Cert's for IT managment?

pcgizzmo

All,

I'm looking for certs that might help me in my managment role. I've been recently promoted. I don't have a college degree so I'm looking for anything that might help me long term at my current job and possibly in future positions to offset the fact I don't have a college degree. I've thought about going back to school but at 45 honestly don't see myself doing it.

Before my promotion I was a system/network admin for 15 years and previous to that worked as a consultant.

Thanks..

dave330i

ITIL is popular in the US.

colemic

Do you have any certs? I hate seeing people give up on the possibility of getting a college degree... please check out WGU. They tie certs and degrees together, which could be doubly helpful for you.

N2IT

Pure IT Management, I'd have to agree with Dave ITIL would be the biggest one. RUP, PMI, even Six Sigma etc at time mention ITIL, it's really done well in penatrating that space. It's a framework that allows other methodologies to snap into it and leverage it.

ITIL V3 Foundation would be a really good one to get. Not only is it popular in the states it's popular in a lot of countries, EU, LATAM, etc.

With that said I think it's common sense, but paper is paper so this might just help you get over the "hump"

pcgizzmo

colemic wrote: »

Do you have any certs? I hate seeing people give up on the possibility of getting a college degree... please check out WGU. They tie certs and degrees together, which could be doubly helpful for you.

I do have some certs but I have others that I have let expire over time. I have looked into WGU and it would most likely be what I would do if I were to try and get my degree.

Part of my issue is my wife just spent two years getting her Masters degree and the time spent by her really took a toll on our marriage. I don't know if going back to school would be good for us at this point in time plus at 45 I don't know if I have it in me to finish 2-3 years of schooling.
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I've done pretty well w/out my degree (six figure income) but there is always part of me that knows that I'm competing with folks younger than me that will work for less money and that have degrees. Management it seems is always a risky place to be because they can always replace you I think. It was a risk for me to take the positions but it was a step up and that's where we all want to go.

N2IT

pcgizzmo wrote: »

Part of my issue is my wife just spent two years getting her Masters degree and the time spent by her really took a toll on our marriage. I don't know if going back to school would be good for us at this point in time plus at 45 I don't know if I have it in me to finish 2-3 years of schooling.

I really do like the way you think. Putting you relationship before you career, hats off you have it "figured" out.

ITIL is relatively easy and it has a nice return. It's a really good one for IT Management. No question about it.

Chitownjedi

After ITIL, I landed two management positions. Not saying that it was the reason, but I can say undoubtedly that I wasn't being recruited for them before it, and afterwards about 40% of people reaching out to me were reaching out about management roles.

N2IT

ChitownJedi Same here. Stuck on the desk for ~ 2 years took a contract role as a team lead went back to the desk for ~11 months then bam placed the ITIL designation on my resume and landed my first tech team lead job. It wasn't anything technical, it was tracking billing, managing a budget and creating one etc. But it paid A LOT more.

slee335

Interesting do you have itil v3 foundation or intermediate? I'm looking for team lead position

paul78

@OP - I can certainly emphasize with not wanting to complete your degree. I am also in my late 40's and I never got the chance to finish my own degree. Depending on the type of technology teams that you are managing - I would agree that broader topics are usually better - such as ITIL or PMI. One area that you could also explore is readings on various management topics. There really aren't any certifications per se. But there are decent free resources which good snippets. These are my 2 favourites:

https://hbr.org/
https://www.executiveboard.com/blogs/ - decent if your employer cannot afford a membership

pcgizzmo

Thanks everyone for the thoughtful replies. I'm currently looking at the ITIL information and the managment topics per the links as suggested. The ITIL seems like it might not be to bad with some studying. The concepts seem fairly straight forward.

Thanks again.