an office assistant and hired a lady who had actual PAPERS that said she knew how to use MS Excel. Within a week I ended up showing her how to minimize windows and change the font in Word. Eventually she had heart problems from working with the VP's nightmarishly complex spreadsheets (yeah, seriously) so s
Everyone knows... (Score:5, Insightful)
I find some cert courses are good for teaching the fundamentals, rather than proving expertise. I'm studying for a CCNA right now, and while I doubt it'll prove practical for a low level sysadmin job, it is certainly giving me the base networking knowledge required to further pursue a career in network technology...
Veto CMM where you can (Score:5, Insightful)
What was especially telling was when we let them go. Their only defense? "But we're CMM Level 5!" They had no idea that process quality was completely separate from product quality.
Some personal experience... (Score:5, Informative)
Over three years, I had about six different teachers, due to budget problems (in California). The one we had the longest started us on track for an MCSE. Just about everybody in the class got their MCP in Windows 2000 that year, and when I realized how inept a lot of my fellow classmates were, I lost faith in (at least Microsoft's) certifications.
"I can't get my e-mail."
"Why not?"
"The screen's messed up."
"How is the screen messed up?"
"It just went blank."
"Have you tried downloading another graphics driver?"
"How do you do that?"
That's a "Microsoft Certified Professional" talking. Pathetic.
Don't agree (Score:5, Informative)
That only tells me that that person needs to go through the traditional courses to learn new things and chances are he/she won't be an ingenious innovator who can improvise good solutions to non standard problems.
So far I've been right.
Every time I've decided to hire a certification trained person (regardless of college degrees) I've ended up with people unable to think outside the box.
I don't want to generalize here, but I've seen the pattern.
Good for you, but can you do anything (Score:5, Interesting)
MCSE - need to tie accounts on the Unix and windows box together (glossy look as the resist the urge to say "Migrate to active directory")
CCNA - Yeah...we don't use Cisco - stare of disbelief as if I just grew another head.
It's great if you can pass these things, but if you can't apply the knowledge and extrapolate from it, may as well use the certificate as bird linings.
Yes (Score:5, Insightful)
As a heavily certifed consultant... (Score:5, Insightful)
...I can attest to the fact that some clients DO place too much weight on certs. I'll be the first to tell you that some of my certs are valuable and backed by years of experience (VCP - Veritas Certified Pro) while some are the result of cram/pass (CCNA 2.0) or somewhere in between (RHCE).
I've found that being up-front and honest about which of your certs fall into which catagories lends a high level of credability to yourself in the eyes of a potential client/employer. When asked about a specific cert that falls in the cram/pass catagory, I'm brutally honest: "Well, I am certified and I have worked on the equipment in a lab environment; however, the certification was required by my employer so we could resell a particular product line. I can get it up and running solidly, but not off the top of my head..." This was especially true when I used to work in the "channel" (ISVs, resellers, SIs).
I would not fall into the poor attitude of "all certs suck and are worthless"! Proper certs AND documented real-world experience can be a powerful weapon as you try to sell yourself. They can also be a way to get around the gatekeepers to access the real decision makers.
Most, but not all.. (Score:4, Informative)
I considered going for CCIE in the past, but at that time it was a single test that covered a huge amount of ground. I would have had to learn about DECNet, SNA, Appletalk, IPX, and others. But, it was clear at that time ('95-96) that TCP/IP was the future. So, I didn't do it. I think they now have several CCIE tests, each for different areas of specialization.
But, most of the other certifications I have seen are meaningless. My previous employer tried to send me through various certification classes. They were mind numbingly boring, and I chose not to do them.
In that job, that was no problem, because I had already proven my knowledge. But, I have seen quite a few job listings where they list those silly certifications as desirable. So, you have to rely on the interviewer to be bright enough to assess your knowledge rather than relying on the certifications.
My advice would be to go through the drudgery of the certifications if your employer is willing to pay for it. I wouldn't make it a big part of my resume or anything, but if they ask for it, you will have it.
Oh well. (Score:5, Funny)
Certs Let The Hiring People Cover Their Asses (Score:3, Insightful)
That's why IT certifications can help people get hired. If a manager takes a chance on an "unproven" but possibly brilliant guy with no certs, she's going to have a lot of explaining to do if that new hire turns out to suck.
However, if she hires somebody with all the proper certifications, she can have a) piece of mind b) a nice, plausible excuse if the new dude doesn't work out. "He had all his certifications and gave an impressive interview - we did everything right, but the guy just turned out to be a dude"
For whatever it's worth, I'm a programmer with no certifications. And I think that references are more important than certs, at least in the hiring processes *I've* seen, from both the hiring and the hiree end. However, there's no denying that certifications can be a nice comfort factor as well as be a deciding point between two otherwise-equivalent potential hires.
I think the article misses the point (Score:4, Funny)
Just one factor. (Score:5, Interesting)
This is an excellent point, but is it so wrong to evaluate a candidate's attitude and drive just as much as their aptitude? In my experience, I've seen better results from hard-working, honest people than from very bright, unmotivated jerks.
Do certifications mean someone is more motivated? Well, I'd say that it's a good (but not infallible) indicator, and should be evaluated along with other factors.
Here's a stab at what might also work:
evaluating Certifications, degrees, and so on.
seeing how well candidate gets along with potential peers (a la group interview)
score on a mental alertness (read: IQ) test. Yeah, it's Orwellian, but generally speaking they are a good indicator at your capacity for abstract thought.
Reality Certifications rule (Score:4, Interesting)
I work for my own company these days, but I often wonder if I decided I wasn't subjected to enough sadism (I routinely watch "Office Space" to reaffirm my life choices) whether or not I'd be "marketable" in today's job market, whether or not having degrees and certifications would be more important than a lot of productive, world-class real-world experience.
Maybe I can afford to be more arrogant about this, but I really wouldn't want to work for any company that only cared about paper-based qualifications. I have faith in my experence, my track record and my ability to convince others that I am the right person for the job.
That notwithstanding, I do recognize that there is an absence of means by which "computer people" are qualified as being "certified". There are times when I almost wish there was the computer equivalent of a Bar or CPA exam, just so I could fly through it and distance myself from the large array of hacks that rip off people. But in the end, I think paper is worth little more than its weight... in paper.
here's a view from under the middle class (Score:5, Interesting)
My boyfriend and I are barely living about the poverty line. Some really good months when I get extra hours at my day job, and the fast food place I work at on the side needs me to cover an extra shift, and his customers feel like actually tipping him for delivering their pizzas, sure, we can squeeze into the very lower middle class, but usually we're scrambling to just pay bills and eat well. And even for the breif moment we are in the lower middle class, all that usually means is buying new black pants and white undershirts and socks because they're ripped and have holes.
What does that mean? It means that neither of us have $150 per class to even work on our gen eds at the community college (I could hardly even fit a class into my two job schedule right now.) We certainly don't have $500-$1000 to pull out of our asses to get MCSEs, MSCDs, and whatever else wants to be the cool certification this week, even though both of us could certainly pass if we bought a book and bought the software. Spending just $300 each last summer to get A+ certified about broke the bank!
But there's the other trick to breaking into the IT "industry." We need to keep our software current. An MCSE and MSCD would do both of us some good, but how can we do that when all I own is a Windows 98 SE liscense and all he owns is a Windows XP Home liscense? Neither of us can certainly afford to shell out the money to get Windows Server 2003 so that we can get experience.
It's a vicious cycle. Both of us are trapped in crap jobs because we don't make enough to educate ourselves to even get considered for interviews for better jobs that would pay enough that we could keep current. A lot of good both of our excellent GPAs from high school did us. Employers won't even give me a chance to show them my coding skill, and they won't give my boyfriend a chance to show his administration skill.
In the end, it's a plug for free software. I could kick some ass as a developer if an employer needed someone to code QT, but no one uses QT. Somehow people got on the bandwagon of shit that is Win32. Now, if you want MySQL skills, sure. SQL Server 2000? Dream on. Even at my day job, my boss refuses to upgrade from 6.5 since it costs too much. Visual Basic .NET. I'd love to. They all tell me it's finally become a real programming language. Too bad. I'm stuck in Visual Basic 6 at my day job for the same reason.
It really doesn't matter to employers that I have the methods and attitudes that produce good products. All that matters is that I threw money at some college to give me one piece of paper, and then I threw money at some other business to get more pieces of paper.
Re:word of advice from a hiring mgr (Score:3, Informative)
Here it is, paraphrased as management would hear it:
You know that certs are worthless when (Score:3, Insightful)
I'm sorry, but that means that no actual thinking goes on. Nobody can put together multiple complex concepts to do much of anything at 13.
In a Word... YES (Score:5, Interesting)
Degrees are nice for certain things, but have become the litmus test for so many professions especially IT. When in fact, so many guys have been too busy coding and fixing networks and upgrading systems to go out and get a piece of paper that says they passed a test on things that they've been doing for years.
Peace
useful for something (Score:4, Interesting)
On the other hand, MSCE certification was a good indicator for me. If someone had acutally paid to become a Microsoft puppet, and expected extra preks and pays and status for it, it was easy to decide that I would not hire them
Why does this keep coming up here? (Score:3, Interesting)
A company that knows certs are meaningless... (Score:4, Interesting)
The tier 2 employees? Tier 3? Many had some form of [VENDOR X] training years ago. The last time the company authorized training for most of them was in either 1999 or 2000. Most are not certified. The vast majority (especially after rounds of eliminations over the years) are very competent and some even quite excellent in their technical knowledge.
The company only minorly encourages the Tier 2 and 3 employees to get certified. The Tier 1 certification is required via contract with [VENDOR X] as part of their agreement.I think this pretty much spells a company that knows that certs are meaningless. Clued managers don't look for certs. But there certainly are some organizations out there for who certifications are everything.
[VENDOR X] used to allow plausable deniability that we're talking about any vendor under the sun, and not one in particular. Apologies.
Certifications can get you a job but... (Score:3, Insightful)
True, many people with certifications don't know what the should. That's when you show up with the same cert, do a good job and make them look bad. Your employer (or consulting firm, in my case) will that much more impressed with you.
Who do you think they'll call for the next contact.
*Note* Would those who have gotten certs only for the money please change careers. You're degrading the value of certifications. Thanks.
Re:Certifications can get you a job but... (Score:3, Insightful)
There are a lot of people in the computer field who don't have a clue what they are doing. It isn't only those who have paper certs. You might as well say, "will those of you who suck at IT get out of the field", and hope they realize that they are the ones you are talking to. Consider these:
In colege, one of my classmates was a complete air-head. I once spent a full hour
the best MCSE article of all time (Score:3)
You'll be able to relate to this if . . . . (Score:3, Interesting)
. . . you are in management and do hiring and firing. Here's the truth of the matter: if you came up through the ranks - - and I did, starting with PC support - - then, by the time you're the one making choices about who joins your team, you know how to do the interview. You make the candidate write something to make sure he can spell and put a sentence together. You talk to him for a little while to make reasonably certain he is not schizoid. You have the criminal background check done to make sure he isn't a fugitive. And then, you give him a practical interview with maybe 20 tasks to perform on a workstation and/or server. These tasks range from the obvious to the arcane. If things look good after the practical interview, you have a serious chat about how he got his education and where he wants to go with it. The words "self taught" always ring loudly. Certs may enter in to such a conversation, but, from what I've seen, the hungry guys and gals who love computing have a glow to them that the money grubbers just can't fake. This is how it has been for me, and I have hired only one disaster (drug problem) so far. I'd be curious as to whether other IT managers would share this point of view.
"Quickly Changing Field of IT", My Fat, Hairy Ass! (Score:5, Insightful)
For that matter, I've never understood why people are happy to post their "braindumps" of memorized exam questions on the Internet. The people you're feeding answers to are the same people you're going to be competing with for jobs. You're flooding the same market you want to compete in!
I've been in the fast, quickly changing world of IT since 1993, and for all that's changed, many "tried and true" tricks still work. They might need to be updated, but the concepts are similar. For example, suppose back in 1994 I had a bunch of identical machines I wanted to configure quickly. I'd pull out the old laplink cables, pull out my special floppy that would copy the disk from my working configured "master" to the "clones". In 2003, I use a network and Ghost software, but it's pretty much the same. In 1996, I made a firewall with a floppy disk and an old 386. I needed a router in a pinch a few weeks ago, and I made one with a bootable linux CD.
In IT, understanding a few basic concepts will get you a long way. Until earlier this year, I'd never touched Windows XP - we hadn't used it at work, and I have Macs at home. But when a few Windows XP computers showed up in the office and on customer's desktops during support sessions, did I throw my hands up and whine, "Omigod! The fast pace of the quickly changing field of IT has obsoleted my skills and left me behind!" No, I didn't - I applied what I'd learned from previous Microsoft operating systems and *I* *figured* *it* *out*.
If you took someone off the street and taught him Windows NT 4.0 inside and out, then gave him a computer with XP or Server 2003 on it, it's not like he's going to be completely lost because the tech blew right past him. He can take the skills he's already picked up, and apply them as he learns a new system. Same thing with certifications. If I've been using and am certified on Netware 4 (and I mean CNE-level, not a CNA), then I'll probably be able to get the hang of Netware 5 pretty quickly, even if my certificate doesn't say so.
A certification, or any sort of technical training is valuable if you learn its main lesson - how to think when looking at a particular manufacturer's products. If you think the goal of the certification process is the piece of paper, you've missed the whole point. The problem with most technical cetification testing programs is how easily they can be "gamed". Someone who's learned what's really supposed to be taught by the certification process is invaluable. Someone who's memorized the answers off a few dozen braindump sites will be near useless.
Re:"Quickly Changing Field of IT", My Fat, Hairy A (Score:3, Interesting)
"Someone who's learned what's really supposed to be taught by the certification process is invaluable."
Hell, I know more than a few college grads that have difficulty thinking and learning. Why should people with certs be any different.
A cert that is ba
My certifications were useful (Score:4, Interesting)
In the first few months, I scrambled hard to get used to the new language, tools, etc... Certification gave me a clear learning path, and showed the boss that I had the right attitude. I also learned the Java API inside out, and actually became much more productive... it's amazing how many people code for years in Java and don't know that there's this handy-dandy java.util.Properties thing in the API! Someone had duplicated it, so I refactored it, made it faster with 200 fewer lines to maintain. (In fact, I erased more lines than I wrote; my productivity that year was probably a negative 7-10,000 lines, )
When my trial period ended, I got a raise. 3 months later, I was almost done certification, and I got another raise. They had to lay me off after a year, but one of the two clients I did work for offered me a position, paying 5k Euro more- I wouldn't have been on the client projects if it weren't for the fact that I was certified.
I'm now self-employed, and when I sent out resumes, the certification helps me get an interview (I don't have a degree). It might prove I can jump through hoops, but it also proves I at least know my API.
Any HR person that relies on certs alone is an idiot. Disregarding them entirely would be stupid. But if you are on the other side of things, certifications can be damned useful
as a someone on both sides... (Score:4, Insightful)
The key to usefull people is experience and certification. There were two things I saw with self-taught technical people:
first, there were gaps in their knowledge that came from being able to do things without understanding exactly what they're doing or the underlying technology. I did this to myself when i first hooked up two windows nt machines together and wondered why they didn't see each other. They would be properly setup but i couldn't browse to the other. i would get disgusted and go get something to eat (or do *something* else). when i would get back, presto, it worked! later when i was reading the microsoft courseware I came to understand the timing of the Browswer server and how it worked. So *training* helps fill in the gaps of knowledge. *testing* demonstrates that you have been paying attention at least a little. and *certification* demonstratates persistance.
The second thing that I noticed was that self taught people could not see their lack of knowledge. If there was one thing that I started out all classes with it was this: I can teach you what's in this book, but the most important thing to learn is where this book takes you after the last page. I could tell pretty early who my good students were because they took what was handed to them and pursued it farther.
I have passed about 70 of these test (most needed to teach a class), and have sat a large number of classes as a student. One of the things that I am proud to say is that there were very few useless classes (or test) that I studied for. There have been an amazing number of times where little details in a novell, microsoft, or cisco course have helped me fill in the blanks to solve a problem.
eric
Its for they do not know (Score:3, Interesting)
But then again, its never bad to have some paper behind you if your trying to break into the industry you desire.
Also worth noting is that I am biased. Veiw this comment as non-factual and opinionated. Also, all systems level hirees go through me at my orginization.
When I must interview a prospective person, I will ask them questions that they have no hope of answering. I am interested in their learned tactics for figuring out the answer.
all of this for the problems you will face in everyday life will rarely be textbook.
Easy guide to certification and employment (Score:5, Insightful)
A hiring manager's perspective... (Score:5, Insightful)
I was amazed that candidates with networking-related certs couldn't adequately answer basic questions like the difference between shared and switched Ethernet, or the purpose of a subnet mask. Eventually it got to the point that I was less likely to consider a resume that had certs listed prominently compared to a resume that had no certs at all.
There are two attributes that I found were most likely to result in a successful, productive hire:
- Good interpersonal skills. Sounds trite, I know, by in my view IT is a customer service position. You should enjoy helping people, not get riled easily, and be able to talk to them on their technical level without being condescending. Candidates with successful experience in front-line retail sales (department stores, automotive shops, etc) often downplayed this element of their work history, but I found it to be a positive indicator of a "customer service" mindset.
- Self-motivated technical experience. Many people find it hard to break into the IT industry; that's fine - what did you do in the meantime? Build a home network? Put together a PC from components? Try other operating systems? Do volunteer IT work for schools, libraries, churches, friends & family? Great. Write some software of your own, esp. OSS? Even better! I found that the candidates who explored and learned new technologies just because they thought it was cool made the most capable employees when it came to integrating diverse systems and solving odd problems.
So are certs a waste of time? Not necessarily. My perspective is specific to a startup environment, where everyone needs to be able to do a lot of different things. Large companies often use certs as a filter, though, and if you don't have them you might not even get in the door.Plastering your certification logos across the top of your resume is unlikely to impress anyone who is competent technically. You can still mention them, but make sure to have plenty of evidence of actual doing in addition, even if it's not formal job experience.
True Story (Score:4, Informative)
I applied for a Network Administrator position at a very large credit union. I have no certifications, only years of experience (of course long before small community bank I was messing with DOS/Win/Linux/etc).
Long story short: I got the job against 150 applicants. Why?
Why did I beat out so many of the finalists, most of whom did have certifications?
Well, the answer's obvious, isn't it? Experience beats a piece of paper every day of the week.
I'm not saying that certs are worthless, but experience weighs more on the decision, and is taken into consideration a bit more, than certs.
I feel very fortunate to have the job I do. I suffered for four and a half years as the bank lackey, and it paid off.
Certs aren't t worth the paper (Score:5, Interesting)
Re:Certs aren't t worth the paper (Score:3, Insightful)
And I sincerely hope that after firing the CNE, the owner also fired your sorry ass.
You were miffed that they hired someone with paper qualifications and no experience, so you decided on your own initiative:
to quietly fix errors made by the new guy, rather than talking to him and helping him gain that vaunted experience you're so proud of,
to not talk to your manager/the owner about the problems the new guy was having/causing,
that t
My Situation... (Score:3, Interesting)
I have just recently graduated highschool(this month), and have finished 1/2 of the CCNA(v. 3.xx), I have 2 internships, 1 a 9-month(school year) desktop support intership troubleshooter high school staffer machines, printers, etc. The other, a 3 month(june-august) that I am currently in, is a networking intership with the school district's VERY competant Tech department, including cable management stuff, Avaya switch and layer 3 config at the Avaya CLI, etc..
For college, I plan on going to the comm. college's network degree that offers a CCNA, CCNP, Cisco WLAN and Cisco Security(yes, an associates that is based on Cisco classes, i know). I will be eligable to take all those tests, with reasonable assurance of passing.
So I will be a Networker, with about 1 years experience, with as high as a CCNP, and some limited but hands-on experience with Avaya equipment, as well. If I want, in the next 2 years(as I attend the community college's program) to get myself to be 'more attractive' to a potential emploter for being a networkin admin, or similar, what should i focus on? Part-time intership, passing the cert tests, getting non-networking certs as well(A+ and Net+ would not, I am told, be difficult for my knowledge, though studying would be required)?
Any suggestions on what you would want me to do in the next 2 years, so that I would be more valuable to a future employer?
No certification here! (Score:3, Interesting)
Anyway, when I showed up for my interview, the boss, who is a sort of layman nerd, the kind who reads Wired magazine and thinks he knows everything about computers, but who has about 150 adware and spyware programs on his Windows box that runs slow as molasses, that all he uses it for is checking his Hotmail account, asked me what certifications I had. Well, I had none, and that's what I told him. I think the interview ended abruptly at that point. I didn't get the job.
But the story gets better. As it turns out, I am a half-distant friend of this one guy who works there, and about six months later, after they hired someone with about 50 certifications, my friend told me that this guy doesn't know jack about schitt. They have so many problems there, it's not even funny. And it's stupid, obvious stuff. I mean, come on! I know I could have done a much better job there. Even another friend of mine, a machinist who doesn't give a rat's ass about computers, set up a complete network inside his company, where every job is referenced to a database that he set up. Hell, this guy knows so little about computers, he doesn't even know his administrator password to modify the database, so it's been the same way for years and years... but it gets the job done. No certification, no knowledge of anything... Sure, if it were hooked up to the Internet, he'd probably have the whole system h4x0r3d up faster than he could say Jack Robinson, but he knows that he doesn't know jack, so he has a single "Great Quality" PC hooked up to the dial-up for emailing customers. If he could do all that without knowing schitt about jack, imagine what I could do for the company that wouldn't hire me because I didn't have all kinds of glossy certifications from fancy companies.
Oh, the end of my story is that I finally got a job at another small business, actually an indirect competitor of the first company--same general business, but different market segment. When I got there they had 3 computers, and 1 printer. When someone needed to print, they'd wheel the printer over (it was on a cart), hook it up to the computer, and print. If all three needed to print at the same time, you had two people standing around waiting for a 50 page piece of crap the other person was printing to finish... What a waste of time! Now, they have 24 computers, including 4 servers, with a nice company network, a professional website, everything stored in databases, automated backup, and I'm continuously working on ways to make the most of our computational resources to better serve our customers, our sales team, and the employees inside the company. Still no certification though.
Of course they're meaningless (Score:4, Insightful)
Certifications are narrow, and rarely test genuine problem solving skills. They're a marketting tool more than anything else. They sell you the study guide, the test, and once you've invested so much into getting the certification you've just gotta recommend their products in the workplace, otherwise, why did you just go through all that work of getting certified?
The most important skills are a lot more general than any piece of software you apply them to, and can't be easily verified with a certification. If you can learn on demand, quickly, solve any problem, and have a working understand of good design practices, that's more important than proving you know how to use a piece of software.
But what do I know? I have no certifications. Never needed or wanted one.
Where I Work... (Score:5, Informative)
Based on most of our interviews (not all), we've seen that the people with certs are probably the worst candidates. They are usually arrogant pricks who think they should run the department, or they are clueless dorks who can't find the on switch. One of our tests that we give a candidate is presenting them with a PC that has it's cover off. We ask the person to identify as many components as possible. Without fail, most (again, not all) of the people with certs do miserably on this part of the interview. They can't tell you what kinds of slots are on the motherboard, or what kind of ports are on the back of the system. They can't tell you what expansion cards (if any) are in the system, or even identify the CPU. Some of them even make the egregious mistake of calling the box itself a CPU. But the people without certs usually have a pretty good idea of what a PC is made of.
Where passion is concerned, we usually ask our candidates to tell us about their pet projects at home. It's rare, but occasionally we'll find someone who is just as into computers as we (managment) are. This one guy had fourteen servers at home, including one Sun SPARC box and a DEC Alpha box. When asked to name file systems for OSes, not only did he mention Unix file systems before Windows file systems, but he actually knew VMS' file system as well. Now THAT'S passion.
Attitude will get you far, if it's right for the job you're applying for. We look for people who know computers well, but are confident enough to keep quiet about it. Hotdogging will get you nowhere, except maybe a pink slip. Claiming that you know more than you do will make you look foolish. Keeping your nose to the grindstone will get you advancement. And IF you decide to go get a certification of some kind, we'll applaude that, but don't expect to be treated any differently. Arrogance is always an unpleasant trait and is the number one reason we DON'T hire, certification or not.
We had some idiot with a ton of Microsoft certifications come in. To begin with, he completely failed the PC test. He couldn't tell if the system had ISA or PCI slots. He only knew NTFS and FAT as file systems. He still had the attitude that he could "whip this place into shape" even after flunking the PC test! He only had certs and no practical experience. This is your typical candidate with certs, especially MS certs. Needless to say, he didn't get the job. I imagine he probably conned someone else into hiring him. More than likely for some "suit" position that pretends to be a technical position.
Which leads me to one of my last points: Where I work, EVERYONE (managment included) has to be able to operate our systems. This goes all the way from our department head to the lowest grunt on the totem pole. This includes, not just Windows servers, but OpenVMS servers, Cisco network devices, Sun servers, Tru64 servers, HP-UX servers and Linux servers. No one is exempt from crawling under a desk to troubleshoot a PC problem. We maintain a network of thousands of people, millions of users and millions of items to track in inventory with only three main admins and six technicians and we do it pretty well.
I'm not saying that certs are bad, per se. But if you are going out to interview, put them on the resume, but downplay their significance and emphasize the knowledge you acquired outside of your cert studies. If you didn't learn anything outside of cert classes or books and you don't play with this stuff in your spare time, consider looking in a different field. If your primary goal is to make lots
cert / degree is the key it does not open the door (Score:3, Interesting)
My Mum also told me that as a secretary she would filter the resumes her manager based on rules. Uni degree or 5 years of experience. The manager did not see your resume if you did not fit a 'tick list'. So have the appropriate experience or qualifications to get to the top of the resume pile or you will not get an interview.
Any qualifications will get you to the interview what you do once there opens the door. This was pretty much my story, I had a High Distinction in a single computing subject and no other qualification. I play with computers during high school, this was before the IBM PC was released. It took me about 8 years to get an 'official' programming job. I was configuring reports, doing operations management, loading tapes for a long time before my break came. So if you are at the beginning take the loan get the certifications. If you are not willing to bet on yourself why would anyone else do it.
I read up on the juniors that are "sure" their ability is worth a shot. They are "smarter" that a qualified person. To be sure there is the expectional case that this is true. Most homebrew people cannot cope outside reinstalling a simple computer. Depth on one type if computer does not equal breadth. Certification forces you to learn some of this breadth and opens eyes as to how much there is to actually learn. A failure breeds some humility.
I also read with joy the "qualified" person saying they would not trust an unqualified hack. I lack ANY formal qualifications. I do not have CCNA, I just taught it for a while. I am not a qualified programmer but I just finished a semester teaching 120 students. I really do believe that I am better qualified than most "papered" people out there. If you really want to excel at computer you must be willing to read and learn. You must be willing to struggle through some awful textbooks at times (I read a windows programming manual, took me 6 months! Bad was not an understatement). You must invest your personal time to learn, write Open Source software like OpenOffice.org (plug!)
So what does make the difference. Interview well, actually like the person you are talking too. If you think they are high paying idiots it is likely you will not perform and then you will loose the job. Like the job first and let the money come to you. It is a formula that has worked for me.
Experience is the best certification.
Picture IT (Score:3, Insightful)
Not at all useless (Score:4, Insightful)
If a company's management chain is so weak that they need to use certifications to determine employee skill, you can be sure that working there will be a bureaucratic nightmare.
random certificate thoughts (Score:3, Interesting)
That said, I'm working towards certification in both C++ and UML. The former I have experience debugging, but I'm not (or rather, wasn't) comfortable designing with. The latter is to help with OO knowledge and design. The certificates are through the University of Washington, not some technical school of questionable reputation. The amount of work for these classes is on par with standard 3-5 credit engineering courses. I know Sally Struthers can't offer anything comporable, which is why I wouldn't settle for certification from a non-major university.
Do I believe the certs are *necessary* for me to get a job? No, if Seattle had a decent job market I could land a job pretty quick (I've gotten response from San Jose/Portland, I'm just not willing to relocate yet). But really I need some resume fodder to keep me looking busy, employers don't like long gaps of unactivity in a candidate.
On top of that, after being out of college for 8 years it's about time to go back and take some classes to brush up on technologies I didn't study in college. Note that I said classes, not certification. Really, their is no reason to get certification for everything and if only a single class is relevant to your discipline.
Summing it up, classes from major university == good. Certification is not necessarily required and may in fact be overkill. Certification is not a substitute for real experience/education.
Are Certs worthless? (Score:3, Interesting)
They prove that you can: It's experience that's really valuable, but a cert has it's place. Plus it gets your foot in the door. It also can be used to confuse the clueless boss (or potential boss) as some companies follow the insane process of having the CIO and the CFO (who is almost always a CPA) be the same person. That's a true disaster, folks, I know...it's what I have to deal with daily.
MCP, A+, Net+ -- and I'm not upset I spent the time and money on them, but I'm also smart enough to not lord it over people either.
Re:the problem is (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Here's a serious question... (Score:4, Informative)
Re:Transaction cost (Score:4, Interesting)
I would also recommend stashing at least 10% of your pay into a slush fund to fall back on after you move. Some employers won't consider a candidate outside the commuting area because they may want a relocation package as part of the job offer.