Comment Do the jobs you want require Certification? (Score 1) 317
What you want and think is immaterial.
It is all about what your future employer values.
The options are:
- The actual certifications matter to the employer. Unlike many longer established professions such as for instance law, medicine, architecture, which by law require professional accreditation before you can practice it professionally, IT so far has few if any such legal requirements. But the trend in industry regulation and quality improvement (such as ISO 9001) makes certification of your staff an easy, objective metric to "prove" a (minimal) level of staff competency. Without certification you simply won't be considered.
- The actual certifications don't really matter to the employer. It's about the actual skill level, but by using any number of common industry certificates in the job description you convey skill levels and areas that are important to the role. Your CV should make it glaringly obvious then that you're the right candidate.
As the candidate you don't know beforehand which is the case...
My personal opinion for a good number of certificates is that if you've been working with that particular technology for some time (and maybe with some self-study) you can simply show up for the exam and pass, without an expensive training beforehand. When a current employer doesn't want to pay, you can often qualify for some tax deductions when you pay for them yourself.
Or more bluntly; if you think you're THAT good and so much better then somebody who "only" has the piece of paper, then getting the actual certificate should be trivial for you and why don't you?